El Último Traje (The Last Suit)

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Title: El Ultimo Traje (The Last Suit)
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Director: Pablo Solarz
Cast: Miguel Angel Sola, Angela Molina
Runtime: 92 minutes

What It Is: A look into a Holocaust survivors final wish, and a promise to fill the last request.

What We Think: Lost in a time too modern for his ideas, and escaping a time too horrific for his memories, Abraham Bursztein (Miguel Angel Sola) seeks to fulfill a promise to the one person that remains from his past. Fighting his own history, he returns to Poland, the country he can no longer even speak of, to track down and face his past, escaping his family and rebuilt a life. His journey forces him to evaluate the hate he had been harboring and the anger he had long held on to, in order to find finality in his life.

Our Grade: A-, Though Solarz embodies the character of Abraham, inspiring us to match his anger with our own, the true star of the film in Poland. The country that can not be named by the man once on the brink of a break, Poland’s historic atrocities is presented in the broken limbs of Abraham’s younger self, all the way to the young German woman who does her best to respect Abraham while helping him. The country is both the causes and effects of all of Abraham’s pain and choices and thus the people he meets and effects. To see that a man could lead a life of great wealth and still be held back by the scars of a countries blade allows us a glimpse of how sharp that blade may have been. Solarz not only plays the part of Bursztein but humanizes Poland so that the audience has a source of its anger for all the frustration we witness on his character. It’s a film that does not feel entertaining, or comic, but soulful, leaving me with a level of empathy I lacked before, and for that, I’m almost grateful.

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