Irena's Vow 2023 Film Review

 

Irena's Vow

A new film dramatizes the life of an almost unbelievable heroine

Irena's Vow is a 2023 film dramatizing the World War II heroism of a young Polish nursing student, Irena Gut. Irena's Vow is a two-hour, color film. It was shot in Poland. The film is in English. It received a limited US release in April, 2024. Irena's Vow has an 86% professional reviewer rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 93% fan reviewer rating. Veteran reviewer Rex Reed calls Irena's Vow "One of the most astounding holocaust stories." He says, "It’s true, if fantastic." The film is "anchored by the powerful, heartfelt performance of Sophie Nelisse as an innocent girl whose integrity and resolve turns her into a woman of maturity and strength." Roman Haller, a Holocaust survivor, says, "It is a very great film. I expected a good film, but it is even more than I expected. … I saw my mother. I saw my father. I saw Irena … She was like a mother to me … I want to tell you there were people like that."

Dr. Glenn R. Schiraldi wrote the 2007 book, World War II Survivors: Lessons in Resilience. He devoted a chapter to Irena Gut Opdyke. She was, he writes, "a diminutive, elegant woman with warm, radiant blue eyes and delicate features. She is one of the kindest, most loving women I have encountered. She reminds one of Mother Teresa. As she spoke, I often found myself choking back tears."

Dan Gordon is a veteran screenwriter and also a former captain in the Israeli Defense Forces. Gordon says, "About 25 years ago, I was driving to my home in Los Angeles and listening to the radio. I heard a woman, Irene Gut Opdyke, telling her story. When I got home, I sat in the car in the driveway for another hour and a half, because I couldn’t stop listening." He worked for years to get the film made.

Director Louise Archambault is a French Canadian. When she first viewed the script, she says, her reaction was "Wow. What an amazing woman. If that script had been fiction, I would have refused it" because no one would believe it. But, "I fell in love with that character." Irena's story is "relevant. We want to tell that story today in 2024." Even though many films have been made about WW II, we haven't seen, Archambault says, WW II from the eyes of a young Polish Catholic girl forced by Nazis to work for them. Approximately 1.5 million Poles were forced to work for Nazi Germany, often under slave labor conditions and at the cost of their health and their lives.

Because Archambault had a relatively meager budget of five million dollars and only twenty-nine days for shooting, she developed an intimate, rather than epic style. Irena's Vow isn't Saving Private Ryan; the deaths we see are of individuals; they are murdered in a sickeningly intimate way. Yes, there is horror in the story, but there is also genuine "love, hope, and light." Archambault benefited from filming Polish actors, with a Polish crew, in Poland. They all know the history, she said; their grandparents lived it. They brought their personal experiences to the film. Also, "I put my energy on character, on human behavior."

Events in Poland contributed to the set's atmosphere. Refugees from Ukraine were arriving with their belongings in their hands and on their backs. "Every day we were reminded that war was going on next door." There was a "big van" with "big guys" on the set necessary for insurance purposes. "If shooting starts here" – shooting with bullets not with cameras – "we need to get everyone out of here."

Given how good this movie is, and how remarkable Irena's story is, one has to wonder why the film has received so little publicity and such a limited release. I have my suspicions as to what cultural trends may have sidelined Irena's Vow. More on that, below.

On Seeing Gone with the Wind in a theater for the fifth time

 

On Watching Gone with the Wind in a Theater for the Fifth Time

 

Gone with the Wind is universal art misunderstood by elite book burners

 

On April 7, I attended an eighty-fifth anniversary theatrical showing of Gone with the Wind. In recent weeks, I've been through an earthquake, seen a solar eclipse, and spent hours in church for Easter. Even so, watching GWTW for the fifth time in a theater was a religious experience.

 

Manohla Dargis, the New York Times chief film critic, interrupts her April 12 review of a new movie to restate her righteous indignation against an unrelated film. Gone with the Wind, she insists, is a "monument to white supremacy and the myth of the Southern Lost Cause."

