The Survivor is a biographical drama about Harry Haft(Ben Foster) who survived Auschwitz by boxing fellow inmates. The film opens on Haft in 1949 where he is working as a professional boxer in New York. He struggles with survivors guilt, PTSD, and with the loss of Leah his childhood sweetheart who he is engaging various chartiable organizations in order to track down. In order to up his exposure(and contact Leah via headlines) he angles for a fight with Rocky Marciano. While he prepares for the fight, tells part of his story to a reporter(Peter Sarsgaard), and works with Miriam(Vicky Krieps), there are flashbacks to his time in the camps where he is taught to box and then forced to box by a SS officer(Billy Magnussen).
Foster, as he always does, gives everything he has to the role and totally transforms. With make-up, weight fluctuation, and in the nuance of his performance. It's grounded, emotional, and dynamic. The rest of the cast doesn't have much to do, although there all very good, but overall there's a sense of tidiness about the script- characters speaking too clearly and directly their subtext- that feels if not quite anachronistic then certainly too clean for the complicated life and dynamics being portrayed.
Beautifully shot but perhaps a bit too calculated. Using black and white for the scenes in the camps feels a bit uninspired, a bit rote, given the long shadow of Schindler's List. The boxing scenes and those in NYC are more dynamic but there is overall a feeling of unnecessary restraint with a lot of the film. The Hans Zimmer score is effective if, again, perhaps too obvious. All taken together it works, it investigates some interesting and vital ideas, its complex without being despairing, but its just too neat to pack the punch you would expect.
Anchored by an incredible lead performance, the film is good but not great, constrained by a need for narrative coherence that is somewhat incongruous with the story being told.
Currently streaming on HBO Max.
Rent It.
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