By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3 cats
Director: Marleen Gorris
Starring: Ben Miller | Benjamin Sadler | Emily Watson | Ian Hart | Jimmy Yuill | Pam Ferris | Ulrich Tukur
Country: belgium, germany, poland
Year: 2009
Running time: 90
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1142804/
Diane says: “I have a problem with Holocaust movies! I can’t help but consider them as entertainment and not as windows into the horror of what happened. When SCHINDLER’S LIST came out, my reaction was ‘movies shouldn’t be made about this–the medium cannot sustain the weight of it.’ Maybe there’s an example that worked for me, but I can’t remember. I probably just shouldn’t see them.
“So too with this film about the Soviet Gulag. After seeing WITHIN THE WHIRLWIND, I came out of the theater and said to another audience member, ‘I love Emily Watson!’ What I got in return was a long pause, then a sober ‘I don’t know how people lived through it.’ WHIRLWIND is based on the memoirs of Yevgenia Ginzburg, a Russian professor during Stalin’s Great Purge who sees her colleagues taken away one by one, and then her turn comes. She’s sent to a work camp in Siberia for ten years. The women are starved, raped, and arbitrarily re-sentenced.
“To me, it was a fast-moving drama and a love story, on the Hollywood style. Watson does a wonderful job with the lead. Great chemistry with the prison camp doc, played by Ulrich Tukur. Costumes are top-notch. 3 cats.”