Divided We Fall

The Czech film Divided We Fall, which was nominated for a Foreign Film Oscar last year, is a lesson in the art of compromise ' or, if not the art of compromise, then the sheer necessity of compromise when a country's at war. Set in Czechoslovakia during the last years of World War II, this darkly comic drama ' part morality tale, part immorality tale ' features a childless couple named Josef (Boleslav Polivka) and Marie (Anna Siskova) who, though hardly heroic, offer refuge to a former Jewish neighbor (Csongor Kassai) who's escaped from a concentration camp. To say that wackiness ensues would be to miss the movie's firm grounding in Nazi-occupied terror. But director Jan Hrebejk and scriptwriter Petr Jarchovsky do appreciate the absurdist element of trying to survive when no one knows what tomorrow will bring. There are no heroes in Divided We Fall, and if the movie has a major flaw, it's that there are no villains either. Everybody has his reasons. All is forgiven.