The Last Suit (2017) User Reviews

A strange kind of road movie that manages to transfix nevertheless

[paul-allaer · 7/10 · 7 February 2019]

"The Last Suit" (2017 release from Argentina; original title "El ultimo traje"; 91 min.) brings the story of Abraham Bursztein, a very old and ailing Jewish tailor. As the movie opens, Abraham's family is getting ready to move him to a retirement home, against Abraham's express wishes. When his housekeeper asks what to do with a certain suit she finds, he decides on the spur of the moment to trek out to Poland. He waits for his family to leave (expecting to pick him up the next morning to take his to the retirement home). Instead, Abraham takes off for the airport, where a flight to Madrid is the first flight to Europe... At this point we are less than 15 min. into the movie but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: it took me a while to get into the movie, to be honest. At first we don't understand what is so important about that suit, and why exactly he wants to go to Poland, but of course all is revealed in due course. The core of the movie is Abraham, in frail health, getting from Buenos Aires to Poland via planes, trains and automobiles. Braham is played with grace and humor by noted Argentinean actor Miguel Angel Sola. And any movie that finds a spot for Natalia Verbeke is a winner for me!

I recently saw "The Last Suite" at the 2019 Jewish & Israeli Film Festival here in Cincinnati, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this years. More often than not, the festival's programming committee puts together a great slate of interesting and thought-provoking films. If you have a chance to see "The Last Suit", do not miss it!

Old Argentinian Jewish tailor returns to Poland to thank benefactor.

[maurice_yacowar · 7/10 · 11 July 2018]

When Abraham, the 88-year-old Jewish tailor from Buenos Aires, arrives in Madrid he reveals he's living King Lear's folly. Decades earlier, when his favourite daughter Claudia (i.e., Cordelia) wouldn't match her two older sisters in describing her love for him he disowned her, gave them his estate and refused to speak to her again. Having now unhoused him, the sisters doom him to a Home. He's also at risk of losing a leg. Hence his oedipal limp. Helpless and freshly robbed, he now reluctantly turns to Claudia for help. He squeezes out a strained apology for having so abused her. She corrects his story in one respect. The other sisters paid her her fair share after all. She gives him the grand he needs to get to Poland, but makes no effort to admit him into her - and her little daughter's - life. There is none of Cordelia's forgiveness, nor Lear's reconnection. But here's the question: What the hell is a Lear rehash doing in a Holocaust survivor saga? It must be the heart of the film. It's such a prominent jarring intrusion that it must bear the point of the exercise. Story-telling is an early motif in the film. Abraham's delightful, doomed little sister was enchanting in her capacity to invent stories and to share them with audiences. Her own story ends when the Nazis snatch her from Abraham's grip. Not for her the immortality of the stars that she kept afloat in the night. So the film is about living through stories. After all - as has been remarked - the Holocaust is such a monstrous occurrence, with such unimaginable cruelty and an unfathomable scale of evil and inhumanity, that approaching its reality beggars the imagination. How else deal with the unimaginable than by sending out stories that may at least point to its implications, however incompletely. What cannot be fathomed can perhaps be outlined or pointed to. So this film is not so much the story of one survivor's experience but a demonstration pf how the extremities of history can only be approached in discrete fictions. The power of stories make a history possible. That's why the hero is named Abraham, the father of the Jewish people (as well as of the recycled Lear's daughters) and why he's that most stereotypical of Jews, the tailor. And the wanderer. Though Abraham is 88 this is still a bildungsroman, a sequence of episodes through which the hero moves toward self-realization. Typically, the episodes stand quite separate. In the first, the sly grandfather negotiates a bribe with his even craftier granddaughter, to get a family photo to impress the old folks at the looming home. He then has a Kafkaesque scene with a travel agent in some shadowy warehouse. Subsequent scenes advance his mission but probably mean even more to the people he engages with. In passing he gives them stories to tell: the young music student on the plane, the hotel clerk who sings in a club, the German woman anthropologist whose Jewish history studies led to he learning yiddish. As they variously help him their scenes become dramatic tales to enrichen their bios. And lives. They all take their leave with warm, lingering embraces. The main story is the reunion of the two old friends, the two tailors, at the end. They were so close as boys that when Abraham escaped from the Nazis, Piotrek fought off his own father in order to save their benefactor's son. Though they have not communicated for over 60 years, and neither knows the other has survived, both men have such a need to complete their story that they recognize each other on sight. This film is less about life than about our need for stories. So, too, Abraham's flashbacks whether in his dreams or his delirium. Especially the train scenes seem culled from film-lore as much as from personal history or experience. Perhaps this theme is especially pertinent to a Holocaust survival film coming from Argentina. That country, after all, welcomed so many Nazi officials after the war. Of course it has a significant Jewish population now, but the history remains problematic. Jews have been attacked there, including a serious attack on a synagogue. Argentina was recently embarrassed when it buckled to Palestinian pressure and cancelled its national soccer team's planned exhibition match in Tel Aviv. So the history - like the best stories - keeps retelling.

