Fugitive Pieces (Jeremy Podeswa, 2007): Canada-Greece

Fugitive Pieces, is undoubtedly the worst movie I have seen at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. Written and directed by Jeremy Podeswa, Fugitive Pieces is based off of the novel by Anne Michaels. It wasn’t the acting that ruined it, nor the direction of photography, but rather a collection of cliché dramatic story telling devices combined with a less than interesting plot. I am not saying there aren’t those who would appreciate and even possibly find true enjoyment out of it, but if your one of those who recognize over-the-top drama and need a to be able to relate to plot on any level, stay away from this film!

Fugitive Pieces is the story of a man, Jakob (Robbie Kay) coming to terms with the atrocities that occurred to him and his family during World War II. The film does not unfold in chronological order. It cuts back and forth between his childhood during the war and his life a grown man during the late 60s and 70s. It is not this technique that turns me off to the film. It is the incredibly cheesy and overly poetic voice-over narration that does it for me. For a movie that dealt with incredibly sad historical incidents, I felt that it did not do its job. During moments of heightened emotion and intense feeling, I wanted to laugh due to the cliché voice over. This cannot be a good thing if the movie is a drama.

During the war, the Nazi’s came into his home and killed his family. He was able o escape while his sister was taken away. Taken in by a Greek paleontologist named Athos, Jakob moves to Greece with his new caretaker. This story develops simultaneously as we watch a grown Jakob suffer during his adulthood. He isn’t even able to hold onto a relationship that seems to be perfect. Constantly flashing back to his childhood, we watch him grow closer to this older man. This is painful. The child is not a very capable actor, and it seems he shows his suffering by constantly running out of the frame. Whenever Athos says something that displeases or scares him, he just runs off. It almost became funny to me but I was to embarrassed to laugh out loud. Although, there was someone else who did not have the self control that I did and laughed out loud several times.

The film lacked any form of humor seemingly nothing significant happened at all. His obvious problem is that he is unable to leet go of the terrible things that happened in his past, but his amazing enlightenment in the end is just that he simply needs to let go. I felt like I wasted two very important hours of my life and I want them back.