"Western Front") is a 2015 South Korean film written and directed by Cheon Sung-il, about the friendship between a South Korean and a North Korean soldier during the Korean War. NARRATED BY: Morgan Freeman WITH THE VOICES OF: Edward Asner, Ruth Gruber, Martin Landau and Miriam Margolyes.The Long Way Home ( Korean: 서부전선 RR: Seobu Jeonseon lit. Written and directed by Mark Jonathan Harris director of photography, Don Lenzer edited by Kate Amend music by Lee Holdridge produced by Rabbi Marvin Hier and Richard Trank released by Seventh Art Releasing. Yet "The Long Way Home," a film made under the auspices of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, manages to find images of hope, resilience and gentle humanity amid the misery. Who covered the camp where refugees were detained. "To this day I can still smell Cyprus," says Ruth Gruber, an American reporter Meanwhile, "The Long Way Home" retraces British political opposition to the founding of a Jewish state and Jewish terrorism against British colonial rule.Īmong scenes depicted here are the aftermath of the bombing of the King David Hotel and the British rerouting of the refugee ship Exodus in 1947. The film strongly maintains that only the goal of a Zionist state could have given such demoralized people There are also remarkable scenes of refugee groups trekking over the Alps, carrying babies, in hopes of reaching safety in Palestine. "We are living like a litter of puppies crowded under the body of their mother," one woman wrote of that ordeal. Many remained in displaced persons camps,Īnd the film's arduous research offers glimpses of conditions there. "We were hated," one says, "because we returned from the dead."īut returned to what? "The Long Way Home" traces the sad progress of people realizing that their houses and families were gone and that their European homelands no longer wanted them. Not want to contemplate what they had been through. Survivors speak of being shunned by outsiders who did And a different kind of suffering awaited those who recovered their physical stamina. Others succumbed to disease and exhaustion. Some ate so ravenously that their stomachs ruptured. The film scenes accompanying this description are raw and startling, like one that shows the starved ex-prisoners rioting over a truckload of potatoes. ![]() Own shame, and of how much unexpected anger surrounded their liberation. (Other actors, among them Edward Asner, Miriam Margolyes and Martin Landau, are heard reading from diaries and letters.) Survivors talk of how the soldiers' horror triggered their "Few are prepared for the hell they encounter," says Morgan Freeman, theįilm's narrator, with dignity and compassion. Along the way, Harris creates an intense empathy for the refugees' experience and for aspects of their ordeal that are often ignored.Įarly in the film, shocking scenes of survivors at the camps are accompanied by a description of the liberating soldiers' reaction to what they saw. Later, emphasizing the profound connection between these events. ![]() Normously powerful archival scenes punctuate the Holocaust documentary "The Long Way Home," giving an intimate dimension to the film's historical drama.įrankly Zionist in its sympathies, Mark Jonathan Harris's stirring and accomplished film spans the period from the liberation of Nazi concentration camp survivors in 1945 to the founding of Israel as a Jewish homeland three years SeptemA Road From Auschwitz to Israel By JANET MASLIN
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