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.
Comment
05/29/09
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.
Theatrical Release:29-05-2009
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
Podeswa's confusing, commonplace film lumbers along with a painful sincerity.
06/02/09
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
One of the most delicate, approachable and rewarding Holocaust movies of recent years.
05/29/09
Top CriticRestrained, worthy and dull.
05/29/09
Despite a rich premise, the soul-searching of the older Jakob is, at best, curiously colourless; at worst, positively grating.
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 CriticGiven 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
Top CriticFugitive Pieces reduces the Holocaust and its aftermath to a cosy soap opera.
05/29/09
His 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
An intermittently powerful, if not entirely successful, piece.
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 CriticJeremy 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
Plays out with such daunting high-mindedness it makes The Reader look like Transformers.
05/29/09
Top CriticEngaging, well acted and ultimately moving drama.
05/28/09
The film can barely breathe, much less move.
05/15/08
Ultimately, Podeswa fashions this collection of familiar characters and overworked themes into something unique: a wistful parable about the destructive hold the past has on all of our lives and the absolute necessity of breaking it.
06/26/08
It’s a character study in which the lead participant is the least interesting person in the movie. There’s something inherently frustrating and unsatisfying about that.
05/02/08
The best approach to the movie is to stay home with the celebrated novel on which it's based.
05/01/08
A poignant and heart-affecting screen adaptation of a 1996 novel about suffering and the redemptive power of love.
05/01/08
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