Adam Resurrected – “The Day the Clown Cried”

Directed by Paul Schrader

Screenplay by Noah Stollman based on the novel by Yoram Kaniuk

In 1972 Jerry Lewis made a film called “The Day the Clown Cried” about a Jewish clown in WWII-era Germany who is put into a concentration camp. He ends up being used by the Nazis for entertaining children, gaining their trust so he can lead them to the gas chamber. It is infamous in film circles as an unfinished, unreleased film for obvious reasons. “Adam Resurrected”, based on the 1968 novel “Adam Ben Kelev” (“Man, son of a dog” literally translated from Hebrew) by Yoram Kaniuk, addresses similar subject matter. Here, a clown is again juxtaposed against the horrors of the Holocaust. However instead of a distasteful farce, we see a moving and all too human portrait of the torture that the concentration camps inflicted, including the lasting effects it had on those who survived.

Adam Stein is played by Jeff Goldblum, who sheds most of the clichéd quirks we have come to expect from him over the years. He loses himself in the role creating levels of both sadness and joy, sometimes piled on top of one another. As the film opens we find out Adam, living in 1960’s Israel, has recently almost killed a woman during a magic trick, and is headed back to a mental institution for unstable survivors where he has spent most of the last 10 years. Adam has a run of the joint; the other patients treat him like a king, the doctors let him work out his own treatments, he sneaks alcohol from behind air conditioning vents, and the head nurse (Ayelet Zurer) even carries on an affair with him. But he cannot escape the torture that is bottled up inside.

It is at this point the film begins to flash back to life for Adam in Germany. In the 20’s he was a huge star, headlining his own circus and magic show. He had a wife and two daughters, who supported his act. But as the Nazi party rises in a beautiful sequence showing how his audience changes over a 5-10 year period, it is no longer appropriate for such a revered entertainer to also be a Jew. And so, Adam and his family end up in a concentration camp. Commandant Klein (Willem Dafoe) recognizes Adam from his show, and has him act like a dog for his amusement. This begins a long scarring period of humiliation for Adam where he is given “preferential” treatment by Klein by acting just like a pet dog, where he crawls on all fours, begs for scraps, and wears a choke collar. All the while he begs for his family to be spared due to his compliance. These flashback sequences are portrayed in stark black and white, a clean and elegant cinematography comparable to Schindler’s List, while the rest of the film is lit in a modern, muted color palette.

Director Schrader is no stranger to dark material. I’ll admit this is the first film of his I sat through since feeling like my brain needed a bath seeing “Auto Focus” in the theater. Schrader is famously the screenwriter of such dark psyche-delving material as “Taxi Driver”, “Hardcore”, and “American Gigolo”. Here, working from someone else’s screenplay, he strikes an excellent balance between the horrors that exist in humanity and hope for those who can live through such things. Hope for Adam comes from being forced to finally confront his “dog days”, and while forcing humanity on a feral fellow inmate, he has a chance at finding redemption himself.

There is a reoccurring theme throughout the film of Purim, probably the silliest holiday on the Jewish calendar. It is mentioned several times in different sequences, and the climax of the film takes place on this day. Purim is a day of joyous drinking, wearing masks, and celebrating survival in the face of near destruction. The holiday is about pointing out how what is on the surface is separate from what is inside or what we could be at our best. It is an apt metaphor that ties together the themes of life and death, suffering and celebration that resurrects Adam.

****1/2 Four and a half stars – Definitely See This Film

Adam Resurrected, after having an almost non-existent run in theaters, was recently released on DVD and Blu-ray and can also be watched streaming online through Netflix.