Fugitive Pieces delivers its own evocative poetry.
Fugitive Pieces (2008)
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Reviews Counted:20
Fresh:13
Rotten:7
Average Rating:6.7/10
Consensus: Though the retelling is a bit too subtle, the moving story and solid performances lift Fugitive Pieces beyond standard holocaust tales.
Theatrical Release:May 2, 2008 Limited
Box Office: $449,048
Synopsis: Adapted from Anne Michael's acclaimed prose-poem novel, FUGITIVE PIECES is a harrowing and haunting tale of Holocaust survival and personal awakening. The film opens in Poland, as young Jakob Berr... Adapted from Anne Michael's acclaimed prose-poem novel, FUGITIVE PIECES is a harrowing and haunting tale of Holocaust survival and personal awakening. The film opens in Poland, as young Jakob Berr (Robbie Kay) is hidden away just before German soldiers storm into his Jewish family's home. After watching his parents murdered and his sister dragged away to an uncertain fate, Jakob flees and hides in the woods. He is discovered by a kindly Greek archaeologist, Athos (Rade Sherbedgia), who smuggles the sickly Jakob back to his own island home and hides him for the rest of the war. Years later, having moved to Canada, the grownup Jakob (Stephen Dillane) has become a writer struggling to articulate his childhood horrors, haunted by the mystery of his sister's fate. But after his troubled emotions lead to the breakup of his marriage to the free-spirited Alex (Rosamund Pike), Jakob must exorcise the ghosts of his past if he is to close a traumatic chapter of his life and find beauty in the present. Director Jeremy Podeswa (THE FIVE SENSES) ably shifts between the different stages of Jakob's life, showing how grief can continue to influence one's actions--or inaction--in the years that follow a tragedy. Handsomely shot and thoughtfully acted, FUGITIVE PIECES is a touching testimony to the power of remembrance and redemption. [More]
Starring: Stephen Dillane, Rade Sherbedgia, Rosamund Pike, Ayelet Zurer
Starring: Stephen Dillane, Rade Sherbedgia, Rosamund Pike, Ayelet Zurer, Robbie Kay, Ed Stoppard, Rachelle Lefevre, Nina Dobrev
Director: Jeremy Podeswa
Director: Jeremy Podeswa
Screenwriter: Jeremy Podeswa
Producer: Robert Lantos
Composer: Nikos Kypourgos
Studio: Samuel Goldwyn Films
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Reviews for Fugitive Pieces
The great Serbian actor Rade Serbedzija gives Fugitive Pieces its heart.
Tasteful, unremarkable art-house fare, rescued from complete irrelevance by Stephen Dillane's bottled-up performance as a writer scarred by the Holocaust.
If Fugitive Pieces has a message, it is that life can heal us, if we allow it.
Fugitive Pieces is often quiet, lyrical, reflective and underplayed. It doesn't minimize Holocaust suffering--far from it--but it strives, often successfully, to unearth the innate good in people Anne Frank alluded to so eloquently.
Everyone in the movie...is fabulous, and Podeswa has an ability to distill history into a few powerful images.
The cast is uniformly attractive and earnest. But the romanticized image of the tortured artist is the stuff of stereotype unless it's leavened with humor, or limned in art. In Fugitive Pieces, neither element appears in sufficient quantity.
Feels less like a redemptive survivor's story and more like a commercial for some terrific Mediterranean resort.
Bit by fragmented bit, it all adds up to a one-note portrait of its protagonist. Granted, that one note is a powerful one.
This lyrical drama about memory and survivor's guilt taps a deep reservoir of emotions.
A generally dull and unmemorable adaptation of Anne Michaels' extraordinary prose-poetry novel.
It’s a character study in which the lead participant is the least interesting person in the movie. There’s something inherently frustrating and unsatisfying about that.
Fugitive Pieces, however well-meaning, is still pretty much an emotionally distanced slog.
Though much of the film's power is tamped down by the passive storytelling style, Dillane's performance as the adult Jakob is compelling, and Ayelet Zurer is beguiling as Jakob's late-in-life soul mate.
Once you adjust to the film's deliberate pace and literary rhythms, there are innumerable visual and emotional pleasures to be had.
The strengths of Fugitive Pieces are its fluidity and subtlety. Emotional repression may be one of the most difficult conditions to portray honestly, and Dillane's performance of Jakob is a study in the art of creating sympathy by not asking for it.
The resonant film that results is not without its flaws, but it’s ultimately quite absorbing.
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