My Mother's Courage

Adapted from George Tabori's novel of the same name (based on the actual experience of the author's mother), this unsettling 1995 drama takes place in Budapest, circa 1944, where the Nazi deportation of Jews is just getting underway. While out running errands, middle-aged Elsa Tabori (Irish actress Pauline Collins, playing her best role in years) is seized by two bumbling Hungarian policemen, turned over to the Nazis, and mistakenly placed on a crowded train for deportation. Up to this point, My Mother's Courage is relatively lighthearted, but the film's mood shifts dramatically as the horror of the Holocaust becomes paramount, and we observe an all-too-trusting Elsa struggling to comprehend the depths of human evil. Her eventual release by a cavalier SS commandant underscores the casual, seemingly random way in which lives were torn apart—and sometimes serendipitously saved—during that horrible time. Director Michael Verhoeven (The Nasty Girl) handles this material with considerable delicacy, but he doesn't avoid or soft-pedal its inherent absurdity, and as a result My Mother's Courage is quite unlike other films dealing with this very bleak period in human history. Highly recommended. (E. Hulse)