Under Jakob's Ladder (2011) - full transcript
Jakob, a former teacher who lost his job due to the new Communist system, can only stand by and watch as the world around him slowly disintegrates, and fear and suspicion rule the day. Like most of the men, he soon finds himself in a Soviet prison.
- My grandfather once said
that people were like
chess pces.
My grandfather loved chess,
and he specially loved to win.
He started his last and
longest game the night they
took him away.
- Please papa, don't speak at
the funeral.
- How do you know about that?
What Emma has asked me to do
for her brother of course it's
not allowed.
She just doesn't want him
buried like an animal.
She begged me.
- Your mother told me I'll get
reported if I speak.
And if I don't do you really
want a coward for
a grandfather?
- Whatever you do, don't talk.
- What are they looking for?
- Teacher.
- Like chess pces, people can
be captured.
In Stalin's Russia you never
knew who you could trust and
how or why they would betray
you.
- But before the night was
over another man would
be dead.
- There.
That's your spot now, old man.
What are you looking for?
A bed.
Not in Bruno's hotel.
- You're not a prisoner.
- Prisoner?
Look around, old man.
Everybody on my side of the
door is either guilty of
holding back the ewe utopian
paradise or
- waiting to get their hands
around the
necks of our accusers.
- What do you think, brother
David?
Or don't you pacifists have
violent thoughts?
- Don't mind Bruno.
He's the inside man.
- Inside man?
- That's just what I call him.
Food gets delivered he
controls the distribution.
I'm David.
This is my brother.
Rudy.
- Sale. Jakob sale.
- Jakob sale?
The chess player?
So you might just get out.
- What is in your boot?
- My Bible.
I was a preacher on the
outside.
We held secret meetings in
homes and in the woods
at night.
- Then we were betrayed.
- I was arrested for praying
at a funeral.
- Praying?
You should have preached a
sermon.
- Not as long as I'm around.
- Attention!
- We have been informed that
one of you has
religious writings.
I'm going to count to 5 and if
no one steps forward you'll
all be punished.
1, 2, 3, 4
- I I have something.
- 5.
- Jakob sale, bring this back
while they're asleep.
Be faithful unto death and
you'll be given the
crown of life.
- Jakob sale, bring this back
while they're asleep.
- This is like the famine.
- My cousin's entire village
starved to death and not
because they did not have a
good harvest.
- Shut up.
We don't want to hear it.
- People were forced to trade
jewelry to buy food.
And when the children of one
family told their teacher that
their parents had secretly
baptized them, the teacher
rewarded them with bread.
But later that night they came
and stole the parents away so
that the children starved.
- Yasha, talk about something
else, like what I have to do
to get out of here.
- I think you will get out of
here when you learn how to be
nicer to me.
- Oh yeah?
When will everybody else get
out?
- When we defeat Nikolai.
- The littlest girl was found
dead but not before she had
gnawed off all her frozen
fingers.
- Yasha!
Tell a different story.
- Hey everybody, listen up.
Yasha is telling his story
again.
- Okay.
Well, one day I heard they
were recruiting workers for
the mines and my name was on
the top of the list.
- At the top of the list.
- I was the hardest working in
my village.
At least that's what the
commissar told me every time he
had a job for me.
Still mama did not like the
idea of me working
in the mines.
- Because of your
claustrophobia?
- No. Because I am afraid of
closed in spaces.
- Hey, you were telling us
about your escape.
- Well, mama tells me this is
not a good job for me and I
need to visit my relatives
right away.
So I did.
Of course she meant her
relatives in Kiev.
But I just went to my
brother's house down
the street.
- Yasha?
- It was yasha's family that
asked my grandfather to speak
at the funeral.
- He was too sick to go to
school today.
Yasha, I said you were sick.
- Probably the only kind thing
yasha's father ever did
for the boy was to keep him
home from school the day he
fired my grandfather.
Yasha's mother would do
anything for her son.
- But then I remembered the
teacher's words,
to always tell the truth.
Always tell the truth, yasha.
And that is when they brought
me here.
- And when did it dawn on you
that you were in prison?
- When I got my first taste of
blood.
- And what was it you said?
- I said this tastes as bad as
prison food.
- Yasha, tell us again when
you said when you
ate the food.