 

Yes, both the book and the film are racist. No, GWTW's racism is not the works' alpha and omega. And, no, GWTW is not the only flawed work of art. Have you heard any rap lyrics lately? Rather, GWTW addresses universal themes. Audiences from diverse ethnicities and social classes recognize these themes and even just the film's soundtrack reduces listeners to tears. GWTW brings the power of myth to a universal experience: growing up, leaving childhood innocence, and entering a world that isn't invested in your survival, and that can engineer relentless freight trains full of misery and steer them right at you. It's about who survives the collision, how, and why, and at what cost. "Hardships make or break people," as Rhett Butler says.

"One Way Back" by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Book Review

 

"One Way Back" is a good book. It's not just a "celebrity memoir." Even if author Dr. Christine Blasey Ford were not famous, this book would be worth reading. It's well-written and like any good book it causes the reader to feel, to think, and to understand the human race a bit better. "One Way Back" is also brief and an easy read. The sentences are short and the vocabulary is basic.
 
"One Way Back" is no less beautiful for its ease of reading. Ford uses surfing as her overarching metaphor. Surfing is dangerous but it is also, for the surfer, like life itself. Yes, it entails risk, but in undertaking that risk the surfer enhances the experience of being alive. The book's title, "One Way Back," is a reference to surfing. The surfer paddles out into the ocean, and must ride the wave the ocean presents. There's only one way back to shore – riding the wave that life hands you.

 

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was not famous before summer, 2018. US President Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the SCOTUS. Ford contacted her elected officials to report that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her at an informal high school gathering when she was 15 and he was 17. Ford passed a lie detector test administered by a former FBI agent. Ford was asked to testify before the Senate, and she did. In initial reactions, even FOX news, and, indeed, even Donald Trump himself assessed Ford as credible.

 

Later, the White House devised a strategy whereby Brett Kavanaugh would perform an opera similar to the one presented by the similarly accused Clarence Thomas. Thomas claimed he was a victim of a "high tech lynching." Kavanaugh said, "This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election … revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups." What Kavanaugh said here was not true. Kavanaugh spoke other untruths, see, for example, his untrue comments about "boof," about "Devil's Triangle," and about how much he drank and what parties he attended. He spoke these untruths while under oath.

 

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and her family have been subjected to murderous harassment ever since. She has had to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars in security fees. For the past six years, people have been actively threatening to kill her and her children. Even animals are subjected to this rage. Dead animals have been thrown onto her property. Brett Kavanaugh has a lifetime ride on the SCOTUS, a position as close to royalty as America awards.

 

"One Way Back" is a quiet book. Dr. Ford records these events, but quietly. She never adopts the histrionic, fever pitch screech of Kavanaugh in his testimony, revealing temperament so totally unworthy of a judge that Saturday Night Live parodied it in one of their most popular routines.

 

Rather we get an account of a woman who apparently never wanted the spotlight, but who marched – or surfed – into it when she thought doing so was her civic duty.

 

I liked this book, but I didn't feel that I could ever get close to Dr. Ford. She is very unlike me. Her father was a self-made man. He was successful enough that he managed to send his three children to exclusive prep schools and to see them go on to advanced degrees and successful careers.

 

Young Christine didn't have to work. She went to an exclusive prep school and spent her extracurricular hours swimming and diving. It seems that her dad bankrolled her advanced education that included time spent in Hawaii. With that foundation, Dr. Ford became a successful professor and employee at two California universities. She is happily married and her sons followed her into the water and she spent her summers standing by as they received training at the beach.

 

Dr. Ford is frank about how she differs from others. She is a very sensitive person and she sometimes feels shy and out of place with others' values. Reading about her decision to come forward, I felt as if I were reading about Dr. Ford being put through a food processor. So many different people gave her so much different advice. Testify, don't testify, protect yourself above all, do your civic duty above all, align yourself with this or that person … it must have been hell for her. Through it all, she was true to her own sense of civic duty. And for that unhinged, hateful misogynists defame her and encourage really bad people to continue to threaten her life and the life of her children.

 

Ford's misogynist enemies lie about her. Many of those lies have found their way into influential publications. "One Way Back" corrects those lies. Read the book.

 

Finally – Thank you Dr. Ford.