Romani Eyes on Gypsy Film

 

"Summary: The Romani figure has, since the time of silent film, found representation on the silver screen.  Whether as a main character, (or much more frequently as a cameo or a supporting role,) a myriad of cinematic displays of Romani people, with a distinct culture and history, have been put forward…but to what end, to whose benefit, and to what degree have these depictions served as propaganda?

Let us analyze a string of these films, breaking them down to see what place, as a collective whole, the Romani figure has and what value it is to the Gadje film industry to not change the age-old misperceptions."

Galina Trefil

Regularly, Galina Trefil, film director and writer and Romni herself (see photo) will publish here and in the blog of the same name on this site, on films produced by the Gadje film industry.

You will find the first analysis below:

 

"Outcast": "What's Romani Got to Do with It?"

by 

Galina Trefil

 

While a number of traditional Romani characters from novels are well-known and have been represented repeatedly in movies, (The Hunchback of Notre Dame’s Esmeralda, Wuthering Heights’ Heathcliff; et cetera,) one should be careful not to assume that these “celebrities” have the final say in the public opinion.  The devil being in the details, it is very often a constant barrage of less familiar individuals, all wilted roses by different names, that leave the deepest impact.  As Adolf Hitler so famously said: “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”

                

Outcast (2010) is a good example of this.  At face value, it is a typical horror movie.  On a positive note, the sepia and shadows cinematography gives the film a campfire horror story effect.  The sound editing and dramatic use of silence makes those edgy moments just a little bit more edgy.  It is also very well acted, starring Kate Dickie, (recently best known on television’s “Game of Thrones,”) Niall Burton, James Nesbitt, Ciaran McMenamin, and, in her first role, Hanna Stanbridge as “Petronella.”

                

Perhaps the first hiccup in the film is the description of it.

                

As summarized on the back of the DVD: “It tells the tale of Petronella (a Scottish/Romany girl) and Fergal (her mysterious Irish traveller boyfriend). As their doomed relationship plays out, a Beast stalks the estate, killing locals, working its way towards our protagonists. Meanwhile Cathal and Liam, two mysterious travellers from Ireland use ritual and magic on a blood hunt. Mary, Fergal's mother performs ritual and magic of her own. As Cathal comes face to face with Mary in a vicious finale we know one thing: the Beast must die.”

                

If audiences did not read this description, I frankly doubt that there would be any who would at all guess that Petronella is supposed to be Romani.  I would not have and half of those who reviewed the film made no mention of her inserted ethnic origin either.  Without the DVD summary, I would absolutely have been able to watch just another horror flick and enjoy or dislike it for what it was without spending a moment to break down exactly what its writers and director might have been either getting at or capitalizing on.

                

However, since Petronella is declared Romani, let’s look at how she and her family are portrayed.  It takes a meager three minutes into the film for us to see into her world: a dank, alcoholic, untidy flat in a gang-graffitied, street-thug neighborhood of Ireland.  So, even before Petronella gets a single word in, her atmosphere is spot-on to what the media so loves to paint the Romani people as belonging to: filth and crime.  Strike one. 

 

Petronella’s brother suffers from extreme, yet unclear, mental defects.  Her mother is an irresponsible drunk, dependent upon government care.  Her father is…somewhere…maybe.  It’s hard to tell if he just up and ran off altogether.  Either way, it is Petronella’s lot to cook and clean for the parental ne’er-do-wells and take care of her brother, the stereotypical can’t-do-well.  For added pinache, despite the fact that her description is “Scottish Romany,” one gets a distinct feeling, (perhaps added to by her brother’s first name being “Tomatsk,”) that her family might be immigrants from Eastern Europe.  Given that the majority of Romani children and youths are depicted as mentally inferior there, the family depiction serves as a good strike two.