- I said this
- There were two ways out of
comrade
Nikolai's prison.
The first was to defeat him in
chess because he had promised
to free anyone who beat him.
But no one ever beat him.
- Do you think you can teach
me?
- So there was really only one
way out.
- How many pces did he lose
this time?
- Yasha? Yasha?
I thought I saw
- that's right, Karl.
The teacher is here too, now.
You remember teacher, me and
Karl how we sat
in the back row.
Bruno, if you lay a hand on
him, I'll
- you'll what?
- Yasha, get some wood.
- So in just 4 moves the red
dragon has been taken.
Comrade style.
Karl?
- We have a better teacher who
doesn't waste time
playing checkers.
Sorry, old man.
You've got less than five
minutes.
- What are you thinking?
- About yasha talking even
when he's sleeping.
- Yasha is yasha.
Karl is Karl.
Silent as ever.
- There's not much to say.
- We all need to talk
sometimes.
- What I need is not to talk
right now.
Something for my headache,
like a bullet.
- I do have one question.
Do you still believe in god?
Karl, what would a chess pce
be without the one who
guards it.
- I hate them.
He turned me in for nothing
more than believing in god.
And I hate god for allowing
it.
- Karl.
- No, teacher.
We're not in school now.
No more lectures about things
you yourself shouldn't believe
in anymore.
- Karl
- he hasn't called for you
yet, has he?
Let me tell you what happens
to you in that office, what
they do to break you.
He sits you down and asks you
to tell him that the white
paper is red.
And when you disagree, they
dig under your finger nail
until your willing to say it's
whatever color they want.
So you confess.
And after that you play chess
like you've never
played before.
- Grandpa, if you could do
anything at all right now,
what would it be?
- To play one last great game
of chess.
- After his conversation with
Karl, my grandfather started
looking for an opportunity to
play chess with
comrade Nikolai.
And he found one the very next
morning.
- What is wrong with Karl?
- You're too early for
breakfast.
- I don't want breakfast.
I want my spoon.
- This?
Oh, this belongs to Bruno.
What they call water is so
brown here.
Why do you even need a spoon?
- Why don't I just hold on it
for all the peas, potatoes and
carrots they might not strain
out of it tomorrow.
- This isn't yours.
Maybe somebody stole yours.
- Bruno.
- Just give it to me, old man,
before somebody really
gets hurt.
- Bruno, can I ask you a
question about what the spoon
looks like?
- It looks like a spoon.
- And how long have you had
it?
- He was born with it in his
mouth.
- Shut up.
- Bruno, how much ridges on
there on the handle of
the spoon?
- How many what?
- Ridges.
- What are you talking about
ridges?
- You do know what a Ridge is,
don't you?
- How am I supposed to know
that with my eyes?
- You can tell by the feel of
it.
- What does it matter how many
ridges it's got?
- Karl. Would you know the
number?
- It has 2.
2 ridges.
- Only 2?
- No.
3.
No.
1.
- It has 2.
- Isn't life difficult enough
as it is without us making it
worse for each other.
- Are you accusing me, old
man?
- No.
It's just that what we have
here seems like a simple case
of mistaken identity.
- I
- it's a simple mistake anyone
could make.
Specially someone whose eyes
aren't as good as they
used to be.
- There's a troublemaker!
Guard!
- Maybe you shouldn't have
done that, teacher.
- You're 7 years old.
Your father beat you with a
stick the first time you beat
him at chess.
Now, how do I know that?
- You have the papers?
- Papers?
- For me to sign admitting my
guilt.
- What about your integrity?
Your good family name?
- I'm ready to sign.
- You know we are going to use
this to send you
to Siberia.
- If I live that long.
- Then I will have my
secretary prepare
your confession.
Since you made my
interrogation so easy today, I
have something for you.
- Teacher, did he make you
play chess?
Why does he play chess with us
and not with you?
- Karl.
Yasha.
Nikolai.
- Nikolai.
Where had he heard that name
before?
In our house.
We had a chess board with one
missing pce.
Before I was born, my
grandfather played a chess
champion and beat him.
In his joy, he handed the red
queen to the champion's son.
But what he had given as a
gift Nikolai
- Nikolai, go!
