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Edges of the Lord
Edges of the Lord is a serious, devout film that tries to shake us through its message with such urgency that it only succeeds in rattling us into frustration. We are given sad scene after sad scene, but they are never able to connect in a way that ever makes a clear point about anything. By the end of the film, be are drained, not inspired or challenged. This film does not observe and comment on our depravity, but rather gives in to it. It's a hard film to forget, or to forgive. The film tells the story of Romek (Haley Joel Osment), a preteen Jewish boy in Nazi-occupied Poland who is whisked away from his parents by a good-natured farmer to live as one of his sons in a small farming village. The Nazis are ever present, and they occasionally storm the village and shoot Polish pig-smugglers, but Romek integrates so well into the farmer’s family that they seemingly don’t notice him. Romek spends most of his days roaming about the beautiful landscape with a group of friends that includes his new “brothers”—Vladek (Richard Banel), who is about his age, and Tolo (Liam Hess), who is younger and fits the token “wise-beyond-his-age” role nicely—Pyra (Wojciech Smolarz), who plays with the others when he is not helping his older brother rob fugitive Jews, and Vladek’s orphaned girlfriend Maria (Ola Frycz), who lives with her ailing grandmother after her parents were murdered by the Nazis. Just about every scene has to do with the interaction between these kids as they play different games and find themselves in various quarrels with each other. Most of their games and conflicts come from the challenge of the over-zealous priest (Willem Dafoe, perhaps the only actor besides Max von Sydow to play Christ, a priest, and various, evil villains—what a good sport), who is trying to ready the children for their christening. The priest knows that Romek is a Jew, but a christening would cast doubt on the boy’s true origins and keep the Nazis away, and it would also possibly convert the lad to the “true” faith. In the meantime, each child is assigned an apostle to “study” and to try to imitate him. We come to learn that the true hero of the film is Tolo, who chooses to imitate not an apostle but Christ himself, and does so which such childlike conviction that he begins to actually see himself capable of Christ’s miracles. The other children look on in stunned fascination—they play along, get baptized by Tolo, help him fulfill his “Jesus practices,” try to give cut the poor tyke some slack, and are consistently tormented both by other children and ensuing tragedies that I will not reveal. It is here that the film begins to rapidly lose its footing. While they play out the roles of the apostles, Romek and company’s relationships constantly shift from friendly, antagonistic and even romantic, though sans Tolo’s subplot, the conflicts never rise beyond the typical childhood dramas of My Girl or Stand By Me. Sadly, Edges of the Lord lacks the confidence and clear sense of direction of both those films; it moves from scene to scene, relationship to relationship with such reckless abandon that we have hard time keeping up or understanding the motivations for many of their actions. Setting these dramatic but directionless scenes to the backdrop of the Holocaust might give the film an appearance of depth, but it really only coats it with a false sense of sincerity, that it quickly grows tiresome and manipulative. Some films about the Holocaust—Schindler’s List immediately comes to mind—use that dark hour in history as a means to paint a darker picture of humanity’s descent into depravity and the infrequent, good souls who tried to do something about it. Others, such as The Pianist, have no such motivation, but simply disclose a person’s survival through the turbulent times and allow images of suffering to speak for themselves. Edges of the Lord has the workings of an interesting film; if it had followed the pattern of either of the aforementioned movies, it could have been quite a masterpiece. But it consistently falls short of its goals to stir our thoughts by never really deciding what its trying to say, or at least never having a firm grasp of how it is going to relay its message. It is simply a series of events, of individual scenes that are overly-preachy but are never clear and never connect together to form a cohesive whole. Writer/director Yurek Bogayevicz seems to know that his film is in danger of getting incoherent and tries to conceal the fact with scene after scene in which pointlessly sad things happen to the children. I think that he hopes these moments will be moving enough to make us forget that the picture really isn’t working. There are, unfortunately, many such depressing scenes that I could choose from to discuss, but the most obvious example I can give that won’t give anything else away is Tolo’s continuing insistence that he is Christ. He ties himself crucifix-style to a tree, weeps and screams when other children refuse to follow him, gets deathly-ill after trying to calm a violent storm, and the like. Certainly these scenes are almost unbearably sad, but not because they contain any poignancy—we simply see this pathetic, idealistic child in pain and it is not fun to watch. What are these scenes saying? I was never sure, and neither, I suspect, is Bogayevicz. They simply exist, as does the rest of the film, without carrying any weight except that of self-indulgence. It should be noted the Osment and the other children are all fine actors who are able to effectively wade through the material unscathed, transcending its manipulative gibberish and pointlessly preachy dialogue. And God bless them, they even maintain believable Polish accents throughout, though it would have been less distracting if Bogayevicz had just let them be themselves on the screen. After all, they’re all technically speaking Polish anyway, so are the accents really necessary? As the near-mad priest, Defoe doesn’t fare quite as well—he seems detached and far too thoughtful for such a wild-eyed, legalistic zealot. I’ll forgive him on the basis that the script probably didn’t help him much—he probably thought that, like the film he was starring in, his character contained a depth that really wasn’t there at all. Cast: Mirimax Films presents a Canal+ release. Written and directed by Yurek Bogayevicz. Rated R, for graphic violence and sexual content, including an implied rape. Running time: 96 minutes. Original year of release: 2001. Questions? Comments? E-mail me: danel_the_tinman@hotmail.com |
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