 

Petronella enters the frame for the first time, dark and beautiful, wearing short shorts, setting the age-old costuming stage for the majority of Romani female characters. Petronella will remain low-cut and thighs exposed in practically every scene in the movie.  Thankfully, the film does not require her nudity, though it does expect it in spades from Kate Dickie’s portrayal of "Mary," a Traveller woman, practicing the ancient Traveller arts of… Scandanavian blood magic and runic warfare.  (A detailed analysis of how inappropriately this film portrays the Traveller community is best left for a different article.) 

                

Petronella’s immodesty comes with typical unchastity to match.  As Petronella and Fergal are bonding over Fergal’s kindness to Petronella’s brother, she insists flirtatiously on him pushing her on the swing.  Flashbacks of this sequence will be played back later in the movie in slow motion, with her miniskirt flying up, exposing black panties.  Fourteen minutes into the film, a group of young Irish Gadje approach and a fight ensues, establishing that Petronella has slept with one of them and that he bragged about it to all his friends.  He calls her a “slag.”  She fires back a few times that he has a “wee dick.”

                

There are definitely more than three strikes by this point.  Anyone expecting to see anything even vaguely tied to Romani culture would be fairly well horrified by now, but, naturally, Outcast does not stop there.  Five minutes later, Petronella and Fergal are somehow psychically masturbating simultaneously on either side of a wall at their next door apartments.  As if the hyper-sexuality stereotype of Romani women wasn’t enough, Petronella is masturbating in front of her brother during this scene.  Fergal’s relationship with his mother is also increasingly incestuous throughout the movie’s progression.

                

There is a bleakness, a grungy form of sorrow for these Romani and Traveller characters.  The audience is given a real inclination to pity them their uneducated, impoverished, scatterbrained failures, with a charitable attitude of “They know not what they do.”  Both for teenager and adult characters, there is no concept of anyone here being able to work as, say, a bank teller, a doctor, a teacher.  Heck, you would hesitate to even let these people hand you a tray at a fast food joint.  At the same time, there is an ethereal depth to them.  They seem untouchable because they have a mysterious loftiness about them; something special reserved to them alone by blood.  “Me and my Mom, we’re from people who’re different than you.  We’re not normal.  Most of our people left this world.  Those that stayed just hid in the shadows, waiting patiently,” Fergal tells Petronella before they lean in for their first kiss.  There is absolutely fairy dust, unicorns, and dragons in these peoples’ ancestry.  The magic DNA seduces the audience at the same time they are pleasantly repelled. 

                

While there are certain negative stereotypes about the Romani people that Petronella is not linked directly to, they are nonetheless present in the film—hoisted onto the Traveller woman’s character instead.  In one scene, while threatened with eviction by a lovely blond (of course, blond,) Housing Officer, Fergal’s mother puts a curse on her that she will forget where she came from; be unable to ever find her way back.  Eventually, the Beast finds her, drags her into an alley, (where we see the stripped and mutilated body of another Gadji,) and kills her.  Thus does the popular fable of the abduction and destruction of the Aryan angel present itself a half hour into the movie.

                

However, whilst Romani and Traveller may share certain stereotypes, Petronella and Mary certainly are no great examples of that.  Cautioning Petronella to stay away from her son, Mary is pelted back by her with, “Just fuck off, alright?”  Immediately afterwards, Petronella takes Fergal to a sleazy, broken-down building and graphically attempts to seduce him.  This attempt fails, but, skipping along through much blood and runic gore, eventually she manages this feat on a public jungle gym at night.  Sex promptly turns him into the Beast, showing that—aha—the Traveller lad had been the one all along slaughtering the nice Gadje ladies!  Petronella runs away from him at first; then manages to stab him.  He dies and, now dead, becomes human again. 

                

The film ends with Petronella begging for a living on a sidewalk—homeless and pregnant—as a Traveller elder of possibly dubious intent gives her a charm to protect Fergal’s likely-monster unborn baby.

