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Aug 23, 2009Michael rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
This heart-warming saturday afternoon special alternates from dreary to melodramatic too many convenient times for me to classify it up there with other "journey movies" truly worthy of note (like critically acclaimed in 2008, "Into The Wild", for example). However... it has a way of growing on an audience if you can get passed its rather gloom-and-doom start long enough for young Ben Tibber who plays the twelve year old David, to endear himself into the minds and hearts of its viewers. And he does... ever so sweetly, that you become entranced by his melancholy looks and steadfast disposition, and you end up wanting to know his fate, hoping that it will all turn out safe and sound for him, but wondering in the end - just how? His escape from a Bulgarian communist concentration camp in 1952, begins his journey, and continues as a mystery to a destination he never chose and never questioned. The perilous trip becomes a metaphoric re-birth for David, as he begins to deal with life outside the prison. And life, as we all know, has its ups and downs, with people good and bad, along the way. David experiences it all, with an ah shucks kind of good natured attitude that sometimes is threatened by flashbacks to the violence he was used to as a prisoner. But you begin to get this sense that he's going to miraculously make it in the end. It helps that he runs into Sophie, an elderly Swiss matron, played by Dame Joan Plowright, the remarkably resilient British actress (of "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont" fame) who saves the day - and the movie, I might add - by finally giving young David the trustworthy kindness and human decency he never had growing up in the communist prison - nor received from even some of the people he met along his journey. Even their introduction is idyllic: After crossing Greece and Italy, and while travelling through Germany to ultimately reach Denmark - David finds Sophie painting impressionist landscapes in a pastoral setting just outside the Swiss border. She asks to paint him: "Michaelangelo had his David, and so shall I" - and this perchance meeting begins their friendship, and gives rise to a new-found hope in the young man's quest to reach his Danish destination. Who and what is waiting for him there is a beautiful surprise that cannot be spoiled here. Suffice it to say - no one will be disappointed with the ending, despite the movie's all-too-many apparent coincidences.