Cinema is a vehicle for investigating historical scars in “Isaac,” a starkly beautiful drama about a filmmaker who returns to his native Lithuania in 1964 to make a movie about a WWII slaughter, and becomes embroiled alongside his schoolmate in totalitarian trouble. Adapted from a short story by Antanas Skema, director Jurgis Matulevicius’ feature debut — Lithuania’s entry to the Oscar international feature race — is Its obliqueness may preclude it from attracting a wide domestic audience, but such haziness is part and parcel of a work about the lingering, lethal fog of war.
“Isaac” opens with the 1941 Lietukis garage massacre of 40 Lithuanian Jews at the hands of Nazis and their local mob-like collaborators. Shot in sumptuous black and white (as is two-thirds of the ensuing film), and with the sort of roving, wobbly, serpentine camerawork favored throughout by Matulevicius and talented cinematographer Narvydas Naujalis, this scene evokes the grimy brutality of “Son of Saul,...
“Isaac” opens with the 1941 Lietukis garage massacre of 40 Lithuanian Jews at the hands of Nazis and their local mob-like collaborators. Shot in sumptuous black and white (as is two-thirds of the ensuing film), and with the sort of roving, wobbly, serpentine camerawork favored throughout by Matulevicius and talented cinematographer Narvydas Naujalis, this scene evokes the grimy brutality of “Son of Saul,...
- 11/23/2021
- by Nick Schager
- Variety Film + TV
Jurgis Matulevicius: 'The camerawork and lighting are very important to me and I spent a lot of time on that' Photo: Courtesy of Tallinn Black Nights The present is haunted by the past in Jurgis Matulevicius' smart and complex debut film, that mixes Cold War elements and soul-searching with a love triangle plotline and psychological thriller. It centres on a trio of of characters, film director Gediminas (Dainius Gavenonis), his old friend Andrius (Aleksas Kazanavicius) and Andrius' wife Elena (Severija Janusauskaite), whose lives are tied up to a lesser or greater degree with the death of a Jewish man, Isaac, in the Lietukis Garage Massacre. The film is adapted from a short story by Antanas Skema, a Lithuanian author whose stream of consciousness approach you can feel in the fluidity of Isaac's narrative.
When we caught up with Matulevicius in Tallinn - where his film screened in the First...
When we caught up with Matulevicius in Tallinn - where his film screened in the First...
- 12/20/2019
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
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