                

As for why exactly Fergal was a beast, this is never explained fully, though it is pointed out that the union between his Traveller mother and Gadjo father is forbidden.  Effectively, the implication goes that mixed blood caused the monstrosity.  So perhaps it is serves as yet another reminder: Gadje, don’t have children with the Traveller community or, if you do, when they are old enough, they will be murderous and twisted freaks of nature with the capacity to kill their White parent.

                

The film was directed by Colm McCarthy.  He co-wrote it with Tom McCarthy.  Its producers are John McDonnell and Brendan McCarthy.  The film’s success is debatable, though it did make it to the Cannes Film Festival. 

                

Perhaps the focus should not be on the financial gain in this particular case, but rather on the sheer amount of negative ideas about Romani women which all managed to get squeezed into such a brief time frame.  If the writers had been making a list of how many rotten concepts surround the Roma, practically every single one, short of child stealing, presents in this movie.  And the biggest irony about that is that, nowhere in the film do the words “Gypsy,” “Roma,” or “Romani” ever appear….  There is no Romani flag in the background or any other obvious indicator that these are Roma characters. 

 

So…could it be that “Romany” was a gimic?  Just a means to sell more copies?  Get more viewers?  Was it perhaps, to some degree, even an afterthought to state on the DVD box that Petronella was Romany at all, when it is utterly absent from the dialogue? 

                

I will hand it to the creators: if it was a gimic, it is effective.  The curious will buy it just to get a glimpse into “Gypsy life.”  Romani people might buy it just to see whether or not we will be given any theatrical respect finally…or continue to have our ethnic reputation strung up like a puppet, dancing for those who have contempt for us, our traditions, and our history.

                

All in all, I would recommend this film to actual, genuine Romani people only if they have great ability to remain calm and avoid nausea in the face of adversity.  Buckle up if you do watch it, Romanies, because, emotionally, it is likely to be a very bumpy ride.

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October 1, 2014

 

A new film review, by Galina Trefil:

 

“SUBSPECIES”: Who Needs Character?

 

One might be inclined to give a lengthy description of this film’s basic plotline and how its Romani roles are portrayed…only the first option is completely irrelevant and the second does even not exist.  So what makes this movie worthy of a critique?  No pun intended, but it is the subplot of Subspecies, without which, there would be no film; nor the several sequels that followed it.

 

Subspecies was written by Charles Band, Jackson Barr, and David Pabian.  It was directed by Ted Nicolaou and produced by Ion Ionescu. 

 

To start with the positive…. 

 

Released in 1991, it was shot on location in Romania, giving a ring of beauty and authenticity to the picture.  According to Wikipedia, it also has the distinction of being the first US film ever made there, so a round of applause to the crew and cast on their paving of the way for much more usage of a stunning geographic atmosphere. 

 

The musical score drifts between simply lilting and darkly passionate.  It furthermore has the umph to tackle some traditional Romanian-style tunes with authentic instruments.  The Claymation devil critters, for nearly 25 years ago, are respectably done; definitely repugnant.  What the movie lacks regarding costume flare, it makes up for in makeup design so much that the villain wound up with action figures being molded after him.  (Granted, a great deal of this makeup was uncreatively based upon 1922’s Nosferatu, but it still came out creepy, icky, and jaw-dropping.)

 

Kudos given, let’s start adding the strikes…. The place where the Romani people make their entrance comes through the mouth of a folktale-telling, vampire-paranoid crone.  As per her legend, during an Ottoman attack into Romania, vampires killed and dined on the invading Turks.  Consequently, the locals gifted them with a castle…only to realize that, hey, a vampire’s still a vampire and Romanians were now rather predictably on the menu.  Up pops a Gypsy to save the day…by stealing a magical thingamabob which drips the addictive blood of saints.  The Gypsy gives it to the vampires and, badda bing, they no longer have to order takeout, as it were.    

