The sojourn of Primo Levi
When Primo Levi was liberated from Auschwitz in January 1945, he wanted to return immediately to his birthplace in Turin, Italy. That journey of a thousand miles ended up taking 10 months as Levi crossed country after country before finally making it back home.
Levi, whose book “Survival in Auschwitz” is an acknowledged classic, wrote about this passage in “The Truce” (filmed by John Turturro in 1998). Italian documentary filmmaker Davide Ferrario, who specializes in what he calls “on the road” documentaries, decided to retrace Levi’s steps in modern Europe. It was a wise choice.
For while the idea of comparing the Europe of 60 years ago to the Europe of today sounds didactic, the results are anything but. Ferrario turns out to have a delicate, unforced eye for elegant counterpoints, and his style unobtrusively draws you into the journey.
The idea, in the director’s words, of crossing Europe “with our eyes and his words” has the bonus of Levi’s crystalline prose (read here by Chris Cooper). “It seems the world is headed for disaster,” goes one prescient passage, “and we limit ourselves to hoping its advance is slow.” Levi himself is glimpsed in newsreel footage of a 1982 Auschwitz visit, his uncompromising intelligence written on his face.
While Ferrario began with a general idea of themes for the different countries he would be crossing, he was open to the serendipity of particular events that would illustrate those points.
In Poland, for instance, the theme is work, and filmmaker Andrzej Wajda, director of “Man of Iron,” shows him around the now-deserted steel mills of Nowa Huta, calling it “a living corpse, a museum of communism.”
In Belarus, where the theme is “a world apart,” the nature of the country’s political system is illustrated by the way a government functionary attempts to manage the film crew’s movements.
Levi and the film also go through Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and even Germany before getting to Italy. It was a harrowing experience not easily survived -- “We met Medusa’s gaze without being petrified” is how Levi described it -- but a journey with things to say to us today.
“Primo Levi’s Journey.” Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes. Laemmle’s Music Hall 3, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills (310) 274-6869.
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