The Truce
In his critically acclaimed writings, Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi feared that
time would compress the horrors of the Holocaust into a neat chapter of
history. It is with unfortunate irony then that director Francesco Rosi traces
Levi's odyssey from the concentration camp to his hometown of Torino in a
patchwork of affecting but ultimately disjointed vignettes. John Turturro plays
the owlish chemist and writer (who committed suicide in 1987) with a quiet yet
complex mix of irony, fragility, and tenacity. So subtle is his portrayal that
at times he's almost blown away by the bloated score.
But Levi's brilliant, deeply psychological recountings of his survival,
published in a 1963 memoir of the same name, seem too intricate for film. And
taken verbatim, his trenchant observations about torture and loss ring
discordantly pious as dialogue. Like the epic atrocities of the Holocaust
itself, the tragically haunted Levi eludes cinematic adaptation. At the
Kendall Square.
-- Alicia Potter
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