Centuries later, during pagan celebrations held by the town in order to try to find modern-day vampires, amidst joyful dancing, festive music, and the tearing out of decaying human hearts from corpses so as to facilitate some recreational cannibalism, all the local Romanians wear masks, depicting their Gypsy hero.  The masks are big-eared, mammoth-nosed, squinty-eyed, yellow-skinned; scraggly-haired….  Did I forget anything?  Oh, yes!  And horned!

 

After the apparently-not-paranoid crone winds up being vampire dinner, the locals parade her decapitated head around the area, pouring holy water on it and then covering it back up again with the Gypsy mask.

 

So what are the main messages being portrayed?  1. Gypsies steal.  They’re expected to by others.  It’s okay for them culturally.  2. Gypsies are capable of access to mysterious pagan forces that Gadje are not; forces which result in death and or insanity.  3.  Gypsies are linked to grave-robbing, mutilation of the dead, and, just as we were accused of by the Inquisition, eating human flesh.  4. We are ugly, disheveled, unhygienic, and satanic. 

 

Beyond the racial problems presented by these four issues, there are two further things to point out: this legend created for the film supposedly happens during the medieval period.  During that time, in all three of the Romanian principalities, the Romani people were slaves.  It is a common romantic notion held by the dominant ethnic group that those who are raped, tortured, trafficked, held in bondage; et cetera, would be inclined to rescue those who subjugate them.  Essentially, it implies that, despite all the oppression, the oppressed are the good and faithful dogs that masters always hoped for/ beat the Romani into being.  (Perhaps the story of a Romani slave not caring if the masters wound up with a dose of karma just isn’t catchy enough….)

 

Secondly, it is irrevocably tacky to use the Romani people as an artistic balancing device, whilst not portraying a single Romani character.  Essentially, it demeans us into being nothing but a voiceless prop.  The one-scene of “mysterious Gypsy” cameo is cliché enough in Hollywood.  The theme of spinning gossipy, stereotypical ethnic webs outranks it though.

 

The Romani are there….

 

The Romani are not there….

 

The Romani are there…and silenced….

 

This is a classical method of plot filler; needs to stop being used so that the actual good work that went into the films perpetrating it may be appreciated.  It seems a very little thing, this anti-Romani sentiment, stacked up against the rest of the film’s actual story, but it has been done so many times that, when adding together with all the cases of other films using the Romani in the exact same way, the one small chip away from our dignity winds up a combined landslide of our humanity.

 

A word to those in film: if you would not want a Romani person standing across the room from you like wallpaper, don’t portray us like we are objects when the camera is rolling.  The reputation of our ethnic group was not meant to be used for decorative purposes and to do so has serious implications and heavy consequences.  You may not live with them, but we will.

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October 17, 2014

New film review, by Galina Trefil:

“HANNIBAL RISING”: Porrajmos Gone Casual

 

While films with Romani stereotypes thrown out casually continue to descend upon Hollywood like a plague of locusts, there are the rare times when slices of authentic Romani history as seen through the dual eyes of both the Romani and the Gadje community do manage to squeeze past the prejudicial gates. Such an instance is seen in Hannibal Rising, (2007), starring Gaspard Ulliel as the infamous cannibal, Hannibal Lector.  Whilst one would expect the eerie and cheeky, head-hunting proverbial chef from Hell, (youthfully shy of achieving his psychiatric doctorate), of being the being the villain to put the Romani people on a silver platter in this film, oh no.  Quite the contrary.  It is in fact so contrary that this film subtly puts forward a rather pertinent disgrace regarding the Porrajmos which a series of governments worldwide bear responsibility for. 

 

The positive: for the horror genre, there is actually an incredible amount to recommend this film artistically.  From lush Lithuanian forests to swanky Parisian cafes, the viewer has a strong sense of authentic timeline.  The costuming, set off by the ever-pearlescent Gong Li, who plays Lady Murasaki, Hannibal’s seductive aunt-by-marriage, is well-researched.  Props chime from scene to scene like eye candy. The music dances between tragically funereal and putting an ill feeling in one’s stomach, almost like someone is about to come from behind and smack you on the shoulder. And, while brief, the war scenes are heart-cutting to the point that families of Holocaust victims would be ill-advised to not have tissues handy when watching.

