Sitting down to watch Larry Weinstein's documentary Inside Hana's Suitcase (opening in Toronto this week and the rest of Canada later this month), I will admit I felt overprepared.
Based on Karen Levine's best-selling book Hana's Suitcase , which I covered when it debuted, Inside Hana's Suitcase re-enacts the serpentine set of coincidences that allowed a Japanese school teacher to reunite George Brady, a Toronto resident and Holocaust survivor, with the suitcase his late sister Hana carried to Auschwitz.
I knew Hana and George's story, and I knew what happened to Hana. And yet, there I sat, fully informed and more than a little jaded by life, balling my eyes out at the film's conclusion. Some stories can never be told too often.
But Inside Hana's Suitcase could have been much more sombre. Instead, Weinstein has crafted a beautiful, celebratory film determined to stare down the evil that killed Hana with life-affirming joy. Brady, we learn, is now a jolly grandpa, a man surrounded by children who is heartily determined to get the best out of every second.
And Weinstein, I learned, is one of those directors who falls in love with his subjects, and who, like all the best documentary makers, collects wondrous anecdotes the way philatelists collect colourful stamps.
Why does Hana's suitcase, both the story and the actual object, carry so much resonance?
Hmmm. First of all, the fact that Fumiko Ishioka [the Japanese teacher]even exists, that she is teaching Japanese kids about the Holocaust, is a weird anomaly. And then that she tried to get a relic from Auschwitz that belonged to someone the same age as the kids that she teaches, and gets the suitcase, with a girl's name on it. And then the fact that she was able, through hard work, some obsession, and good luck, to trace Hana's history. … Well, the odds of being able to find a person, to figure out that Hana had a surviving relative, that George is living, and has photographs of Hana. … It's just an incredible series of events that go beyond the story Hana's Suitcase .
Part of the appeal of this story is that it is about an object, a single thing. Perhaps it is easier to process the horror of the Holocaust in small parts, because the totality is incomprehensible.
Yes, through tiny fragments or perhaps the point of view of one child. The question is whether it's that suitcase or the girl Hana whom we discover and then learn so much about. I don't know. I had done an historic, relic film before [ Beethoven's Hair ] and so many stories came from that relic, that lock of hair, it was remarkable. And with this suitcase, a suitcase that actually doesn't even really exist [the original was lost in a fire and then reconstructed by Holocaust historians] there's a lot of that same quality.
It's strange to watch Japanese children learning about the Holocaust, when Japan itself is rather reluctant to talk about it's own Second World War atrocities.
There are actually two Holocaust centres in Japan. The other one is just outside of Hiroshima, and was started by a Christian minister. As Fumiko says in the film, she started her Holocaust centre because she saw the Holocaust as a metaphor and as a tool to teach kids about bullying, which is a serious problem in Japan, and about oppression and prejudice and xenophobia, which she saw in Japanese culture. But there is the obvious question: Why the European Holocaust and not the Japanese stuff against Korea and China? It's partly because Japan has never 'fessed up to these things, and the Japanese are uncomfortable with the history.
Apart from having the Holocaust centre, Fumiko has travelled across Japan with the suitcase. I think she's gone to between 900 and 1,000 schools, and she always encourages the children to think about the Japanese-German connection, and also that Japan has a pretty flawed war record as well. But that's something she didn't want to cover so much in the film, partly for political reasons, because she would have problems continuing what she does.
Visually, this film is very beautiful, particularly the animated parts. How did you reconcile using gorgeous visuals to tell a horrible story? Were you worried the animations and re-enactments of Hana's childhood would lessen the brutal reality of her death?
There isn't a lot of animation, but I considered the images I used carefully, and certainly would not have made animations from the actual Auschwitz photos. But I did animate photos from Hana and George's childhood because I wanted a storybook look and approach. Everything has a different use.
I wanted the dramatizations to have a softness, representing memory, because George is constantly looking at photo albums. But I was mostly inspired by the book, which is aimed at nine- and 10-year-old kids, and I wanted that childlike aspect.
But I can see what you mean - I've had the opportunity to show the film to quite a few festival audiences, and mostly people are really stunned watching this stuff - the casting, how the kid actors look so much like the real kids. I knew I was going to play with reality and artifice. I really wanted, after I read the book, to make a hybrid. The documentary aspects keep it honest, but the dramatic stuff is valid too.
So, you can make a beautiful film about evil ?
Yeah, you can! Ha! Life Is Beautiful is a beautiful film, Schindler's List is lovely, in a weird way. This film is mostly from a child's point of view, and they don't see the full horror. George told me that they were taught as children to be optimistic. Hana was happy that she was being sent to Auschwitz, which is inconceivable to us. It's a terrible irony, but it's true. She thought she was going to see her parents. There was always this hope that George and Hana both had. Almost everything about the film is inspired by George's positive outlook.