SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL | SFJFF 2010

It is June 1941 and Curzio Malaparte, an Italian war correspondent, is en route through Romania to cover the Russian front for the Italian news service. Suffering from severe allergies, he gets referred to a certain Jewish doctor, Josef Gruber, in the German-occupied city of Iaşi. The only problem is that Gruber is nowhere to be found. All attempts to locate him are met with Kafka-esque bureaucracy and outrageous, almost comic, ineptitude. In Malaparte’s increasingly anxious search for Gruber, director Radu Gabrea displays a considerable gift for subtlety and nuance, as we watch his protagonist put together the pieces and gradually uncover the truth of the brutality of the Romanian authorities towards the country’s Jewish population. Based on a true story, the brilliant Gruber’s Journey dramatizes deceptively trivial events to reveal their monstrous backdrop: Over 12,000 Jews suffered one of the most violent and savage pogroms in Jewish history in Iaşi. No prodding from Nazi Germany was needed for the slaughter to reach barbaric proportions. Director Gabrea’s approach to this history is no less effective for being coolly understated. This is an extraordinarily intelligent film of epic proportions, where the horror resides in what is not seen.—Jay Rosenblatt

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