{"id":7015,"date":"2013-09-13T01:36:43","date_gmt":"2013-09-13T05:36:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=7015"},"modified":"2013-09-13T01:36:43","modified_gmt":"2013-09-13T05:36:43","slug":"dvd-no-place-on-earth-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=7015","title":{"rendered":"DVD: No Place on Earth (2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>N to O<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Very Good\/ DVD Transfer: Excellent\/ DVD Extras: Very Good<\/p>\n

Label: Magnolia Home Entertainment\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: August 20, 2013<\/p>\n

Genre: Documentary \/ WWII \/ Holocaust<\/p>\n

Synopsis: Docu-drama styled film about Jewish Ukrainians who hid in a desolate cave system for 511 days during WWII.<\/p>\n

Special Features: \u201cThe Stermers after the War\u201d + \u201cKorolowka Before the War\u201d + \u201cMore About Life in the Cave\u201d + \u201cFood\u201d + \u201cThe Children\u201d + \u201cDavid Blitzer (Sima\u2019s Husband\u201d): His Holocaust Story\u201d + \u201cHarold Hochman (Sonia\u2019s Husband): His Holocaust Story\u201d + \u201cChris Nicola Adventure Caving in the USA\u201d \/ Photo Galleries \/ Trailer<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

Janet Tobias\u2019 film on the plight of Jewish Ukrainians living in the darkness of a cave system during Nazi occupation blends talking heads interviews with extensive dramatizations of horrible experiences \u2013 a ploy that does push the film into the docu-drama terrain \u2013 but it works, largely because the re-enactments manage to evoke the extreme conditions of what\u2019s been inadvertently catalogued as the longest uninterrupted underground survival in human history.<\/p>\n

To avoid capture and deportation to Nazi concentration camps, whole families lived underground for 511 days with severe water and food rations. After the first cave system was raided by the Nazis, those who managed to escape fled to a secondary network of caves where they waited out the war, emerging only after the Soviet Red Army had expunged the Nazis from the Ukraine. While living underground, the men would make strategic runs for food, often bartering the few goods they had, while others hid in the barns of sympathetic villagers.<\/p>\n

Tobias weaves together three elements to create a fairly linear narrative \u2013 \u00a0NYC cop \/ spelunker Chris Nicola, who discovered the first cave used by the persecuted Jewish Ukrainians; interviews with survivors from the Stermer and Dodyk families now living in New York City and Montreal; and the return of the survivors to the caves with members of their extended families \u2013 and although the film does have the tenor of a PBS documentary (no coincidence, since Tobias\u2019 background lay in producing docs for the station), it\u2019s still a potent story of human survival under horrendous conditions.<\/p>\n

Where the film runs into trouble is in the midsection: after starting the film with Nicola and his yearning to find the story behind the people who lived in the caves, Tobias almost exclusively switches to dramatizations propelled by survivor recollections, and Nicola\u2019s return in the finale feels abrupt; Tobias may have felt the power of the survival story mandated no interruption, but it does feel awkward when a leading character is needle-dropped back into the narrative after a lengthy absence.<\/p>\n

Evocative cinematography captures the grimness of the caves, and John Piscitello\u2019s score is appropriately restrained in the dramatic recreations and reunion sequences. The end-point, where a few survivors return to the actual caves, is especially moving, particularly the moment when a survivor asks the crew to turn off their lights, and absorb the still darkness he endured for more than a year.<\/p>\n

Magnolia\u2019s DVD sports an excellent transfer, plus extended and unused interviews which add a little more dimension to Tobias\u2019 feature film debut.<\/p>\n

A podcast interview <\/a>with composer John Piscitello is also available.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2013 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Soundtrack Review<\/a>— Composer Website<\/a><\/p>\n

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Vendor Search Links:<\/em><\/p>\n

Amazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a>\"\" \"\"—New movie releases on iTunes<\/a>\"\"
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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0N to O<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ N to O . Film: Very Good\/ DVD Transfer: Excellent\/ DVD Extras: Very Good Label: Magnolia Home Entertainment\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: August 20, 2013 Genre: Documentary \/ WWII \/ Holocaust Synopsis: Docu-drama styled film about Jewish Ukrainians who hid in a desolate cave system for 511 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[2219,2220,2218],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1P9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7015"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7015"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7033,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7015\/revisions\/7033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}