Démanty noci

Another of the many foreign films that's been sitting on my DVR for quite some time is a film from the beginning of the Czech New Wave, Diamonds of the Night.

Diamonds of the Night is yet another film that doesn't exactly have a straightforward plot, and nobody famous in the cast. The movie starts with a long tracking shot. It's 1942 in Bohemia, which of course means the Nazi Protectorate and the Nazis transporting all the Jews first to the Theresienstadt/Terezin concentration camp, and from there to extermination camps farther east. Two teenaged boys, wearing coats clearly marked KL for Konzentrationslager, jump off the train in an attempt to escape.

Their escape involves going through the forest, and with the war on it's not as though there's much food to be had anywhere. That, and one of the boys appears to be possibly injured, considering he's walking with a stick. It could just be, however, that this is because of how ill-fitting his shoes are, as we see several scenes of him taking off the shoes and having his feet wrapped in rags.

As the two young men walk toward their possible escape, they have what might be flashbacks. Or they might be daydreams or hallucinations. The movie doesn't make this quite clear, but then that's the point, that the viewer is supposed to be disconcerted, much as the two boys are. Eventually the come across a farmer out in the field whose wife is bringing him some lunch. Ooh, a possibility for them to get food, although there's also the possibility for them to get caught.

And then a bunch of old-fart Germans do catch them, with the likelihood that the Germans will turn them over to whoever will take them back to the camps or else just kill them forthwith for trying to escape. As the old men sing, the local boss calls his higher-ups, leading to an ambiguous ending....

Diamonds of the Night is based on a book by Arnošt Lustig, who as a teenaged boy was sent by the Nazis to Theresienstadt but escaped before going on to become a successful writer well after the war. The movie is definitely well made, although the non-linear plot may be a bit off-putting to some viewers, especially those who like more conventional movies.

The movie also has a fairly low amount of dialog compared to most movies, so those who aren't thrilled at the prospect of reading subtitles don't have to read so much. Diamonds of the Night isn't a standard-issue movie, but it's definitely one that should be seen.