Simon Magus
UK/Germany/Italy/France 1999
Reviewed by Ken Hollings
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Late-19th-century Silesia. An isolated rural community is threatened with extinction when a new railway line is driven through it, taking away trade. Dovid, a poor Jewish dairy farmer, approaches the local squire in secret, seeking to buy swampland upon which to build a station. The squire agrees on condition that Dovid read a volume of poems the squire has recently had published. Wealthy landowner Maximilion Hase also wants to build a station in order to squeeze out the last of the village's Jews by controlling the region's economy. To this end, he employs the services of Simon, a demented outcast who is barely tolerated by his fellow Jews.
Persuaded by Hase and the devil, who appears to him in visions, Simon renounces his religion and exposes Dovid. Hase forces Dovid to withdraw his offer by threatening to kill his intended bride. The squire insists that the land go to Dovid, who has been studying poetry with the daughter of a local merchant. After Simon foils Hase's attempt to disgrace the Jews at Passover, his hovel is set on fire with him inside it.
Review
Describing itself in a closing subtitle as a tale from a vanished world, Simon Magus is set in old Austro-Hungarian Poland, a region now erased from the geopolitical map by force of historical circumstance. Displacing homes, brutally redistributing economic power, the railway appears in this film as an unstoppable physical manifestation of radical change. The squire, tied to the land through a sense of obligation but dreaming wistfully of Vienna, refers to the steam train as a noise from hell. Later, convinced it's the devil's emissary sent to destroy the Jews, Simon attempts to sacrifice himself on the steel tracks.
With Simon Magus, debut British director Ben Hopkins treads a similar line to his central characters for whom the stuff of history is turned into nightmarish imaginings. Boasting a finely graded colour scheme that ranges from sludgy browns and mildewy greens to fiery reds and smoky yellows, his film strikes a deft balance between all-too-real historical events and dreamlike sequences of impressive visual invention. Even Dovid's innocent joy at receiving planning permission for his station is captured in the muted shades, hand-cranked flares and skipped frames of early cinematography - another infernal apparatus of the machine age. Hopkins' directorial flair is well matched by Michele Clapton's costume designs and Angela Davies' assured production design which evokes a harsh muddy existence into which the devil, played with barely suppressed malign cunning by Ian Holm, can wander as a diseased vagabond and feel perfectly at home.
It's a shame then that Simon Magus is populated with so many stock characters. From Simon's holy fool to the patrician, dutiful squire, all seem overly familiar. Even Bratislav, the worldly-wise innkeeper, appears to have wandered in from a rather earnest production of Brecht. Hopkins could also have maintained tighter control over some of the central performances. Noah Taylor brings a spirited rawness to his portrayal of Simon but he occasionally overplays the part, indulging, for instance, in too much lip-smacking gusto in scenes intended to show how uncivilised his eating habits are. Embeth Davidtz's otherwise sensitive presentation of Leah is sent spinning by a clumsy display of jealousy over Dovid's clandestine meetings with Sarah. Stranded awkwardly between such scenes of emotional outburst and moments of broad Jewish comedy, the film prompts the question of why Dovid, the centre of so much turbulence, should be at all baffled by the notion of a poem arousing such strong feelings.
This minor consideration takes on a broader significance when viewed against Simon's pronouncement that the Angel of Death is coming and the railway is there to take his fellow Jews to hell, a prophesy emphasised by the sound of a train roaring through the darkness at the film's conclusion. There's nothing mystical about Hase's cold-blooded anti-Semitism or his deliberate manipulation of people's fears. The squire's love of the work of the Jewish poet Heinrich Heine won't prevent it from being banned by Nazi authorities in years to come. Simon Magus' world may be a vanished one, but for anyone even vaguely familiar with the events in European history in the last century, it's not a distant one.
