This is a film whose mood lingers.
Comment
12/01/08
Fugitive Pieces (2008)
66
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:68
Fresh:45
Rotten:23
Average Rating:6.1/10
Consensus: Though the retelling is a bit too subtle, the moving story and solid performances lift Fugitive Pieces beyond standard holocaust tales.
Australian Theatrical Release:
Nov 20, 2008 Wide
US Box Office: $449,048
Synopsis: Adapted from Anne Michael's acclaimed prose-poem novel, FUGITIVE PIECES is a harrowing and haunting tale of Holocaust survival and personal awakening. The film opens in Poland, as young Jakob Berr... [More]
Starring: Stephen Dillane, Rade Sherbedgia, Rosamund Pike, Ayelet Zurer
Director: Jeremy Podeswa
Reviews for Fugitive Pieces
Top CriticThough the strong performances from the brooding Dillane and the ever-good Serbedzija keep things from getting dull, the film does meander its way to a final act that simply peters out.
12/01/08
Top CriticWriter-director Jeremy Podeswa, another Canadian, doesn't try to reproduce the talk on film, which is a wise move.
11/28/08
Top CriticNuanced, scrupulous and powerful...
11/19/08
Top CriticSlow moving, torpid and melancholy...it's tearjerker material, but without the tears.
11/19/08
Top CriticA powerful and emotional journey of a man trying to come to terms with history.
11/19/08
Top CriticNostalgic, deeply felt, and refreshingly astute, "Fugitive Pieces" is something of a rare bird these days%u2014a big-budget, transnational historical drama that actually justifies its scope and subject matter with more than visual opulence.
08/08/09
Podeswa's confusing, commonplace film lumbers along with a painful sincerity.
06/02/09
Plays out with such daunting high-mindedness it makes The Reader look like Transformers.
05/29/09
Fugitive Pieces reduces the Holocaust and its aftermath to a cosy soap opera.
05/29/09
One of the most delicate, approachable and rewarding Holocaust movies of recent years.
05/29/09
Given the source novel, Podeswa's attempt to adapt Fugitive Pieces is admirable in itself. Yet despite an enthusiastic cast, this fails to transport you in the same way. Tying itself in narrative knots, the end result is stilted.
05/29/09
The movie has little dramatic momentum, and its journey is essentially Jakob’s incremental acceptance of his fate. But Dillane and the writer-director Jeremy Podeswa create such a compelling central character that it hardly matters.
05/29/09
Top CriticHis journey towards peace of mind involves lots of lyrical philosophising, which presumably comes straight from the film’s source novel, by Anne Michaels, and doesn’t lend itself to dramatisation, despite Dillane’s typically intelligent performance.
05/29/09
Anne Michael's complex, poetic novel is here adapted into a stolid, somewhat po-faced film, but one that still manages to tease some affecting drama out of its scholarly premise.
05/29/09
Top CriticDespite a rich premise, the soul-searching of the older Jakob is, at best, curiously colourless; at worst, positively grating.
05/29/09
An intermittently powerful, if not entirely successful, piece.
05/29/09
But while there’s life, there’s hope, and Jeremy Podeswa’s delicate, deliberate adaptation of Anne Michaels’ novel follows Jakob’s heartrending progress from the darkness to the light.
05/29/09
There are fleeting moments of poignancy and poetry, significantly when the script features narration taken almost directly from the novel, but this is clunkily written and poorly edited.
05/29/09
Jeremy Podeswa's tremulous adaptation of Anne Michaels's novel aches with earnest intent and tasteful eroticism, yet it moves as heavily and lugubriously as a prison gate.
05/29/09
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