As I am always in the market for film recommendations, I assume that this may be the case for many of my readers as well. So, allow me to recommend Persian Lessons (2020), an unusual Holocaust drama directed by Vadim Perelman.
This multilingual film tells the story of a Belgian Jew, Gilles (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), who, after his capture by Nazis, is being transported to a concentration camp. He trades half a sandwich with another prisoner in exchange for a Persian book. When the Nazi guards stop the vehicle and begin shooting their captives, Gilles begs for his life, swearing he is not Jewish but Persian. The book is his proof. As it so happens, the camp commandant, Klaus Koch (Lars Eidinger), is looking for a Persian to teach him Farsi. And so, Gilles’s life is spared but is dependent on his ability to convincingly teach a language he doesn’t know. He must devise one.
As we get to know the characters better, we see that Klaus’s gullibility, which is often humorous, stems from his lack of humanity. Gilles’s resourcefulness, on the other hand, is rooted in empathy. He devises a system to help him memorize the gibberish he’s teaching Klaus, inventing vocabulary based on the prisoners’ names, which he must document with each new arrival under Klaus’s supervision. Klaus does not notice the similarities because he has no interest in the prisoners whose deaths he presides over. In one scene, Klaus dismisses the condemned prisoners as “nameless hordes,” to which Gilles replies, “They are only nameless because you don’t know their names.”
The story may sound far-fetched. And perhaps it is. But despite the occasional plot hole, there is much to commend the movie.
