Rent I Am David (2004)

Film Adaptation of a Classic Danish Book about Communist Concentration Camps - I Am David review by PV

Having read the book (by Danish author Ann Holm) st school when aged 13 I would certainly recommend that more than this film - I also recommend the radio drama adaptation from maybe 15 years ago on BBC Radio 4. That is superior to this. But the nature of the story make it so. It simply cannot be all that cinematic really. I think they changed the end in this adaptation too. My memory of the book is vague but I am sure it was different.

The story deals with an important and oft-forgotten issue - that if camps run under communist regimes. This is set in one such camp in 1952 in Bulgaria. Millions suffered in such camps and died too.

I am unsure of the casting here. The boy who plays the main character has the right look, but his voice is way too posh - it reminds me of all those 1970s and 80s BBC children's TV adaptations of old books. The kids were straight out of prep school even when playing Victorian street urchins. This film is 15 years old and the main actor seems to have disappeared without trace anyway and I have never seen him in anything else. His voice is just too posh and maybe too 'small' too. Some voices are. The face fits though.

One MASSIVE error in this movie is a globe of the world showing The Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. In 1952? It was Czechoslovakia then - from the end of WWII and the Communist putsch of 1948. Not separate countries again until 1 January 1993. Bad error.

But well worth watching, this film - the issue needs highlighting especially amongst the snowflake woke generation who often have a dewy-eyed view of Communism. They know nothing. Let this film start teaching them. It's suitable for kids of all ages.

3.5 stars rounded up.

This fiction is stranger than truth - I Am David review by Swambi

This is a strange film. It is set as a road story of a traumatised teenager travelling across post-war Europe, with little more than a compass, and with flashbacks to the appalling prison camp he has left, and a beautiful woman, whose identity is never clear until the end. The scenes individually can be attractive and reasonably filmed and there is some excellent music, and a positive message, and so may appeal particularly if you like sentimental encounters.

However, unless you can totally disengage your rationality, the chances any of this ever actually happening, or everyone being happily able to communicate in English, are clearly zero, making it impossible to engage with the film. The combination of a wooden David a random selection of encounters, and periodic flashbacks gives the whole film a discontinuity, and although I enjoyed some of the characters and the scenery, overall I felt that the film was poorly produced and failed to respect viewers' common sense (by expecting them to believe the impossible).