Brussels Transit

Less a movie than a mood piece, Brussels Transit is filmmaker Samy Szlingerbaum's chronicle of his immediate ancestors. The movie begins with voiceover narration from an elderly woman describing her journey by train from Lodz, Poland in 1947 to Paris, and later to Brussels, Belgium, where the family business prospered following WWII. The first half hour consists, visually, of often static shots of train stations, seen during the day and night (actually not seen so well at night). When a woman is shown wordlessly making ferfalech at a kitchen table, we are tremendously grateful--not because the scene itself is intrinsically interesting, but because by this time we are starved for human movement. The concluding segment takes place in the narrator's home where she has "lived and worked for the past 20 years." As a walking photograph, a record of the buildings, train stations, and ambience of pockets of Eastern European history, Brussels Transit is not without value and interest. However, anyone looking for plot, character, or dialogue, that is, the basic elements of a movie, are going to be confused and disappointed here. Libraries with strong Jewish media collections may want to consider; for others, not a necessary purchase. (R. Pitman)