FIGHTER [ 1/2]
Running time: 91 minutes. Not rated. At Lincoln Plaza.
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POWERFUL, provocative and often surprisingly funny, this may be the year’s outstanding documentary.
It bears witness to the quarrelsome friendship of two Czech-American exiles, confrontational Jan Wiener and philosophical Arnost Lustig, both Holocaust survivors (but not victims) and professors. Together they retrace Wiener’s escape from Nazi-occupied Prague to Italy and finally to Britain where he joined the RAF.
They also visit the labor camp to which Wiener was sentenced by the Czech Communists after the war, and the concentration camp where his mother was beaten to death by the SS. Along the way, the friends laugh, schmooze and argue with intelligence and deadly seriousness about morality, communism and revenge. Directed by Amir Bar-Lev.