Description:The film starts out as a comedy-of-sorts, with Tony, the main character, as a run-of-the-mill, average joe carpenter in 1942 Czechoslovakia. Tony gets into arguments with his wife, who wishes her husband would show more initiative, and with his brother-in-law, who is a low-level fascist leader in the community. One night, after a rowdThe film starts out as a comedy-of-sorts, with Tony, the main character, as a run-of-the-mill, average joe carpenter in 1942 Czechoslovakia. Tony gets into arguments with his wife, who wishes her husband would show more initiative, and with his brother-in-law, who is a low-level fascist leader in the community. One night, after a rowdy (and very funny) night of drinking, Tony discovers that his brother-in-law has procured for him a small, downtown store that has been taken from a Jewish woman by the town's anti-Semitic ordinances. When Tony arrives to claim the store, he discovers a 78-year old woman, hard of hearing, who doesn't understand what has happened to her. Tony also discovers that the store sells buttons. Nothing else - just buttons.
Tony discovers that the local Jewish community and its allies have been financially supporting her failing business, and they make a deal with Tony: if he allows the old woman to stay at the store, and allows her to think that he is merely her employee, than they will financially compensate him for his kindness. Tony agrees, figuring that money is money, and not really caring one way or the other. As time goes on, however, he begins to care for the nearly-deaf old woman, repairing broken furniture and shielding her from the surrounding hostile environment.
While most of the early scenes are comedic in nature, the film takes a serious turn when it is announced that cattle cars have arrived to take away all of the town's Jews. Tony doesn't know what to do: should he turn the old woman in, save his neck, and run the store as his own store? Or should he try to save the life of this woman who he has grown to care for with deep affection.... (more)(less)
"A Slovak film about a man's internal struggle between good and evil, right and wrong, during the onslaught of WWII. Very excellent, understated classic, compressing the world-scale issue of totalitarianism into its effects on a man and his fellow shopkeeper.
"
Mr. Saturn added this to a list 9 months, 2 weeks ago
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Watched in 2013
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
BEST ACTRESS...
Seen in 2012 - Best of
New-to-Me Films of 2012
One Film - One Flag
World Films
