The Song of Names

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Family - whether chosen or by blood - is at the heart of "The Song of Names," Fran�ois Girard's affecting big-screen adaptation of the 2002 novel by British music journalist and blogger Norman Lebrecht.

The story concerns two men, essentially foster brothers, who as children survived World War II. Dovidl, a Polish wunderkind with the violin, finds shelter with a well-off family in London. Being Jewish, Dovidl's stay in London serves not just to further his musical education, but spare him the ravages of the Nazi murder machine as the Holocaust finds its way to Poland. Martin - the son of the English family who has taken Dovidl in - is at first resentful of the newcomer, whom his father treats with special care and attention. It doesn't help that Dovidl is self-assured about his own musical genius to the point of being intolerably arrogant - a person quality that tends to alienate others - but over time the two grow to be as close as brothers.

Things change several years after the war, in 1951, when Dovidl vanishes on the eve of a potentially career-launching concert. Martin's father, having poured everything the family had into the show, is left broken spiritually and financially; thirty-five years later, Martin (Tim Roth), now middle-aged, is still struggling somewhat financially when, attending a music contest as a judge, he recognizes some of Dovidl's singular technique in a young man's performance.

That slender thread of evidence convinces Martin that his foster brother, long feared to be dead, is still alive somewhere. But why did he leave, and why has he never been in touch to offer so much as a word of explanation?

Setting out to track Dovidl down - over the halfhearted objections of his wife, Helen (Catherine McCormack) - Martin ventures to Poland and then to New York, gradually piecing together a fragmentary picture of Dovidl's movements.

The viewer pieces the story together, also, through a series of flashbacks that show the two young men growing closer as they enter their teens. The payoff takes the form of flashbacks, also, when Martin finally confronts Dovidl (Clive Owen) and demands an accounting. The story he hears allows everything to make sense long at last - but there are still unresolved issues between the two that only music can heal.

The past few years have seen a resurgence of films addressing the Holocaust and its wide-ranging effects, but "The Song of Names" avoids feeling like part of a glut by examining specific issues and effects of the most cold-blooded and systematic genocide in human history. The costs - in terms of life, potential, spiritual and physical harm - are incalculable, but the film gives a sense of what the world at large lost by sitting back and allowing the Holocaust to rage unchecked.