 

As for the portrayal of the Roma... well, there is none.  But the lack of present Romani characters is actually, for once, a very powerful cinematic tool, perhaps showcasing the viciousness of the true bad guys.  It’s a sad thing when a cannibal psychopath comes out looking good regarding human rights, but this time, pathetically, in many ways, that is exactly what happens.

 

Main plot: a gang of SS-wannabes fall upon Castle Lector when little Hannibal’s family has just escaped it. They shoot one servant for being Jewish; then descend upon a second.  He is restrained and Vladis Grutas, the gang’s leader, (chillingly played by Rhys Ifans,) sniffs him distastefully before inspecting his ears in order to see if they are pierced.  Grutas asks him if he is a Gypsy, intent to shoot him also if the answer is affirmative.  The man denies it, but the gang seems unconvinced.  They begin to strip him to inspect his genitalia for circumcision.  This easy flip-flop between condemning him for Romani blood or Jewish blood is something that, to the Romani community, might be taken for granted.  Naturally, we understand just how par for the course this was.  However, the mainstream Gadje community, by and large, do not.  By the film emphasizing this lack of favoritism—in fact, making it even casual how equally the two are hated, it imparts a huge, however softly delivered, piece of historical information to the Gadje audience.

 

Later on, this same gang kidnaps the Lector children, Hannibal and his beloved little sister, Mischa, in order to eat both of them to avoid war-imposed famine. Hannibal just barely survives, but Mischa is butchered.

Flash forward to years later where the orphaned Hannibal finds his way to his long-lost aunt for shelter and, under her care, kindness, tutelage of Japanese weaponry, the Samurai code, (not to mention floral arranging and manners of etiquette,) he begins to open up. When a Nazi war collaborator gropes and racially slurs her in public, young Hannibal throws caution to the wind though and essentially says, along with a lot of the audience, “If no one else will do anything about war criminals, let’s get to it!” 

 

Hannibal then gruesomely hops from country to country, savagely and mercilessly giving former Nazi after former Nazi doses of their own medicine, sometimes stopping for a rather unorthodox recipe of shish kabobs while he’s at it.

 

Here the movie inserts Inspector Popil (Dominic West,) who recognizes Hannibal for what he is and has strong moral objections to these murders, even though Popil has sworn to apprehend the same men that Hannibal is bent on killing.  As the Inspector and Hannibal go toe-to-toe throughout the rest of the film, we learn that Vladis Grutas committed more war crimes—pouring acid down the throat of a witness to prevent a Nuremburg trial, sawing off a rabbi’s head, and shooting Gypsy children in a forest.  Once more, these crimes are rattled off in a single statement, pointing out to the audience, just as in the beginning of the film, that to Nazis, Jewish and Romani people both were equally targeted. Unlike so many other films which touch on the Porrajmos, there is no hint, implication, insinuation, or flat-out statement that Jews suffered more here.

 

And, as the film progresses, we see more and more that, while Inspector Popil may mean well, he simply just is not getting the job done.  His fair and legal way doesn’t work. There’s no full explanation as to why, but here’s one guess that Romani viewers from Holocaust families will understand very well: even the most well-meaning legal aid is very often blocked from being able to prosecute the murderers of Roma adults and, yes, even our children.

 

Just for one very common World War II example: how many of the guards of the Lety Concentration Camp were well-known to the Czech community? How many of them were prosecuted? How many bureaucrats after the war were perfectly content to let the killers of the Romani people go? These men did not have to go into hiding, change their names; start over, like so many other Nazis did. Essentially, they got “free murders.” They were allowed to gas Roma, shoot Roma, beat Roma, rape Roma, and drown our newborn babies with not so much as a post-war slap on the wrist.

