‘Isaac’ Review: A Striking, Surreal Film About WWII Horrors

Cinema is a vehicle for investigating historical scars in “Isaac,” a starkly beautiful drama about a filmmaker who returns to his native Lithuania in 1964 to make a movie about a WWII slaughter, and becomes embroiled alongside his schoolmate in totalitarian trouble. Adapted from a short story by Antanas Skema, director Jurgis Matulevicius’ feature debut — Lithuania’s entry to the Oscar international feature race — is a bleak, boozy nightmare of buried secrets, unearthed atrocities and anguished guilt. Its obliqueness may preclude it from attracting a wide domestic audience, but such haziness is part and parcel of a work about… Read Full Article