ALL MY LOVED ONES
1999 Czech movie with English subtitles

My sister's coworker Frik told us about this, which he had seen on DVD courtesy of the Unisa library. We promptly borrowed the disk and watched it last night.

The (factual) story is set against the backdrop of the events leading up to the Jewish holocaust, and features the removal of a boy from the Silberstein family in Czechoslovakia to safety in England through the Kindertransport arranged by a relatively little-known Englishman, Nicholas Winton (1909-2015). The rest of the Silberstein family was unable to get out and perished in the holocaust. Nicholas Winton rescued a total of 669 children, most of them Jewish.

One invariably thinks of Oskar Schindler when it comes to the mass rescue of Jews from the holocaust, but there are less celebrated ones who contributed to humanity no less than Schindler did - someone like Nicholas Winton.

The movie tells the story outlined above, but that's virtually all it does. It doesn't engage, or move, or haunt the viewer. In the hands of a good filmmaker it could have been heart-wrenching and soul-searing to watch. It SHOULD have been heart-wrenching and soul-searing - but it isn't.

Still, it's worth watching as it seems to be the only movie that deals with this particular part of history. A story however imperfectly told is better than one not told at all - especially this one.

For the record, my sister's appraisal of the movie is somewhat (possibly considerably) more positive than mine.