- Had taken as an insult.
- Nikolai.
- And now the time for
vengeance had come.
- David fell asleep right over
there and now he is not
there any more.
- Where is he?
- I've got to get out of here!
- Dig over there.
- Why?
- It's where David used to
sleep.
- It's loose like somebody's
been here before me.
- N.
- Safe journeys to wherever
you've been stolen to.
- The man still believed that
comrade Nikolai would free
whoever would beat him at
chess.
So my grandfather kept
teaching him how to play.
But so far there was still
only one way out of prison.
As they took one prisoner
after another.
- That's right.
There's chaos.
- Have you ever noticed
something about the people
that were taken?
They were all learning how to
play chess.
With you.
- You're telling us that the
comrade's been stuck in the
room with people who asked the
teacher to play chess
with them?
And the first initials just
happen to spell out -
Ivan, norbert, Fritz, Ernest.
- Hey. Joseph.
Are you just going to stand
there until they take you?
Help me with my tunnel.
- I will help when you lose
enough weight not to get stuck
in it.
Do you think you're the only
one who tried to dig their way
out of here.
- Wait.
What do you mean?
What?
- Yasha!
- That is what I like about
Joseph.
They will never steal him.
He's not afraid of anybody.
Not even Bruno.
I wish I was like him.
- Talking about me?
- We were just wondering how a
big man like you could get
himself thrown into a place
like this?
- Hey, what about my tunnel?
- Joseph, all you have to do
is convince me that you're not
a killer like they say.
- A killer?
Okay.
For yasha I will tell it.
- So it wasn't long after that
I was appointed chairman of our
beloved collective.
- Because you are so big.
- You think my sole
qualification was my size?
Is that it? Well?
- So? Were you qualified?
- You know Rudy, you're not
much better than that dead
brother of yours.
- Being a good mennonite is
what got David killed.
- Because of his little Bible.
Because we catholics we don't
read the Bible like you.
That means you're better than
we are.
Is that it?
- Joseph, I would like to ask
you a question.
- Go ahead.
Ask.
- Joseph, were you qualified?
Qualified to give this little
man a good night of
thrashing, yes.
But to be in charge, to be in
charge that was bigger joke
than yasha which I don't feel
like talking about right now.
- The last time I had bread
like this it was Christmas.
- Don't you know the rules?
There's no singing.
- What can they do to me?
Throw me in prison?
- Sector 13, everybody out.
- Teacher, your coat.
Your coat please?
Just for a little white.
It's the only one big enough.
- You see what you're singing
did?
- They took the coat.
They took the coat!
Ah!
- Why did they leave the hole?
- No. No.
It was only a coat and it's
warm today.
Put it on.
- Where are the religious
writings?
You, take those off.
- I don't have anything.
- He doesn't.
- Comrade, he doesn't have
anything.
Please.
- Happy now, lutheran?
Don't you know where they are
taking him?
Why don't you stick up for
him?
Aren't you both protestants?
Ahh!
- Sing a new song unto the
lord.
- Rudy.
- So who is going to wear
these?
- Teacher?
Yasha and I have been talking
and he wants me to ask you
a question.
- He can't ask me himself?
- He could but he wants me to.
Yasha wants to know if you
would teach us some of the
songs from back home.
- The songs you're always
humming for protection so they
will not be able to steal us.
Make us a choir.
- How about tomorrow?
- How about today?
- Maybe your Jesus won't be
able to protect you.
Is that it, old man?
- Bruno talking about
religion.
Somebody's crossing a line.
- You think I don't know about
religion?
I've been to church.
- Once.
At Christmas.
- So what?
I go to hell, is that it?
- Why would an atheist need to
worry about that?
- Listen, volvik, I've got as
much religion as the next man.
Wait a minute, old man.
You're not getting off that
easy. So?
What are the believers going
to do about their choir?
- It depends on the teacher.
- The teacher is afraid.
I can smell it.
- Are you, teacher?
Are you afraid?
- To tell you the truth, I am.
Bruno, we all should be more
than before.
- So the comrades are right?
- About what?
- About religion being an
opiate for the weak and
the useless.
- Why do you have to be so
angry?
- Angry?
