Triumph of the Spirit (1989)

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Throughout history many have preferred to forget the atrocities of the Holocaust during World War II. However Hollywood has helped to keep this important event alive thanks to films like "Life is Beautiful", "Schindler's List" and "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas", but sometimes there are stories that go unrecognized or forgotten. Director Robert M. Young decided to take the lesser known story of Holocaust survivor Salamo Arouch and bring it to the masses.Salamo and his family (heritage of Jewish Greeks) are first seen living their lives happily just before the Nazis invade their village and ship the Jewish citizens off to concentration camps, specifically the dreaded Auschwitz. The film follows the Arouch family's struggle to struggle, specifically showing the male members of the family and also the perspectives of Allegra, Salamo's fiancée, and her sister on the women's side of Auschwitz. In the pivotal role of Salamo is an underrated performance by A-list star Willem Dafoe. Portraying a strong-willed survivor, but also a man who loses nearly every person he loves, the emotion of Dafoe's performance is raw and heartbreaking. Going from a carefree man with the world in the palm of his hand to a prisoner fighting (literally) to survive the harsh environment of Auschwitz. Dafoe's costar chemistry is in top form from a touchingly sweet affection for Wendy Gazelle as Allegra, a believable son to Robert Loggia who plays his father and a tenuous friendship with Edward James Olmos as Gypsy, the officer who aids Salamo by giving him a chance to use his boxing talents as well as a better (using the term loosely) job within the camp due to Salamo's consistent winning streak. Dafoe is an adept fighter, with a naturally thin frame and limber muscle, the actor demonstrates adept skill in the boxing arena. However as things grow from bad to worse for Salamo, Dafoe portrays the right amount of emotion that expresses the character's inner pain such as the horrible losses of his brother (shot for refusing to work in the crematorium) and father (executed in the gas chamber due to his age and no longer useful for labor to the officers of the camp), and fear at never seeing his beloved Allegra again. By the film's close we are as exhausted as Salamo and hope for a happy ending after so much horror.The film's narrative is quite dark and depressing due to the subject of the Holocaust and its atrocious violence. Prisoners were forced to march for hours on end, beaten if they tried to seek additional food or refusal to cooperate, many were shot and gassed if their usefulness had ended and there is the violence of the boxing ring when we watch our protagonist fight. It gets bloody and exhausting as we hope that things can't get worse for the characters, but knowing the history of what occurred during the Holocaust we know it is far from over until the Allied Powers finally liberated the camp in 1944.See this film as soon as you can, but keep some tissues on standby cause this is gonna make you cry.

Somehow, in thinking of the horrors of the Holocaust, thoughts of Greece do not spring readily to mind. And yet, obviously there were Jews in Greece, and many were interned after the Nazis occupied Greece in 1941. "Triumph Of The Spirit" follows the story of Salamo Arouch, a Greek champion boxer who is among those sent to Auschwitz.Arouch's story is interesting. He uses boxing as a way of staying alive - fighting other prisoners for the entertainment of Nazi officers and officials, knowing full well that those he defeats are destined almost certainly for execution - and that the same fate awaited him if he were to lose. The movie is rife with reflection on collaboration. The Sonderkommandos (Jews who actively worked with the Nazis in exchange for privileges which included perhaps a few extra months of life) are front and centre in this, and we see various internees doing various things to placate the Nazis, to earn favour with them - and, in the circumstances, who can blame them. They were uprooted from often comfortable lives and placed almost literally into hell. Defiance might have been the more noble choice, but some form of collaboration was more practical. But the choice was never easy, and consciences were surely wounded as those decisions were made. Arouch was played by Willem Defoe - not my favourite actor, but he handled the part quite well. Some license was taken with his story, as is almost always the case when a story "based on fact" is portrayed, but basically from what I've been able to learn the broad sweep of Arouch's story is told. Really, though, Arouch fades into the background in this - or, at least, he did for me.It was the sheer brutality of Auschwitz and of Nazism that was the engine driving this movie forward. It's a realistic and gripping portrayal of the conditions in the camp - all under the slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" - "work makes free" - the slogan that appeared over the gates entering Auschwitz. It makes what happened inside the camp sound almost noble, but there was nothing noble about the type of work done in Auschwitz, and it had nothing to do with freedom. That was made very clear throughout this film. It was, perhaps, the closest thing to hell that any of the inmates could have possibly imagined. Many died, and those who survived were scarred for life, left empty by the experience. The last scene, I thought, portrayed this quite hauntingly, as Arouch - who survived - wanders lost and aimless away from the camp after liberation, not knowing where he was going or what he would find. His story has a "happy" ending filled with marriage and children and grandchildren, but how happy could it have really been, all things considered.This isn't the best movie about the Holocaust ever made, but it is one that stays with the viewer, and it's one that provides a gripping portrayal of life inside perhaps the most notorious of the Nazi concentration camps. (8/10)

When Greece was invaded, its Jews were sent to Auschwitz. Among them was boxing champ Salamo(Dafoe, determined) and his family. When it is discovered that he can fight, he is put in the ring for the entertainment of the SS officers. This doesn't mean that they're safe, not even with him making a contact with a gypsy(Olmos) who is also granted a temporary "tolerance". Based on a true story.This is among the most detailed, authentic and gripping pictures about its subject that I know of. The sheer volume of awful events, ways to be singled out and murdered and lies told by Nazis to avoid panic is impressive for being fit into the 1 hour 51 and a half minute running time. Production values are high. Acting is great for all concerned, with numerous subtle performances.Going to great lengths to avoid being exploitative, this has few on-screen deaths, piles of dead and little naked skin. And yet, so much is communicated. Some recurring images convey far more than gore ever could. A reaction shot of conveys the horror inside the crematorium. And we know exactly what it means when we see the smoke from its chimney, or a train pulling in to, as my father solemnly put it as we watched it together, "the end of the line".There is a lot of disturbing, and some bloody, content in this. I wholeheartedly recommend this to everyone old enough to handle the material. 7/10

The true story of Greek boxer and Holocaust survivor Salamo Arouch mercifully avoids the Rocky-goes-to-Auschwitz game, but it does make the tactical error of turning life in a Nazi death camp into little more than a tear-jerking melodrama. The against-the-odds implications of the title (a clever inversion of Leni Riefenstahl's 'Triumph of the Will') are also misleading, since outside of a few token bouts for the entertainment of German officers the ironies of the fight-to-survive boxing scenario are all but ignored.The film's principle distinction is that was shot on location at Auschwitz-Birkenau, unhappily so, because the disturbing authenticity of the setting only emphasizes the superficiality of the story. No amount of watered down histrionics could ever communicate the true horror of the Holocaust, and in real life there was no stirring, Dolby-stereo music score to accompany the prisoners into the gas chambers, and no tactful cutting away to the next scene at the last moment. Sincere intentions only make it a bogus David vs. Goliath fable, set (and photographed) in Hell.Note: see 'The Boxer and Death' (1963, Czechoslovakia) for a more honest, ambiguous, and compelling treatment of essentially the same story.