The Devil's Arithmetic (1999)
1h 35m | PG-13
An American-born Jewish adolescent, Hannah Stern, is uninterested in the culture, faith and customs of her relatives. However, she begins to revaluate her heritage when she has a supernatural experience that transports her back to a Nazi death camp in 1941. There she meets a young girl named Rivkah, a fellow captive in the camp. As Rivkah and Hannah struggle to survive in the face of daily atrocities, they form an unbreakable bond.
Director: Donna Deitch
Studio: Lithuanian Film Studio
Genre: TV Movie, Drama, Thriller, Fantasy
Video: 720p
Cast
Kirsten Dunst
as Hannah Stern
Brittany Murphy
as Rivkah
Paul Freeman
as Rabbi
Mimi Rogers
as Leonore Stern
Louise Fletcher
as Aunt Eva
Leonardas Pobedonoscevas
as Isaac
Reviews
Previously I had really enjoyed Donna Deitch's earlier lesbian romance period piece, 'Desert Hearts', and I had found Kirsten Dunst and Brittany Murphy amazing in 'Melancholia' and 'Sin City' respectively, but a TV-movie utilizing time-travel as a plot device for a spoiled Jewish teenager to come to grips with her heritage seemed quite a bold and intriguing cinematic experiment, not to mention being an entirely different can of worms than ever I've been privy to watching. Even though personally I have as little to do with Jewish customs as lesbian issues, like Deitch's earlier work, I was able to appreciate it, though I still prefer her earlier film, if I was held at gunpoint and had to rank the two. It's a crying shame, looking at Deitch's IMDb page, that this talented San Francisco native, now 71, has been relegated to basically doing TV episodes since this came out.