Sarah's Key (2011)

Best movie of this year hands down!

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.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

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

Sarah's Key is extremely upsetting and harrowing, but as in the title, the key to the film is allowing its layers to merge. A Jewish family' simple life is torn apart by the Nazi occupation. Along with 670.00 Jewish men, women and children, in stages the Jewish community are herded by the gendarmerie, first into the Velodrome and then on to concentration camps. A little girl has a secret, she has tried to hide her brother, a terrible mistake. The unfolding events are told in a series of flashbacks as a modern day journalist played by Kristin Scott Thomas tries to unravel the secrets of the family apartment in Paris which her husband is redesigning. Her journey leads her to uncover a shocking truth, a metaphor for all that is hidden and should be revealed. The film is cathartic, but do be warned, the plight of families beaten and cruelly divided and of children sickening and dying in the camps is very very upsetting. In amongst the cruelty are also acts of kindness. One thing that let the film down was flat acting from some of the supporting cast,Aidan Quinn is hardly bothering at all at the denoument. The best is from the child actors, notably the young actress who play Sarah herself.

'Sarah's Key' is a well written and well made film that takes on a different holocaust story, combining historical and modern day events. To start with the positives - there were some strong acting performances, especially from the young actress who played Sarah, and the plot was strong and interesting enough.There were a few things that I didn't particularly like, mainly the constant cutting from one story to the other, which I thought took a lot away from the initial story of Sarah. Just when you feel you're getting into one story, it cuts away to other and loses the impact it could have had.I've seen plenty of holocaust movies and whilst this one attempts to do things differently, it just doesn't stand out.

. . . it probably would look a lot like SARAH'S KEY. Mix in a few centuries of Bad Karma corrupting Anglo-Saxon culture in 1066, betraying Saint Joan in 1431, waging the Napoleonic Wars on the heels of the Reign of Terror, being Germany's patsy two World Wars in a row, and deporting 76,000 Jews to the Auschwitz Death Camp as documented in SARAH'S KEY, and it's not hard to see why the self-styled "Avenging Angels" were allowed by Fate to massacre a bastion of French "culture" this week. What with their over-rated cooking and undeserved reputation for Romance, it may be possible to imagine how some naive young Americans such as "Julia" (Kristin Scott Thomas) can be sucked right in, for awhile. But nearly any critical thinker will reach a day of reckoning, when the Truth about the French knocks them off the bandwagon, as they realize that they've been hoodwinked. Whether it's selling warships to Mad Dog Putin, throwing Israel under the bus, or hauling Jews to Hitler, the French can be counted on to do the craven thing. There may be a few "good" people in France, just as there were a couple right-thinking Nazis, such as Oscar Schindler. But, as Julia learns, SARAH'S KEY is to get out of France.

The movie fairly true to the book in that the telling of the story was done with flash-backs and flash-forwards and things pretty well followed the same plot. However, where the book was a compelling read, the movie was far less so.I hate to be picky, but I have to say that the single most frustrating thing about the movie was the very poor quality of the subtitles. Since this movie starred an Anglo actress (Kristin Scott Thomas) and some of the dialogue was in English, the subtitles should have been decent ... unfortunately no.Here are a few examples."That's what I said yesterday al Normally he should be." (Huh? al? and why is normally capitalized? and exactly what the hell are you trying to say?)."You never reacts, Julia. I have three ties left a message" I think what is meant here is, "You never answer, Julia. I have left three messages."And another, "Bertrand I have spoken. He said you write an article about ..." How about, "Bertrand and I have spoken. He said you are writing (or you wrote) and article about ..."It was very distracting having to read these dreadful translations and it took a lot away from the movie. Surely, they could have asked Kristin Scott Thomas - or anyone else with basic English skills - to give them a once over and make them readable. It's mind-blowing how awful they were (and the examples I gave were all from about one five- minute stretch in the movie ... there are dozens more just like them).