‘Persian Lessons‘ is one of the most surprising films I’ve seen lately. It is an international co-production made by studios in Russia, Germany and Belarus. Director Vadim Perelman was born in Ukraine and lives and works in Canada and the USA. Released in 2020 on the festival circuit, the film didn’t really get to run in theaters before the outbreak of the pandemic. It’s being released again now, and I hope it will be seen by a lot of people in theaters or streaming. It had probably been filmed a year before release. Today, such a co-production would probably not be possible, if we take into account the events of 2022. The cinematographic approach is also special, but that does not surprise me, because Vadim Perelman is a film director who is not in a hurry to make many films (this is his fifth in a career spanning some 20 years) and chooses his subjects and scripts carefully.
‘Persian Lessons‘ is a film about the Holocaust. Like many films with similar themes it is a story of survival. Each survival in the Holocaust was a miracle, but in telling it,Vadim Perelman approaches the topic from an original perspective and with a sensitivity that makes the film find its place in the ranks of quality films. The story told is extraordinary, but it is the human dimension that primarily interested screenwriter Ilja Zofin and the director. The hero of the film is Gilles, the son of a rabbi from Antwerp, arrested in occupied France and deported in a transport destined for extermination. Chance and perhaps generosity and a passion for books help him, as in the truck that takes the prisoners to the unknown and perhaps to death, he comes into possession of a book of Persian mythology, which he takes advantage of to claim to be Iranian and not Jewish, escaping immediate execution. In the forced labor camp where he ends up, one of the officers is a former chef, whose dream and plan B in the event of Germany’s defeat is to get to Iran. Gilles, now Reza, takes it upon himself to teach him Persian. It’s just that he doesn’t know the language at all and has to invent it. To memorize the words he had already translated, he uses the register with the names of those interned in the camp, meticulously kept by the executioner. The intellectual game between Gilles / Reza and officer Klaus turns into a more complicated relationship: executioner – victim, torturer – prisoner, but also student – teacher and to the end accomplices in the wish to survive. The words of the invented language play an important role. The danger of death is constant and imminent, and every day of survival is a victory for the young deportee.
The story has many levels of complexity and a symbolic load, avoiding at the same time didacticism and excessive rhetoric. The dialogues are excellently written. I don’t remember seeing the Argentinian born actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart before and all I need to say is that his performance as Gilles / Reza is formidable. German actor Lars Eidinger undertakes the character of Commander Klaus. His role is not easy, because the balance between revulsion towards the executioners’ deeds and the human dimension, between caricature and understanding the reasons for the actions, is very fragile. Eidinger succeeds, I think, very well in this difficult mission. His character could be a good example of what Hanna Arendt called ‘the banality of evil’. I also noticed in the cast the presence of Jonas Nay, a relatively young German actor whom I had already admired in the cycle of television mini-series starting with ‘Deutschland 83 ‘. His role is not very complex but the young actor fills it with content. The side plot of the relationships in-between the German officers and soldiers who turn their duty into crimes may seem far from the central thread of the story, but in my opinion it helps in understanding the context and adds details to the picture of the slave labor camp, where for the prisoners the difference between life and death depended on chance and the whims of the executioners. There are nuances even in hell, this would be one of the interpretations of this complex and impressive film.