Because everybody can see what
is coming and anyone with half
a mind is going to leave
before the whole country
falls apart.
They've taken my church.
They've taken my school.
They've taken my choir.
It's useless.
I'm useless and I am going to
die that way, a useless
old man!
- So Ludwig, Gustav I remember
your voices from
back home.
And Eric, Adam, Otto.
But I'm going to need more
than just you.
So Joseph and volvik and you
too, Bruno.
If you want.
- See, I told you he was not
afraid.
- Can we be courageous some
other way?
- So how do we begin?
- First I try the voices.
- It was my idea.
I will go first.
I will a very loud voice so I
will sing tenor.
- Yes. I remember your voice.
- What song would you like to
hear?
- How about silent night
without words or sound?
- You don't think I know the
words?
* Oh, holy silent night ...
- That's good.
- It's freezing.
- Then everybody come
together.
- Come on.
You want to get warm, don't
you?
- Then let's go.
- Put the teacher in the
middle.
- No, please.
Can we do this without
fighting?
- Now we really are a choir.
- Yasha, if you could only
hear yourself when you sing.
- What about you, Bruno?
What if you could hear
yourself?
- Yasha, I'm a communist, what
would I sing?
- The internationale.
- You think that's the only
song I know, smart guy?
- It has to be a spiritual
song.
- You think I don't know
church music?
- So prove it and sing
something.
- Right here in front of
everybody?
- So whose afraid now, Bruno?
- Listen to me.
I'm not afraid anything.
- So why don't you sing then?
- All right.
I'll do it!
But no laughing.
- You laughed at yasha.
- Because his singing is
ridiculous.
- Just sing and get it over
with already.
There's a song my mother used
to sing.
I'm just singing the first few
words.
- That's all I need to hear
what sort of voice you have.
- How did I get picked for
this?
- I volunteer you because you
are so brave.
- Bruno, just sing the first
line.
- That's almost as good as me.
- So Bruno, you're not the
100 % comrade we all thought.
Bruno, try again only higher.
- I think I've found my
soloist.
- All right.
So whose next?
What about you, Joseph?
Or don't catholics sing hymns?
- What would an atheist like
you care what we
christians do?
- I want to hear Bruno again.
- No wonder they never tried
to stop us from digging out
of here.
- Maybe we are on top of a
bunker.
- Bunker?
I told you we can't dig deep
enough because of
the concrete.
- So we just dig shallow.
- And have them see us?
- I made it.
- Yasha?
- Yes.
- It's your birthday.
- I didn't know it was my
birthday.
Where are we going?
- Solitary.
- What do you want yasha for?
- Religious writings.
- Yasha is an idiot.
He can barely read.
- Step out of the way, big
man.
- It's always the religious
writings with you people,
isn't it?
Can't you make up a better
excuse?
- A present from the kitchen.
Just enough for you this time.
- Teacher?
- What did you do that for?
How are they taking people
away in the middle of the
night without us hearing it?
- Infer.
What do they mean?
- We need a detective.
- I think comrade Nikolai
takes them away with
black magic.
- Bruno, do you think god is
letting bad things happen to
us because we deserve it?
- I don't know, yasha.
- What do you think they are
going to do with the teacher?
- I don't know.
- Do you think they are going
to set him free?
- Of course.
They'll be setting us all
free.
In fact from now on I think
they've become suddenly nice
guards and they'll be serving
us tea and cake.
- What are you going to do
when you get out, Bruno?
- Maybe I'll take a train to
the sea to eat caviar.
- You, volvik?
- I'm going straight to my
wife's restaurant to eat her
white bread.
- I'm going to go to a fancy
restaurant and eat handfuls of
sunflower seeds.
Don't worry, Bruno.
I will invite the brothers.
- The brothers?
- The choir.
Our church.
- Shut up!
This is not a church and you
are not my brothers!
Specially you, yasha.
I'm not from your ridiculous
family or your stinking
little village.
Listen to me.
They took Jakob to kill him!
Just like they killed David,
Rudy, Joseph and all the rest.
Just like they're going to
kill us.
All of us!
But if he does come back
alive, I'm going to break his
scrawny for poisoning us with
his ideas and his singing and
his brotherhood.
And all of it.
- Marta, what can you do with
a bell?
- Please.