The Last Suit may be the Last Holocaust Movie you'll ever need to watch

[richard-1967 · 10/10 · 19 August 2018]

We saw this surprising and completely successful film at a recent festival. El último traje follows the journey of Holocaust survivor Abraham Bursztein as he drags himself and his bad leg from Argentina to Poland against the strong wishes of his family. Despite his age (late 80's), general grumpiness, and inexperience as a traveler, Abraham finds help from a number of remarkably well-realized characters along the way. The excellent (and quite handsome) actor Miguel Ángel Solá put on 20 years of makeup to look every bit his character's age, and manages to infuse Abraham with human qualities that make him appealing almost despite himself. The one drawback of the film is an unnecessary and distracting King Lear plot contrivance. But overall, this solitary journey to the past - paralleling and contrasting with another recent, similar solitary journey in the excellent film "Remember' - is first-rate. The end had my wife and me bawling. Enjoy it.

A very touching road movie

[Red-125 · 9/10 · 3 August 2018]

The Argentinian film El último traje was shown in the U.S. with the translated title of The Last Suit. It was written and directed by Pablo Solarz.

The movie stars Miguel Ángel Solá as Abraham Bursztein, a Holocaust survivor now living safely, if not happily, in Argentina. He decides on the spur of the moment to travel back to Poland to say goodbye to a friend who saved his life.

This is actually a road movie, with many twists and turns and adventures along the route. Part of the film adopts the plot of King Lear, which is very strange. Part of it slides toward magical realism. However, it's always interesting and never boring.

Miguel Ángel Solá is a superb actor. This film would not be worth watching if an inferior actor played Abraham. Solá carries it off with skill and conviction.

We watched this movie on the large screen at the excellent Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum. It was shown as part of the wonderful Rochester Jewish Film Festival. The film has a weak IMDb rating of 6.9. Don't be deterred by the low rating. It's a movie to be sought out and enjoyed.

Heartwarming

[alapides-529-147429 · 10/10 · 14 April 2018]

A movie that will leave you filled with emotion. When it ends, you wish it didn't. A heartfelt story of love and determination. A reminder of a period of time of the horrors that occurred during World War 11. A touching movie that you will admire.

Exquisite Journey

[kshear-94839 · 9/10 · 26 May 2018]

An intensely emotional story, beautifully told. Acting, cinematography, soundtrack, story arc, pacing were all highest quality. A journey you won't soon forget.

An excellent film

[gbenaroya · 10/10 · 14 April 2019]

What's good about this story it's how realistic it is. The main actor was quite lucky about all the people he meets along the way who helps him. I personally know of another Jewish immigrant, In his 80s, who flying from Buenos Aired to Warsaw got lost at Madrid airport. So he was sent back.

Touching movie about an old man trip back to his painful past and to himself

[eugene-khaimson · 9/10 · 9 November 2018]

Equal part funny, sad , dramatic, entertaining and educational the story of old man coming to terms with his past and hismself on a long trip across continents. Meeting people who connect to him and help him on his quest, emotional and beautiful picture of human history magnified in one man's life

Deeply moving, engrossing story

[vidoran · 9/10 · 27 August 2018]

I loved this movie, an unexpected gem. Brilliant acting from Miguel Ángel Solá as a Jewish holocaust survivor who seeks to fulfil a promise from his time in the ghetto.