Filmmaker Vadim Jendreyko's The Woman with the Five Elephants is an entrancing documentary that celebrates the power of language and literature in a quietly moving fashion. This is the story of 85-year-old Svetlana Geier, the world's foremost translator of Russian literature into German. The titular “five elephants” refers to Dostoyevsky's five greatest novels (including Crime and Punishment)—Geier's translations of which have won her global accolades. The film takes the viewer into Geier's routine at home in Freiburg, Germany, illuminating the painstaking process of literary translation and her often brilliant and unorthodox approach to sorting out the syntactical barriers that separate her native Russian from her adopted language of German. But soon the film subtly segues into a historical chronicle of Geier's past during the Nazi occupation of her Russian hometown of Kiev. While her neighbors were being slaughtered by the Germans, Geier used her knowledge of the enemy's language to protect both her and her mother. Once the German menace was driven out, however, another threat appeared in the form of the Stalinist purges. Geier's only hope of salvation, ironically, appeared in the form of a prestigious Humboldt scholarship in Hitler's Germany. Caught between two murderous dictators, Geier's moral dilemmas were almost unimaginable, but her inspiring commitment to language and the pure life of the mind transcended all political ideology and national boundaries. DVD extras include deleted scenes. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (M. Sandlin)
The Woman with the Five Elephants
(2012) 93 min. In German & Russian w/English subtitles. DVD: $29.95. The Cinema Guild (avail. from most distributors). PPR. ISBN: 0-7815-1362-6. Volume 27, Issue 3
The Woman with the Five Elephants
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