“The Secret” at Rutgers
I attended opening night of the Rutgers New Jersey Jewish Film Festival last night. The film was “The Secret,” a 2008 film by French director Claude Miller about an assimilated French Jewish family before, during, and after the Holocaust era, and the secrets they don’t share with their haunted son. Based on a fictionalized memoir by psychiatrist Philippe Grimbert, it’s an adult, unsentimental family drama with wider meanings about memory, self-denial, and even national shame. Columbia U. film prof Annette Insdorf did a nice job of putting the film in context in her talk-back after the screening.
You have another chance to see it on Sunday, November 8 at 1:00 p.m., at the Regal Cinema in North Brunswick. An added treat: Leading the discussion will be Annette Aronowicz, Judaic studies professor at Franklin and Marshall College and an old friend. (I used to give Annette a ride to Hebrew-language lessons when we were both living in Jerusalem. Between my driving, my crappy Fiat, and the madness of the Israeli roads, Annette was a basket case by the time we arrived at class. I didn’t learn much Hebrew, but I did learn “ATTENTION!!” [ah-ten-see-own], French for “watch out!!”)
JustASC is written by Andrew Silow-Carroll, Editor-in-Chief of the 