 

So in that perspective, one finds themselves asking, “If it were my family today…slaughtered…would I really want Inspector Popil on the case... or for the killers to rub Hannibal Lector the wrong way, prompting him to break out a cookbook?”

 

Note to Europe: you’ve got a lot to answer for.  If Porrajmos survivors are still alive, there are still Porrejmos perpetrators alive.  Where are the arrests?  Where have they been for all these decades since the war ended?  Why is it that a character like Inspector Popil, who at least wants to bring the killers of the Romani down, is, even as a failure, so much better than the average investigator when still, to this day, Romani people are murdered?

 

Note to Hollywood: as absurd as it sounds, you made the Porrajmos go casual by dropping a few lines in here and there about it.  And, in-so-doing, perhaps you opened up a few eyes.  We may have lost a smaller number of people than some other groups, but we lost a higher percentage of our people, up to 95% in at least one country. Where’s the recognition?  Well, you gave us a taste of that.  And the lack of Romani characters actually points out just how obliterated our population after the war really was. 

 

Thank you, Thomas Harris for writing it. Thank you, Peter Webber for directing it. And, thank you, Dino de Lorentiis, Martha de Lorentiis, and Tarak Ben Ammar for producing it.  If the film made a profit of nearly $32 million dollars, that’s a lot of eyes and ears to have either learned or be reminded of a valuable fact: the Porrajmos happened... and fiendishly… and, barring vigilantism, by people who just plain got away with it.

 

Galina Trefil

 

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November 10, 2014

New film review, by Galina Trefil:

“King of Devil’s Island”: Criminal or Kidnapped?

 

The award-winning Norwegian Bastøy Prison, located on a square-mile island, is famous throughout the world for its liberal, humane, and, to some thought, even over-indulgent treatment of its inmates…yet this was not always so.  The island has a darker history, not as an adult prison, but as one for juvenile delinquents: Bastøy Boys’ Home.

 

“King of Devil’s Island” (2010) opens during this period in 1915, as two new offenders, Erling (Benjamin Helstad) and Ivar (Magnus Langlete,) are being brought to start their sentences.  After the ritual dehumanizing process that prisons/ boys’ homes are known for of disinfection, hair-cutting, and the nude marching through the rows of other inmates, we become familiar with the film’s other three main characters: morose and near-broken inmate leader Olav (Trond Nillsen,) the self-serving Bastøy Boys’ Home governor Bestyreren (Stellan Skarsgård,) and the sadistic barrack housefather Bråthen (Kristoffer Joner.)  The screen has a permanent tint of blue, giving a bleak sense of isolation and hopelessness, as the film immediately settles into an endless stream of brutal manual labor, vicious food deprivation, beatings from the staff which descend into the realm of genuine torture, as well as prolonged sexual abuse.  The sexual abuse, perpetrated by Bråthen, eventually leads Ivar to put stones in his pockets and drown himself in the sea.  Bestyreren gives the impression to the prisoners that he has sent Bråthen away, but it turns out to be a ruse.  When the child-rapist is put in a power position again over the children, ages eleven to eighteen, they revolt and make an attempt at freedom.

 

All in all, this is a very well-done film.  The acting is spot-on excellent from all players.  The score is quite appropriately depression personified.  The sets are well-designed to the point that one can look at photos and footage from the original time of the quite-real revolt and things match up perfectly.  Lighting is either overly bright, giving the viewer the sensation that nothing can possibly be hid from the film’s oppressors, or the screen is shrouded in a series of shadows, revealing the filthy underbelly of the establishment.

 

So where is the problem?

 

The problem lies in the fact that, behind this film, there lurks a disturbing racist and political agenda, which, without the audience researching the actual story, would remain as hidden as, no doubt, without this revolt, much of these human rights abuses would have also.

