Mendel

I've seen this film billed as a comedy about a Jewish family's post-war adjustment to Norway. However, this is a very poignant film, filled with chilling flashbacks to the Holocaust. I would never take a child to see this film.

The child protagonist's struggle to define himself as a Jew in Norway is challenging, charming, and heart-rending all at once. His nightmares are powerful and genuinely terrifyingly.

Certainly most Norwegians come across as unsympathetic evangelizers in this film. Was this what Jewish refugees really met when they came to post-war Noray, I wonder? It is interesting to hear the child's language gradually become Norwegian.

The family's hidden secret is telegraphed from the very beginning of the film. So when it's revealed, my reaction was "so what?" The interactions between Mendel and his older brother were incredibly powerful, the real stuff of sibling rivalry, rage, betrayal, and powerful love.