Out of the Ashes | Christine Lahti, Beau Bridges | Absolutely spellbinding and unforgettable

Out of the Ashes | Christine Lahti, Beau Bridges | Excellent Movie!

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Out of the Ashes

	Out of the Ashes Christine Lahti, Beau Bridges Showtime Ent., 2004 average customer review:based on 28 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Absolutely spellbinding and unforgettable

This film, based on the memoirs of Dr. Gisella Perl, is an incredibly powerful, moving, soul-searing, and unforgettable experience. Some people feel that there are too many books and movies about the Shoah, or that after awhile they all start to seem the same because the tale of horror is all-too familiar, but this film is moving proof that that's not the case at all. Every person's story was different and unique in some way. How often have we got something from the perspective of a survivor who was a doctor, and a female doctor no less, at a time when men largely dominated the medical field? Additionally, this story is told in the present day, with flashbacks inserted every so often, instead of told in a linear format or just starting in the present and then having the bulk of the movie be one long flashback before reverting back to the present.

Dr. Perl became the first female doctor, and the first female Jewish doctor at that, in her native village of Sighet in Hungary. Even though her father initially disapproved, ever since she announced her plans as a young girl, she proved to him that she could be an observant Jew, a good doctor, a wife, and a mother. Becoming a doctor didn't cancel out her faith or a more traditional female role, as her family had feared. She was well-liked and trusted by her patients, and was doing very well for herself and for her family. In addition to being an inspiration for having survived what she did, she was also living proof that women can have both a career and a family, instead of just one or the other.

In the present day (a few years after the war), Dr. Perl is being examined for American citizenship. Though she passed all of her medical boards to be allowed to practise medicine in the United States, the question remains of her character and if she collaborated with the Nazis. There's an ocean of misunderstanding between her and her three interrogators, men who were living comfortable lives while she and her family were being treated like sub-humans, while she lost her entire family and had to do the unthinkable to try to save her own life. People who were in the camps often had to do things that many in the outside world would consider immoral, uncivilised, or unthinkable, but one must understand that this was another planet, with its own set of rules and morals. No one should judge anyone else for having done something to preserve one's own life. It's not as though these things were done willingly or voluntarily. "Dr." Mengele seemed to have a great deal of liking and respect for Dr. Perl, and made her work in the excuse of an infirmary at Auschwitz, even once assisting with a Gypsy patient who was pregnant with her second set of twins, a woman who was later murdered after giving birth and taken to be dissected. She was also once called upon to give the infamous sadistic Irma Grese an abortion. However, Dr. Perl did far, far more good than harm, often risking her life to save her patients, doing things that she would have been shot for had she been discovered doing, such as hiding a sick woman during selections in the infirmary and using her and the other doctors' blood as the pretended blood sample of a woman who had typhus. And since her specialty was in gynecology and obstetrics, she gave about a thousand women abortions, performed without any tools no less. She knew that this would save these women's lives, and that if they survived, they could go on to bear another child someday, a child who would be born in freedom. Her goal, her driving force for surviving, was to continue helping to bring life into the world, keeping these Jewish women alive so they would keep their people alive and produce children who would continue to propagate their people, replenishing their ranks after how many people the Nazis slaughtered, a million and a half of whom were just children. It is this message that she is trying to get across to the men deciding her fate as an American citizen and as a doctor.

I'd highly recommend this film, both for its moving and gut-wrenching story and for its unique perspective and structure, quite different from what one usually expects from a film about the Shoah. Christine Lahti as Dr. Perl gives an absolutely brilliant performance, and everything is brought to life so vividly that one can almost feel as though one is right there in that moment, place, and time. I was even moved to tears a few times, something that rarely happens when I watch a film. It's the kind of thing that stays with one for a long time afterward.

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Excellent Movie!

Showtime made some amazing movies. This is one. Christine Lahti plays Dr. Gisella Perl a gynecologist who was interred in Auschwitz. It's the story of how she saved other women and herself but how women also died partly due to her (which haunted her greatly). She was used by the evil Dr. Joseph Mengele and she tried and sometimes succeed in saving woman from his horrid "experiments". Her story is told in flashbacks while told to three men who are part of the INS. She wanted to be an American citizen and a doctor again.

I do not and can not understand how the German people allowed all the things that happened under Hitler's regime. I don't think they are any worse than any other people. If I did, I wouldn't have married my husband who is one fourth German-American and taken his German name. And America had "camps" for the Japanese-Americans. We didn't murder or torture them but they still had their freedom taken away. I think all people are capable of evil and it comes out in mob mentality.

I wish that we could see ourselves as one people and equal to each other. Today in America, I see the hate toward new immigrants, especially Hispanics. My son may marry a Puerto Rican and I'm sickened by the idea that she may be mistreated by idiots who hate her for being a Latina.

Will humanity ever evolve beyond such petty differences and allow each other to be who they are?

This is an excellent movie and Christine Lahti gives an outstanding performance.

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Utterly absorbing!

I missed this excellent show when it was on Showtime, so I got it when it was released on DVD. The story is a true account of a Holocaust survivor, made unique by the fact that the survivor was no ordinary person, but a gynaecologist, Dr Gisella Perl, who loses her family to the gas chambers, and has to do what is necessary to survive amidst the worst conditions imaginable...by working alongside the infamous butcher doctor, Josef Mengele. The movie is told via flashbacks, as in the present day, Dr Perl is interviewed by a panel considering her application for US citizenship and allowing her to practise medicine in the US. Although I sympathised with her character [played brilliantly by Christine Lahti], there were moments where I questioned some of her choices as a doctor in Auschwitz. BUT, this movie does make you think...how far would you go in order to survive? Would one's moral compass remain intact in the face of such cruelty, evil & banality? The story is one that is definitely worth viewing, the scenes at the camp are really gut-wrenching, and horrific, and the acting is excellent, so is the cinematography, evoking the hopelessness of the time. Worth multiple viewings.

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holocaust remembered

In Memory Of The Holocaust
Let All The World Never Forget

In Germany one dark day
Evil became, because of one man
All the people had to salute
With hand held high
Every person who was in Hitler's life
Wore his Nazi slogan with pride

While, all the weak, sick and disabled
Mostly Jews, who were also German born
Were sent to concentration camps, because
This man Hitler sought a perfect race
And so began the Holocaust

Jews died by the hundreds each day
For Hitler wanted only blonde hair and blue eyes
He wanted only strong men and women
So many people had to hide
In fear of their lives
As the Secret Service hunted to find

The French underground
Helped some from being captured by the state
Other countries close to Germany
Assisted terrified people to escape

I remember those brave people who saved lives
But millions more still died
The Nazi put numbers on their arms
And set them to hard labour, with little food and drink
Where they became sick or weak
Then they were told to go the showers
They did not know, this was the Nazi gas chambers
Where they would die
After death they were put in the ovens
To hide from the world this genocide

Let us remember the heroes of German occupation
And though we may thank God it is over
We must never let this happen again
There must be peace on earth
Please let the war we are in
Never become another forgotten war
And let no fanatical man
Ever take our souls away
In America, The USA.

Linda Ann Henry
Do you remember me
The people's poet
linda11231949@aol.com

Let the memory never die of:
the millions of good people mainly Jews,
the people who hid them-at the cost of their own lives,
the soldiers who were lost-in the name of freedom for all

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out of the ashes

A moving story, well told. Superb acting. Realistic and well produced. An invaluable adddition to any study of the holocaust

reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6

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