I need to get this to my
grandfather.
- Americans call it jazz.
I was trained soloist in the
Russian opera.
But they ruined my singing
voice.
Strive for quality.
Purity.
Why did this big prisoner
sabotage my solution?
You know, running this place
is not much better than being
a prisoner here.
In her untimely death, she no
longer has need for that.
- Fix your off key singer.
- Comrade didn't like yasha's
singing.
- What's that?
- My granddaughter sent it to
me.
She's dead.
- He tried the same thing with
Victor and Victor thought
his wife was dead until
someone set him straight.
Victor, isn't that right?
What?
A dead girl sent you a bell?
- Another letter.
What's this one say?
- It's the same thing last
year and each year before that
for 12 years now.
Dante.
- Inferno.
- Whose ever heard of anybody
burning?
- No wonder he didn't punish
us for singing.
He likes it.
But not with yasha spoiling
it.
- We don't know that.
- It seems pretty clear to me.
- Yasha is part of the choir.
- Not anymore he isn't.
- Look.
This is not a hard decision to
make.
- Yes.
It isn't because we are not
singing for the comrade.
We are not singing anymore at
all.
- You think we have a choice?
- Listen to me, I do not sing
for a mad man.
My choir sings for the
pleasure of heaven and for
that, no willing man anywhere
is unfit.
- I'm telling you we sing
without yasha.
- I'm with volvik.
- I'm with teacher.
- I say the choir votes on it.
- Teacher.
- Volvik.
- Volvik.
- Teacher.
- Volvik.
- Teacher.
- Volvik.
- Six.
- I never wanted to sing in
the first place.
- I don't think the comrades
spy should get a vote.
- What did you call me, fat
man?
- Why don't you come over to
our side and do something
about it if you can.
- Remember the doctrines?
They're like the Jakob from
the Bible.
And his twin, esau.
Brothers who became enemies.
- Stop it!
Everybody stop.
Okay.
Okay.
- So who remembers the stories
the teacher used to
tell at the school house?
- I always liked the one about
Jakob's ladder.
Jakob was wanted man on the
run.
And one night as he slept in
the fld
- with his head on a rock for
a pillow, he had a dream.
- A good dream?
- A very good dream.
- Jakob had a vision that he
was under a ladder like a
great staircase with angels
going up and down from heaven
to earth and up again.
- Good, papa.
Your name is Jakob, too.
- Maybe the ladder was Jakob's
way out.
- I'm going to ask god to help
us to build that ladder.
Amen.
- Bruno?
Can you deliver a message?
I'm ready to start my choir
again.
Oh, but with changes.
- No music?
- Something better than new
music.
A musician.
- Musician?
- Yes.
A musician.
- Who?
Teacher, I may be a great
singer but I am no musician.
- Yasha, look at me.
Tell me what I am.
- You are a teacher.
- Exactly.
So I'm going to give you an
instrument and
- and teach me to play.
So I get to sing and play.
- This is going well.
- Yasha, I need to speak with
you privately.
If you're the only one who
gets to sing and play an
instrument, the others will be
jealous.
- Why?
- Well, because all they get
to do is sing.
It will seem unfair.
Trust me, yasha, I've got it
all figured out.
- Where is this instrument?
- Oh.
You can teach me to play this?
Don't you think my voice will
over power everybody
in the middle?
- Remember the rules state the
musician is too busy in
time keeping to sing.
- But don't you think the
tenor section will suffer if I
do not sing?
- Suffering is all we've been
doing during this.
- What we need most is an
instrumentalist is someone who
shouldn't distracted by
singing.
Someone who knows just when to
ring the bell to separate
the verses.
Remember, no jealousy.
- But I like singing.
- Yasha, you don't need to
worry about the tenor section.
Just raise your arm like this.
- I'm left handed.
- I don't know if we can use a
left handed musician for
these songs.
- I'm right handed.
I can do it.
- I can learn to play with my
right hand.
- I know you can.
If you just concentrate on
playing.
So men, the bell ringer is the
pivot who faces me.
Yasha, when I point to you
ring the bell.
* Love never failing ...
* our helper he is ...
- Immortal help prevailing!
- Yasha, can I show you a
trick used by the bell
ringers in Canada?
