The Truce . The Boston Phoenix . 05-03-98

The Truce

DIRECTED BY: Francesco Rosi

REVIEWED: 05-03-98

In his critically acclaimed writings, Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi feared that time would compress the horrors of the Holocaust into a neat chapter of history. It is with unfortunate irony then that director Francesco Rosi traces Levi's odyssey from the concentration camp to his hometown of Torino in a patchwork of affecting but ultimately disjointed vignettes. John Turturro plays the owlish chemist and writer (who committed suicide in 1987) with a quiet yet complex mix of irony, fragility, and tenacity. So subtle is his portrayal that at times he's almost blown away by the bloated score.

But Levi's brilliant, deeply psychological recountings of his survival, published in a 1963 memoir of the same name, seem too intricate for film. And taken verbatim, his trenchant observations about torture and loss ring discordantly pious as dialogue. Like the epic atrocities of the Holocaust itself, the tragically haunted Levi eludes cinematic adaptation.

--Alicia Potter

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