Credits
- Director
- Ben Hopkins
- Producer
- Robert Jones
- Screenplay
- Ben Hopkins
- Director of Photography
- Nic Knowland
- Editor
- Alan Levy
- Production Designer
- Angela Davies
- Music
- Deborah Mollison
- ©[outside Germany]
- Film Four Limited and The Arts Council of England
- ©[Germany]
- Hollywood Partners
- Production Companies
- FilmFour, Lucky Red, ARP and Hollywood Partners in association with the Arts
- Council of England present a Jonescompany production
- Developed with the support of British Screen Finance Limited and Miramax Films
- Developed with the support of the MEDIA programme of the European Union
- Supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of England
- Line Producer
- Anita Overland
- Production Co-ordinator
- Ann Lynch
- Location Manager
- Adam Richards
- Post-production Supervisor
- Alistair Hopkins
- 2nd Unit Director
- Alan Levy
- Assistant Directors
- Stephen Woolfenden
- Beni Turkson
- Matt Carver
- Script Supervisor
- Caroline O'Reilly
- Casting Director
- Susie Figgis
- Story/Screenplay Developed with
- Robert Cheek
- Additional Photography
- Stewart Hadley
- Camera Operators
- John Simmons
- 2nd Unit:
- Tony Jackson
- Nick Milner
- Nigel Kinnings
- Steadicam Operator
- Paul Edwards
- Digital Effects Supervisor
- Paul Franklin
- Visual Effects
- Digital Film, London
- Special Effects
- Stuart Murdoch
- Model Maker
- Emily Jenkins
- Art Director
- Martyn John
- Set Decorator
- Rebecca Gillies
- Scenic Artist
- Clare Holland
- Costume Designer
- Michele Clapton
- Wardrobe Supervisor
- Rose Goodhart
- Hair/Make-up Designer
- RoseAnn Samuel
- Make-up Artists
- Beverley Binda
- Elaine Nicholas
- Titles Design
- Kemistry
- Opticals
- General Screen Enterprises
- Music Performed by
- The Sorrel String Quartet
- Musicians
- Violins:
- Gina McCormack
- Catherine Yates
- Viola:
- Vicci Wardman
- Cello:
- Helen Thatcher
- Tarogato:
- Nicholas Bucknall
- Cimbalom:
- Edward Cervenka
- Piano:
- Deborah Mollison
- Harp:
- Rachel Masters
- Double Bass:
- Kevin Rundell
- Musical Saw:
- Richard Watson
- Singers:
- David Hilton
- Maurice Martin
- Orchestrations
- Deborah Mollison
- Music Mixer
- Dick Lewzey
- Soundtrack
- Shostakovich's "Piano Quintet in D Minor,
Op 57" - Sound Recordist
- George Richards
- Dubbing Mixer
- Robert Farr
- Sound Editor
- Larry Sider
- Dialogue Editor
- Joakim Sundström
- Foley Editor
- Tim Barker
- Jewish Advisers
- Rabbi Harry Rabinovicz
- Frank Chersky
- Barry Davis
- Mikhail Krutikov
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Clive Curtis
- Animal Handlers
- Animals O Kay
- Animal Handler
- Debbie Kaye
- Cast
- Noah Taylor
- Simon Magus
- Embeth Davidtz
- Leah
- Stuart Townsend
- Dovid
- Sean McGinley
- Maximilion Hase
- Terence Rigby
- Bratislav
- Amanda Ryan
- Sarah
- Ian Holm
- Sirius/Boris/Head
- Rutger Hauer
- squire
- David De Keyser
- rabbi
- Toby Jones
- Buchholz
- Jim Dunk
- Saul
- Ursula Jones
- Rebecca
- Cyril Shaps
- Chaim
- Ken Drury
- priest
- Tom Fisher
- Thomas
- Walter Sparrow
- Benjamin
- Jean Anderson
- Roise
- Katherine Schlesinger
- Aksha
- Valerie Edmond
- Eva
- Kathryn Hunter
- grandmother
- Maggie Steed
- Müttchen
- Barry Davis
- Samuel the cook
- Frank Chersky
- Feyder the forester
- Lawrence Werber
- Zeidel the carter
- Hayley Carmichael
- Jana Krasinsky
- Phil McKee
- railway man
- Brendan Charleson
- hireling
- Nitzan Sharron
- Joshua
- Joseph England
- Elijah
- Joel Freedman
- Aaron
- Nathan Grower
- Anshel
- Zoe Buckman
- Beyle
- Camilla Mars
- Shifrah
- Sam Davies
- Joseph
- Joshua Morris
- Getsl
- Jacob Morris
- Simcha
- Lexi Rose
- Miryem
- Georgia Graham
- railway daughter
- Certificate
- PG
- Distributor
- Film Four Distributors
- 9,579 feet
- 106 minutes 26 seconds
- Dolby
- Colour by
- DeLuxe
- Super 35 [2.35:1]