Memory is a double-edged sword, and in Plus tard, tu comprendras, Amos Gitaï explores this truism in the most subtle and emotionally powerful manner. This most talented director has found a perfect subject for his increasingly spare and formal style, and the final result is masterly.
The film stars the venerable Jeanne Moreau in the role of Madame Gornick, an aged woman who prowls around her apartment listening to her television set. It is tuned to the Klaus Barbie trial of 1987, in which testimonies about arrests, incarcerations and deportations that took place during the Holocaust were recounted. Meanwhile, her son Victor is trying to assemble the bits and pieces of their family legacy through photographs, letters and memorabilia. It is a history of two conjoined families – French on his father's side and Jewish on his mother's. Victor really only knows the French side; the Jewish half is full of gaps.
The documents he discovers tell of the fate that befell his parents during the war, and he is quick to rush to judgment. But to his frustration, his mother refuses to share any memories with him. She has shuttered away her past, and – with a degree of enviable tranquility – lives her life free from malice.
Gitaï enters these two worlds with the deepest of understanding, both as humanitarian and artist. His imaginative powers have never been displayed with greater force. The film gathers in force and resonance with every scene. As Victor uncovers more and more of his troubled heritage, Gitaï's work becomes an extraordinary portrait of memory and its implications.
Plus tard, tu comprendras touches the deepest wellsprings of emotion, and by being suggestive rather than explicit, allows us all to share in its imaginative universe. This is perhaps the film Gitaï was born to make, a masterpiece of Holocaust memory that uses not one frame of footage from the disaster.
Piers Handling
Amos Gitai was born in Haifa, Israel, and received a Ph.D in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. He has directed more than forty documentaries and fiction films, many of which have played at the Festival. He has also been the subject of numerous international retrospectives. His films include Esther (85), Berlin-Jerusalem (89), Golem, l'esprit de l'exil (91), Golem, le jardin pétrifié (93), Devarim (95), Yom Yom (98), Kadosh (99), Kippur (00), Kedma (02), Alila (03), Promised Land (04), Free Zone (05), Le Dibbouk de Haifa, part of the omnibus film Chacun son cinéma (07), Disengagement (07) and Plus tard, tu comprendras (08).