Don't Suffer Through the Shoddy Sarah and the Squirrel

Last month, I celebrated Squirrel Appreciation Day for the first time by reviewing as many squirrel-related products as I could find. I also found myself at the website of my local library putting more squirrel books on hold, and I ventured over to Netflix to see if I might stumble upon anything there. I came up with one title: Sarah and the Squirrel. I’d never heard of it, but I figured it was worth giving it a whirl. Next time, I might have to think about being a little more discriminating.

The Holocaust has been the subject of many powerful movies, particularly Schindler’s List and Life Is Beautiful, and I’ve sometimes had the impression that it’s hard to mess up a movie that delves into such compelling subject matter. Boy, was I wrong.

In this hour-long movie from the early 1980s, Sarah is a young girl when her family goes into hiding in the woods to escape the Nazis. They live in an underground shelter and urge Sarah to keep quiet and not to let anyone see her. But they let her go out in the woods on berry-collecting missions, and on one such occasion, the rest of her family gets rounded up. She tearfully watches as they’re carted away, then struggles to survive on her own.

Her life in hiding gains a greater purpose when she sees some men trying to bring down the bridge over which a Nazi train rumbles, bringing supplies for their army. They fail, but she sees a chance for her to make a difference. If she loosens the stones one at a time, perhaps she will eventually undermine its stability, and boom! Nazi Bridge is Falling Down!

This semi-animated film is the brainchild of writer-director Yoram Gross, with dialogue by Elizabeth Kata. Mia Farrow, who provides an introduction and conclusion while wandering in the woods that supposedly housed Sarah, seems to suggest that this is a true story, but I can’t find anything elsewhere to corroborate that. So I’m thinking it’s just true in the context of the movie. Which isn’t saying much.

Assuming this didn’t actually happen, Sarah’s own personal resistance is pretty hard to believe. Not that she would attempt it, because it’s a brave, clever plan in theory, but in practice, I just can’t imagine how she could remove enough stones to make a difference while not arousing the suspicions of the soldiers on patrol on top of the bridge. Of course, the point of the movie seems to be that even though she somehow succeeded, the war raged on. So... Don’t try to make a difference, kids, ‘cause there’s really no point.

That’s the message I got from this movie, in the rare event that I even understood what was going on. The film is a bizarre blend of animation and actual footage somewhat akin to Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings. I found that weird and creepy, and this even more so. It flashes between real footage and animation so often that it’s totally disorienting.

Then there’s the sound quality, which is horrendous. The music meant to be representative of Sarah’s tranquil pre-war family life is so shrill that I muted it during the opening credits. Even worse is the dialogue, which almost all comes down to Sarah, who is voiced by Farrow. The trouble is that she whispers pretty much everything she says, so even with the volume way up, she’s very difficult to understand. Not that her dialogue is anything all that illuminating. Still, I found myself wishing that subtitles were an option.

And then there’s the title, the whole reason I ended up with this movie in the first place. The squirrel is barely in the movie. It does one interesting thing; otherwise, it just occasionally appears so that Sarah has someone to mumble to, though she also talks to rabbits, wolves and other animals.

I found the look of the film quite unattractive; the only portion whose animation I really enjoyed was a sequence involving all of the woodland creatures. I liked it because it reminded me of Bambi. But then it reminded me too much of Bambi, as the forest inexplicably burst into flames. And after what felt like about ten minutes, it finally became clear that it was all a nightmare, and on some level a metaphor for the war. So maybe there was some point to it, but they let it go on way too long.

Sarah and the Squirrel is a movie that I’m sure was made with good intentions. I imagine the thought was that this could introduce children to the horrors of the Holocaust without explicitly showing very much. But I can’t imagine many kids being able to sit through this trippy barrage of sounds and images, and I can’t imagine many adults putting up with it either. (My mom declared that it was like The Swans, a Hans Christian Andersen adaptation I abhor, only worse.  Read my review of that, and you'll see that's really saying something.) It’s a shame because it’s an interesting premise, and I’m sure that there could have been a way to do it well. But whatever that method was, Gross didn’t find it.