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Before war breaks out Korczak has already achieved much notoriety. His voice is heard by millions on his radio show and he is recognized in the street by both Poles and Germans alike as a progressive minded humanitarian. He is also a doctor who runs an orphanage for Jewish children and in the opening scenes we hear him on his radio program as he tells just how much his childen mean to him. As soon as the political climate within Poland changes however the doctors program is cancelled and before long the doctor along with his 200 children are marched toward the Warsaw Ghetto. At first the doctor believes the war will be a short one and he confronts the Germans and shames them for their mistreatment of the Jewish Poles. But as events unfold the doctors optimism becomes dimmer and dimmer. It does not take long for people to start dying in the ghetto of starvation and sickness and the doctor soon comes to realize that is very unlikely that either he or the children will survive the war. Death is everywhere around them and the doctor sees all that he can do is try and make this constant contact with death less fearful and so writes plays for the children in which death is experienced as a peaceful thing. These are hard scenes to watch and as moving as anything you will see on film but there is also a beauty to them as they show just how profoundly the doctor feels the childrens suffering. The doctor believes in not just feeding the childrens and caring for them when they are sick but also he believes in making good people out of them and despite the dire circumstances he never ceases acting with the childrens interests in mind, their interests always come before his own. They all admire him and look to him as a beacon of hope. And the doctor does not fail his children. The last scenes of the children walking proudly hand in hand with their Korczak are moving and uplifting even though we know what fate awaits them. The ending of this film has a lyric beauty that I will not give away but I could not give it away even if I wanted to as it really trancends any description of it--you just have to experience it. We feel what the children feel for their beloved Korczak and in a way we all--the best part of ourselves-- marches with them.
The very highest recommendation.
Better than the Pianist? Tough call, but yes in many ways. Polanski is definitely better cinematically, but Wayda, from Holland's script, renders human relations more finely. Probably its biggest weakness is the choppiness between plot lines. For me, the Poles definitely lead the way on cinematic treatment of the Holocaust.
Szpilman was aloof, and Korczak fully engaged, and their trajectories diverge. Korczak was a world renowned orphanage director and pediatrician, whose radio show was massively popular among all Poles before the War. This meant he was given every chance to escape safely, and walk away from his hundreds of Jewish orphans in the Jewish ghetto; but, instead, his absolute devotion to giving his orphans some semblance of childhood drove him to "deal with the devil himself." On the other hand he knows that the children will have to deal with death at an early age, and he is committed to giving them appropriate comfort and emotional tools. Perhaps the most humane treatment death and childhood in film. It also points to the conflict in impossible situations between those remain dignified and steadfast to humane ideals and those who resist with violence.
The film could be pedantic, but Wojciech Pszoniak (Korczach) is a toned-down, serious version of Robin Williams (close to Oliver Sacks in Awakenings). This gives a much more honest (and probably more loving) approach to helping children to face hardship than "Life is Beautiful."
