Coming Soon to an International Border near you . . . No, not the movie, the events. A tough watch from Polish-born, but borderless writer/director Agnieszka Holland on today’s Les Misérables: foreign refugees (legal, illegal, semi-legal migrants) leaving home & country for something better, only to find a road not paved in gold, but no road at all; merely a dirt path to hell. In this case, a No-man’s-land between the Poland-Belarus border. Arranged in chapters: the Border; the Guards; the Activists, etc., Holland, with but one truly horrible exception, puts the worst of it in section one, after a hopeful plane ride devolves into pure terror and venality from everyone they meet, beginning with a connecting van ride gone purposefully wrong, military terrorism, a forced border crossing where they discover they are pawns of international politics, hustled back and forth (with significant collateral damage in each direction) like a deadly game of Red Rover/Red Rover where sadistic Border Guards control the barbed-wire barrier. (Among the many portraits of horrific behavior toward the migrants, the Belarus Border Guards stand out for general inhumanity and whimsical enjoyment of cruelty.) Holland hardly needs to push to earn her effects, and she’s scrupulously fair, not turning starry-eyed toward the sympathetic, and occasionally effective activists, more hard-headed legal aides than saints, and not without their own assholes and entitled show-offs. Not to say there aren’t a few rounded portraits of border guards showing their own stricken consciences, influences and peer pressures. And if some storylines wrap in expected ways (most of them tragically), it’s impossible not to be freshly moved before the inevitable coda shows how this deadly show continues somewhere.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Shot in moody b&w, Holland reverses expectations by using professionals to get a non-pro vibe in the acting.
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