《波斯语课》的故事梗概十分简单:A young Jewish man pretends to be Iranian to avoid being executed in a concentration camp in the Holocaust drama Persian Lessons.为躲避纳粹对犹太人的屠杀,也为自己在集中营中不被处刑,一名犹太男子假装自己是伊朗人。
电影故事的灵感来源于历史上真实的事件,根据编剧Wolfgang Kohlhaase的短篇小说Erfindung einer Sprache(《语言的发明》)改编而成。纳老师在采访中提到:“The film is especially important and relevant in our time,” said Perelman. “It tells a profoundly powerful, heartbreaking story that is infused with tragedy, irony, the kindling of hope and friendship among the unlikeliest in the unlikeliest circumstances. I am honored and pleased with the opportunity to widen the worldwide audience and fans of the film.”
电影中有两大不能忽视的主题,“记忆”还有“友情”。关于这两点,纳老师说道:“Memory is one of the strongest themes in the film, and also inventiveness. I think human inventiveness and what the strong human spirit can do to survive is truly amazing. I think you can actually feel it in the script. And the incredible outcome of this story is that the way Gilles transforms prisoners’ names into foreign language words is immortalizing them. During the war there were all those people who have vanished completely and remained unknown because all the archives and all the registers of the camp were burnt by the Nazis.”
I think I try to show that we are all people, we are all capable of love and we’re all capable of evil things as well as horrific acts of hatred. There is no such thing as an absolute good and absolute evil. It’s always somewhere in the middle.我想展现的是,我们都是人类,我们有爱的能力,我们也有邪恶的一面,会因为憎恨做出一些残忍的行径。没有绝对的好和绝对的坏,中间的灰色地带是存在的。