As Good As It Gets

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Sarah's Key is extremely upsetting and harrowing, but as in the title, the key to the film is allowing its layers to merge. A Jewish family' simple life is torn apart by the Nazi occupation. Along with 670.00 Jewish men, women and children, in stages the Jewish community are herded by the gendarmerie, first into the Velodrome and then on to concentration camps. A little girl has a secret, she has tried to hide her brother, a terrible mistake. The unfolding events are told in a series of flashbacks as a modern day journalist played by Kristin Scott Thomas tries to unravel the secrets of the family apartment in Paris which her husband is redesigning. Her journey leads her to uncover a shocking truth, a metaphor for all that is hidden and should be revealed. The film is cathartic, but do be warned, the plight of families beaten and cruelly divided and of children sickening and dying in the camps is very very upsetting. In amongst the cruelty are also acts of kindness. One thing that let the film down was flat acting from some of the supporting cast,Aidan Quinn is hardly bothering at all at the denoument. The best is from the child actors, notably the young actress who play Sarah herself.

The narration alternates between scenes from the past and from the present, and one can't say this choice turned out to be quite pertinent because if/while the passages revolving around Sarah are relatively interesting, especially the beginning and the rafle du Vel d'Hiv in fact, Kristin Scott Thomas' investigation isn't at all, which induces an extremely bad dynamic because every scene somewhat interesting is followed by a rather boring one.Anyway, the scenario as a whole isn't refined at all and a clear superficiality emerges from the movie, which doesn't convince at all. Even the actors' performances are bland, unimpressive, like the story. Elle s'appelait Sarah won't go down in the records, especially since the holocaust has been the subject of other better productions.

Sarah's Key weaves two stories together into a touching portrait of how history affects us all, long after it's happened. In July 1942, Sarah Starzynski and her Jewish family were rounded up and taken to the Vel' d'Hiv with thousands of other French Jews, where they lived for days in absolutely inhuman conditions until they were shipped to concentration camps. As they were being arrested, Sarah locked her brother in a secret closet so that he would be safe, and vowed to escape and come back for him.The second plot line revolves around Julia Jarmond, an American journalist who is on the verge of buying the apartment that Sarah lived in. She undertakes the task of finding out as much about Sarah and her family as she possibly can, uncovering secrets about her family, France, and herself along the way.Usually movies like this don't work out. I walked in expecting a sickeningly sentimental film, yet walked out devastated and with a heavy heart. Sarah's Key is absolutely harrowing, pulling no punches when it addresses France's involvement with the Nazi regime, and revealing the lingering effects that the Holocaust had on the psyches of those who survived it. The modern story isn't quite as gut-wrenching, but it is elevated by Kristin Scott Thomas in one of her best performances yet. She acts at times as a substitute for the audience: we can feel the devastation and heartbreak she feels with each new revelation and discovery. Also worth mentioning are Melusine Mayance, who gives one of the best child performances ever and in a perfect world would receive an Oscar nomination, and the moving score by the criminally underrated Max Richter which elevates the film's key emotional scenes.From the reviews I've read of Sarah's Key, the general consensus is that it could have done without the modern-day plot line. I disagree. It gave history a personal touch, which I feel most historical films lack, and acted as a conduit so that the audience could get more involved in the film. Thomas's last lines remind us of what I think the filmmakers wanted us to walk away with: that history lives on even in those who lived after it, and that is important to take to heart in order to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

A film of past and present, Sarah's key recounts the struggles and heartache faced by two women as they deal with great loss in their lives and attempt to run from the truth in an effort to deal with their pain. Living with guilt and dealing with the loss and the pain endured along the way become the central theme of this film. We watch as each woman finds ways to cope with their pain but also how running from the truth behind that pain will impact and change the course of their lives forever. As French police begin to roundup Jewish families in 1942 for deportation we learn about a young girl named Sarah, (Melusine Mayance (child) and Charlotte Poutrel (adult), and how the 1942 Roundup, as it is known today, would forever change her life. We are seamlessly transitioned between past and present throughout the film as a present day investigation by an American journalist named Julia (Kristen Scott Thomas), working on a anniversary piece about the incident, uncovers the pain of the life of a forgotten girl named Sarah. In an attempt to save her younger brother's life on that fateful day in 1942, Sarah locked him in a closet, only to leave him behind, unknowing to anyone as she and her parents are taken away by the French police. We watch Sarah's heart break as she makes many unsuccessful attempts to send help to free her brother. Eventually escaping from a concentration camp, she is taken in by Jules (Neils Arestrup) and Genevieve (Dominique Frot) Dufaure, who help her return home only to find her brothers rotting corpse. We watch as her new family struggles to help her cope with the guilt of his death and then confront a loss of their own when she decides to leave in pursuit of a life of her own. Even a husband and son could not heal the pain of her childhood loss and she eventually takes her own life. As a grown man, her son knows no truth about his mother's life and until his father confirms the facts, he is resistant to Julia's findings as she attempts to find closure on Sarah's life. In present day we watch as Julia becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to Sarah and her family and learn that the childhood apartment of her husband, that they are currently renovating, was in fact the same home that Sarah was torn from so many years before. After learning many details from her father-in-law about the day Sarah returned home to find her brother we also learn of Julia's own personal loss. After discovering that she is pregnant, we learn of previous lost pregnancies and the toll it took on her and her family. Deciding against termination of the pregnancy, at the suggestion of her husband, we begin to see the struggles in their relationship and the truth they have been running from as well. The film Message In A Bottle shares a similar theme as the central concern also seems to revolve around dealing with loss, feeling of guilt to be alive, and concealing pain. Interestingly the films also share a similar plot in that a journalist seeks to uncover a story behind intriguing information about an unknown individual. Suggestive of the theme the lighting for this film had an overall darkness to it. The dim but natural lighting effects contributed greatly to the drama and emotions throughout the film. Additionally, the film was able to grab the viewer's attention by use of close up shots throughout the film. This particular technique focused the attention on the emotions of the actor thus drawing the viewer into the scenes providing the greatest dramatic significance in relation to the characters dealing with their losses. As the theme suggest, when we experience such tragic events in our lives it can seem easier to run from the pain than to face it head on. Living as though the events and losses never took place is in a sense hiding from the truth. Perhaps it is much easier to run from the pain than deal with the sadness and possible guilt of surviving the storm that those around us failed to do.