 

At one point in the film, Bråthen does a hygiene inspection of the children, which includes smelling behind their ears.  To one small child, he says, “Doesn’t look like we can get rid of your Gypsy smell.  That’s what happens when you’re born out of your mother’s asshole.”  To me, this prompted the question of how heated the racial discrimination in Norway around this time had become.  The answer is that, only eight years prior to when the Bastøy Boys’ Home Revolt happened, Romani children were routinely being kidnapped from their families by the Norwegian government and, specifically, the Christian organization known as the Association to Counteract Vagabondism.  Romani children were put into work camps and subjected to the same standard cultural, linguistic, and religious rape of identity, not to mention their freedom, that has been viciously perpetrated against Romani people of all ages in a plethora of countries throughout Europe for centuries. 

 

This information is key to the writing of the film because one huge factoid of suppressed data in the script is that the main character who led the revolt was, rather than ethnic Norwegian, a Romani youth from Oslo.  However, the makers of the film decided to ignore this and have him portrayed as, while a hero, a rebel, a teen that will absolutely not surrender dignity and liberty, one who will fight to bring a corrupt system to its knees, instead of him being Romani…he is instead White.

 

As the government-sanctioned abduction of Romani children for slave labor is something all Romani people are well-familiar with, so too are we familiar with the fact that whenever one of us does something noteworthy, they are generally appropriated by mainstream society, with consent or not, and declared Caucasian.  If one were to look at the Wikipedia list of famous Roma and Sinti, one would often find a huge amount of discord between Romani people and Caucasians who refuse to allow certain famous Roma and Sinti to be known as members of their true ethnicity.  While these well-known Romanies are appropriated away from their people, usually post-mortem which leaves them no room to personally argue against it, at the same time, bigots typically throw forward the question, “What have the Romani people ever accomplished?  Name me one Romani person who has ever done anything.”

 

There is no way to argue with the racist logic that takes our achievers from us and then insults us for having no achievers directly afterwards.  None.

 

As regards “King of Devil’s Island,” naturally, one must recognize that, if the film portrayed the hero as being Romani, there would have been a potential price to pay for it.  Perhaps a Romani hero does not sell as many film tickets.  Or perhaps, more likely, Norway does not want this massively embarrassing and bigoted part of its history, which paved the way for forced Romani sterilization even prior to World War II, to be highlighted.  One word though: tough.  If you’re going to make a film about the violation of human rights, you have to be upfront about the reality of the situation.  And if it’s set during a time when your race was enough alone to have you jailed, then the filmmakers do not have the moral right to shy away from that fact.  To do so is not only ethnically unfair and insulting, but, frankly, considering that the film does showcase just how little anyone had to do in order to be incarcerated in Bastøy Boys’ Home, (definitely Jean Valjean territory that we’re talking about here,) a one-liner establishing these historical details would’ve actually worked quite well into the plot.  It would certainly have showcased just a little bit more how corrupt Bastøy Boys’ Home was, which seemed to be the goal of the writers in the first place….

 

One cannot put blame for this omission necessarily though on a specific person.  There are many involved in the making of a film.  This one boasts not one, but four writers, (Mette M. Bølstad, Lars Saabye Christensen, Dennis Magnusson; Eric Shmid,) obviously a director, Marius Holst, as well as a mighty nineteen producers.  It’s impossible for the audience to know exactly which party or parties decided to leave the Romani origin of the hero out.  However, at least, we did get a portrayal, during the hygiene inspection, that prisons did discriminate against Roma and, like usual, poor hygiene is one of the more preferred slurs hurled against us.

 

All in all, I would recommend this film, which is, in all other aspects, quite exemplary.  Just be aware of the historical background that it is really set in when you do watch it.  Was the hero, in reality, a criminal?  Possibly.  Or also quite possibly, he was just another kidnapped Romani youth designated for state-approved slave labor.  Either way, these are two polar opposites worthy of bearing in mind.

Galina Trefil