Fighter

"You were in the Communist party. You were afraid to leave it. Your pants were full." 77-year-old Jan Wiener doesn't mince words when talking with his friend 72-year-old Arnost Lustig--both of them Jews who survived Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia but went in very different directions: Lustig later joined the Communist party, while Wiener began a six-year Homeric odyssey across war-torn Europe, eventually ending up as a fighter pilot for the British Royal Air Force. In Amir Bar-Lev's excellent Fighter--which produces both heartfelt compassionate tears and knee-slapping belly laughs--the raging bull Wiener (the film opens with him pounding a punching bag), who is civilized but brutally straightforward, joins the bemused Lustig, who is given to metaphorical speculation (that pisses Wiener off to no end) on a 50-plus-years-later odd couple journey to the places of their youth and early adulthood, where they were jailed, tortured, aided, or sheltered. Some of the more powerful moments during the men's travels occur at the site of the Terezin ghetto and concentration camp where Lustig spent his childhood and Wiener's mother was killed; the room in a Slovenian town where Wiener watched his father commit suicide; and an Italian village where the now middle-aged children of families who helped Wiener in his flight do not recall this man whose path briefly crossed theirs. Intermixing vivid cinema vérité filmmaking, interview clips, and archival footage, Fighter is an absorbing documentary that offers an engaging and affecting portrait of--in Wiener's words--two "old farts" struggling to come to terms with their early lives and the fateful choices that set them on such divergent paths. The DVD version features a filmmakers' commentary (which offers juicy behind-the-scenes insights into traveling with Wiener and Lustig) and bonus footage (well worth seeing). Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)