Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
My Mother's Courage (1995)
Director: Michael Verhoeven
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
In 1994 the playwright George Tabori visits the set of a film being made from his mother's diaries. An encounter with the leading actress whisks him back to the past to place the story in context - a distancing framework that challenges us to consider our own connection with these images of terror. There's more time for reflection as the action moves on to Tabori's mother, a middle-aged housewife arrested while doing her shopping and dispatched to Budapest's main railway station, where the Gestapo punctiliously marshal hundreds of her fellow Jews into freight wagons. Surprising, maybe, to see Pauline Collins as Mrs Tabori (the film's shot in English), but she's superb as an essentially cheery woman numbed by the events around her and driven to make a stand for the first time in her life. Determined to avoid displaying emotion in front of her captors, Collins, in a key moment, chokes back the tears in a straining, desperate attempt to retain her dignity. A remarkable scene, and it says a lot for the power and intelligence of the film and its central performance, that its most haunting image is of a woman trying not to cry.Author: TJ
Cast & crew
Director: Michael Verhoeven
Producer: Michael Verhoeven
Cast: Pauline Collins, Ulrich Tukur, Natalie Morse, Robert Giggenbach, Günter Bothur, George Tabori full cast
Duration: 90 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now