Lithuanian Holocaust film ‘Isaac’ seeks Oscar recognition

(The massacre scene from “Isaac.” Credit: Courtesy)

Jurgis Matulevicius’ nightmarish thriller “Isaac” is the first Lithuanian film to spotlight the country’s role in the Holocaust. “Variety” called the film “starkly beautiful” and it has been submitted as a foreign language contender for the upcoming Academy Awards. The shortlist will be announced on Dec. 21.

Filmed over 2 1/2 years in Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaipėda, the debut feature film by a 32-year-old non-Jewish man premiered in November 2019 at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia.

It  opens with a gruesome re-creation of the infamous Lietukis Garage massacre in Kaunas in 1941. Some 300 extras portray Nazi-allied Lithuanians who kick and strike Jews, brutally hose them with water and hurl antisemitic slurs. The scene takes place against thebackdrop of exploding cars, with horses and a pig running rampant.

A character named Andrius is impulsively drawn into the action. Wielding a spade, he clubs to death a Jew named Isaac, who had previously reported Andrius to the Communist authorities.

The film then flashes forward to 1964, with Andrius still suffering from crippling guilt over the murder. An old friend of his who is a director returns to Lithuania, determined to shoot a film about the massacre. Will the filmmaker discover Andrius’ role in Isaac’s death? Will Soviet officials eventually arrest him? And will Andrius’ wife succumb to her attraction for the director, her former lover?

In primarily black-and-white sequences, the film explores the paranoia Lithuanians experienced under the Soviet regime as well as revealing previously unearthed atrocities and secrets.

“Isaac” has stirred controversy in Lithuania, where most of the country’s Jews died during the Holocaust — one of the highest rates in Europe. “People have said our movie is Jewish propaganda or something ordered by the Russians,” Matulevicius said in a Zoom interview from Vilnius, which before the war was a major Jewish center in Europe with myriad yeshivas and once dubbed by French military and political leader Napoleon Bonaparte as “the Jerusalem of the North.”

Jurgis Matulevicius (foreground) directs a scene in “Isaac.” Credit: Courtesy

In a separate Zoom conversation, producer Stasys Baltakis said, “I’ve had lots of comments about how bad I am as a Lithuanian, talking against my countrymen killing Jews.… There’s still lots of Jewish haters today. In our high schools, the kids are taught as though they’re supposed to be familiar with this huge issue in just half a page of information, which is disgusting.  But it’s our history and we should start raising questions about it.”

Matulevicius first learned about the Holocaust after watching Roman Polanski’s 2002 film “The Pianist” while still in high school. “I found the extermination of Jews very sad and devastating,” he said. “It was a very big shock that led me later to make [this] film. Lithuania is a country where 95% of the Jewish population was exterminated. It is a very beautiful country, and in summer I really love to just drive in the woods, near the lakes, but everywhere you drive you see these places where the Holocaust happened, and there is no way to escape that, to escape our history, and it is indecent and impure. But it’s our history. We need to start talking about that and raising questions about what happened and why.”

“[Lithuania] is a very beautiful country, and in summer I really love to just drive in the woods, near the lakes, but everywhere you drive you see these places where the Holocaust happened, and there is no way to escape that, to escape our history, and it is indecent and impure.”
— Jurgis Matulevicius”I

Then, seven years ago, he read Antanas Skema’s short story, also called “Isaac,” written shortly before the author’s death in 1961. Matulevicius said he was drawn to both the Holocaust content and its somewhat Beatnik prose. “I found it very cinematic,” he said, adding that Skema was well-known for his stream-of-consciousness writings as well as exploring the emotional underpinnings of his characters. His main interest in making the film, though, he said, was “in the psychology of this man, Andrius. His mind, especially the darker areas of the human psyche; how traumas can plague a person and how that person tries to cope.”

Matulevicius approached Baltakis, his former professor at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, about producing the movie. Together, they perused former KGB archives, where they found 18 photographs of the garage massacre that enabled Matulevicius to re-create the slaughter. As part of their research, they interviewed former KGB agents, listened to their secret recordings from the era and read about other World War II pogroms.

A scene from “Isaac.” Credit: Courtesy

The surreal cinematography involved long takes and tracking shots, “to put some documentary into the scenes,” Matulevicius said. Shooting the eight-minute-long massacre — which required 20 takes — was “very emotionally difficult,” he added. “When you have to direct this kind of humiliation, it’s very hard on you … on everyone.”

Other difficulties surrounding the shoot included the fact that the temperature on the set was around 105 degrees and Matulevicius wanted his casting director to find extras who were “just people on the street whose faces told the story of their lives.”

As a result, two-thirds of the extras were alcoholics, requiring Baltakis to purchase ample amounts of liquor so they could function on the set. Four ambulances were on standby, and three  extras collapsed from alcohol withdrawal, he said.

A psychotherapist helped cast members perform the massacre scene among others, and worked with the lead actors, giving them information about the toll of unexplored emotional guilt.

Baltakis has welcomed the critiques about “Isaac” from Lithuanians. “I want my countrymen to be shaken by this film,” he said.

Matulevicius agreed. “I’m not going to even comment on those criticisms.” 

For more information, visit isaacfilm.com.