Change Your Image
dandrdriscoll
Reviews
Chaos Dragon and the Light (2023)
Portrait of a Life
In his book The Periodic Table, Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi observes that it is a hopeless task to try to dress a person in words and make the person live again on the printed page. In her touching and revelatory film, Marika Henriques has recourse to clever drawings from her father's diary and to her own sketches created during a period of Jungian analysis to corroborate her words and to come alive in this autobiographical tale of hiding from the Nazis during World War II in Hungary, her perilous escape from the Communist regime in 1958, and finding her true identity in introspection and in subsequent acceptance of Judaism. The beautiful film portrays the triumph of the human spirit over extraordinary adversity. It will inspire all who entertain courage to hope.