Here’s as poignant a description as you’ll ever find of growing up Jewish in the second half of the 20th century:
“I am the child of people who remembered many things and refused to remember many others.”
Those haunting words are offered, without elaboration, by one of the people interviewed in the elegiac Mexican documentary “Recuerdos” (“Remembrance”). The effect is emblematic of this lovely and extraordinary film, which is relentless in its portrayal of dislocation.
“Recuerdos” screens Sunday, Nov. 14 at the Lark Theater in Larkspur as part of the eighth International Latino Film Festival.
Gorgeously shot, mostly in black and white, “Recuerdos” is an unsentimental meditation on the pain and comfort of memories. The film takes special note that the sense of loss is greater for those — such as Jews — who are distanced from the land of their birth.
“Recuerdos” begins with a substantial amount of onscreen text describing the life of Luis Frank, a Lithuanian Jew who sailed to America at the age of 9. As a young man he joined the forces fighting Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War, then crossed into France and worked with refugee children for three years before the Nazis captured him and sent him to a concentration camp.
Frank survived the war and immigrated to Mexico, where he died just a few years ago. Although “Recuerdos” includes interviews with Frank and his middle-aged children, the 90-minute film is far from a standard biography whose primary goal is to persuade the viewer of the subject’s importance.
Rather, Frank’s peripatetic life offers a window onto a distant time that, nonetheless, still has ripple effects on subsequent generations. To that end, director Marcela Arteaga includes other elderly people — in Spain, Mexico, New York, France, Lithuania and London — who fought in the Spanish Civil War or suffered through the Holocaust.
One of the film’s few humorous moments, in fact, is an early montage of these folks drawing a blank when asked if they knew Luis Frank. In just a few marvelous seconds, Arteaga elegantly undercuts any expectations that “Recuerdos” will be a worshipful portrait of Frank.
To the contrary, Frank is a downright elusive figure in this film. Even his own documentary work, which presumably comprises some of the stunning vintage footage on display, isn’t labeled.
Gradually, the intent of Arteaga’s approach becomes apparent: Memories are ephemeral and the hazy picture of Luis Frank that emerges is, truthfully, the only one that exists. In fact, one might reasonably conclude, after watching “Recuerdos,” that linear, well-researched film biographies of historical figures — so precise in their detail — represent a kind of fiction.
In other words, they are stories assembled with an artificial clarity. In real life, the nature of memory is not only intangible but, inevitably, incomplete.
“Recuerdos” does not lack for anecdotes about the Holocaust or Spanish Civil War, but viewers already steeped in their history will not have revelations. As a mesmerizing and sublime excursion into a particular corner of the mind’s eye, however, it is truly remarkable.
“Recuerdos” screens at 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 14 at the Lark Theatre, 549 Magnolia Ave. in Larkspur. Tickets: $6 to $8. Information: (415) 458-3769 or www.ticketweb.com.