The Last Supper Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

The Last Supper Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 18, 2020

When you pray, move your feet.

That aphorism, evidently a popular historical African proverb, has gained more renown lately with regard to its use by the late John Lewis. It may seem especially salient in times riven with strife, and in that regard one need not necessarily go down the rabbit hole of current events to find salient examples of actual action rather than mere talk (or prayer) being needed. The Last Supper is a perhaps unavoidably static yet still at least intermittently bracing account of one Jewish family’s reaction to the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Reichschancellor in early 1933. While probably a bit too discursive for non-Germans to generally recognize, the film mixes in a couple of real life characters as tangents, but focuses on the Glicksteins, a family that is itself being riven with strife due to all sorts of internecine conflicts. The result is occasionally too melodramatic for its own good, but it offers some interesting commentary on "commentary", i.e., situations filled more with talking than with action.

Aaron Glickstein (Bruno Eyron) has a large, extended family which is meeting for dinner on the evening of Hitler's appointment. Glickstein's business is potentially in disarray, and as such he has been a largely "absent" father and husband in his attempts to (ironically) keep house and home together. When he gets back to his domicile for dinner (rather late, as proceedings have already begun), he's almost instantly swept up in various dramas, including the fact that his daughter Leah (Mira Elisa Goeres) has been secretly planning on emigrating to Palestine, and, a bit later, that his son Michael (Patrick Mölleken) kinda sorta actually likes some of what the National Socialists have been talking about.

The film therefore is exceedingly dialectic, though instead of, say, the picayune analyses that inform the Talmud, it's more like competing screeds being shouted in figurative "all caps" by proponents of various opinions. The historical milieu is perhaps awkwardly contextualized by actual archival film clips. That works okay in some opening moments with some establishing shots, but later uses, including a really clunky cutaway to a "torchlight" parade, may take some viewers squarely out of the drama at the center of the story.

The Last Supper Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Last Supper is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Menemsha Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb lists only a "DCP" in its technical data, but the closing credits mention Arri rentals, and while that doesn't necessarily mean an Arri camera, I found a few online posts on social media platforms by cinematographer Konstantin Freyer which seem to suggest (if I'm understanding the German correctly, which I may not be) that Alexas were utilized. I'm assuming things were finished at a 2K DI. Perhaps surprisingly (at least to me), this film has won several international awards for its cinematography. While the film is certainly competently shot, and this transfer boasts generally excellent detail and clarity, there's not a lot of "wow" to the visuals, with much of the film taking place at the Glickstein dinner table, where a prevalence of brown and gray tones keeps the palette decidedly on the tamped down, even drab, side of things. Per my comments above in the main body of the review, there are occasional uses of archival footage which do not blend particularly well with the cleaner, glossier look of the bulk of the presentation. The color in some of these archival moments is also (understandably) considerably less suffused and vivid than even the somewhat dreary look of the newly shot material, and at least some of the material looks blown up from smaller formats, so clarity is often not optimal (see screenshots 7 and 9 for two examples).

The Last Supper Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Last Supper features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 tracks, though due to the film's relentlessly talky ambience, it may be hard to distinguish between them. The surround track opens up at least a little during some of the ubiquitous underscore, but neither it nor frankly the stereo track provides a ton of separation of immersive proclivities. That said, all elements in the sound mix are offered with excellent fidelity and no problems whatsoever with regard to damage, distortion or dropouts. Optional English subtitles are available.

The Last Supper Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailers includes The Last Supper (1080p; 1:21) along with trailers for several other releases from Menemsha Films.

The Last Supper Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The basic story of a Jewish family coming to terms with Hitler's rise to power would seem to be ripe for dramatic exploration, but perhaps too often The Last Supper offers melodrama instead. There's another old aphorism, this one of Jewish genesis, that states, "Two Jews, three opinions," and the fact that you get a veritable table full of Jewish characters opining about things can make this a rather static, talky enterprise a lot of the time. Technical merits are solid for those considering a purchase.