- Canada?
- Open your mouth.
Close your mouth.
Can you breathe?
Good.
* A mighty fortress is our god
...
* a love never failing ...
* our helper he amid is it the
flood ...
* immortal help prevailing ...
* he came to save us all ...
* his craft and power are
great ...
- Line up!
- Thank you for accepting my
offer.
- Thank you for stepping into
my trap.
Sing for me.
- To restate my request, if
you win the men will sing.
If I win, you keep your
promise.
- Sit.
- Please forgive an old man
the insensitivity of
his youth.
- Today the rules are
reversed.
Instead of my challenger
suffering the consequence for
losing a peace, he suffers the
consequence for every pce
I lose.
- Ooh!
- Ooh!
- It's over.
Check mate in 5 moves.
Check.
- Speed chess.
- Start the count.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- Ow!
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- Check.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- Check.
- 5, 4, 3.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- Check.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- Check.
- 5, 4, 3, 2 - stop the count!
- Checkmate in 2 moves.
- What did he say?
- Checkmate in 2 moves.
- It is not myself I want to
go free.
I wish you to free someone
else.
I would ask you to free
- I'm not a monster.
- Rachel, I am so ashamed.
It was all my fault.
I shouldn't have asked him.
- So he's the one.
You know what I would do if my
accuser found his way in here?
I would start by making his
life a little more miserable
than usual.
Then I would arrange for a
little accident.
Maybe you would like me to
arrange an accident?
- Rachel, someone from the
prison, someone high up wanted
the teacher.
- Rudy?
- They let you go?
- They promised they would set
yasha free if I did, so I
asked your father to speak so
they would have the excuse
they needed to arrest him.
- Yasha, yasha, I just saw
your papa.
- Papa? Where?
Has he come to take me home?
- Stop.
I said stop!
- Checkmate.
- Yasha, I guess your papa
must have run out of vodka.
- That's right, yasha.
I remember whenever people
were taken from our village,
your papa always got them a
bottle of vodka.
Where did all that vodka come
from?
Yasha, everybody knows how he
got his vodka.
It was his reward for turning
in practically every man in
our village including me.
Including you.
- Teacher!
No!
- Rachel, my dead brother he
is not really dead.
- Why? Why do I need to
forgive them?
These liars.
Rotting in hell.
- It was yasha's mother's love
for her son that Nikolai
had used to take my
grandfather away.
- Back in my village there was
a man who drank too much
so he took a stick to his wife
and to his boy and it made the
boy's head stupid.
Finally the boy was sent away
on a vacation and he found a
new family.
And even though they did not
have a nice place to live and
did not have enough to eat his
new family sang songs.
And his friend taught him to
play a bell.
And he was happy.
I love you, papa.
- That little ceremony out
there, you know why he did it?
Because he's not all there.
- Shut up, Bruno.
- You are telling me to shut
up?
Well, I didn't exactly see you
participate!
And you, you're supposed to be
our leader.
I didn't see you until it was
almost over.
Tell them.
Tell them, Jakob.
Tell them it's not so easy to
forgive.
You and your music.
You're the one that's made
them all crazy like this with
your bloody son of god dying
for our sins on some rotten
slab of wood.
Come on, old man!
Tell them we'll soon be free
of this prison because the
devil himself is coming to
loose us.
And when he does, we'll crush
these Soviet!
Huh?
How do you like that?
Ahh!
- I thank you for singing in
my choir and for helping to
make my time here something I
wouldn't trade for anything.
The ladder, Bruno.
Jakob's ladder.
The way to paradise is through
the gates of mercy.
Forgive me.
- For what?
- For not setting a better
example.
If you get out before me, tell
my family I'm not
angry anymore.
- I forgive you!
Do you hear that?
We forgive you!
* A mighty fortress is our god
...
* a love never failing ...
* our helper he amid the flood
...
* immortal help prevailing ...
* against our ancient foe ...
* his strength and power are
great ...
* on earth is not his equal
...
* a mighty fortress is our god
...
* his love never failing ...
- Look, if we don't make it
out of here alive and I never
had the chance to say this,
after your chess match with
the comrade none of us could
hear the name of the man you
were setting free but I was
watching you so I could see
the name on your lips.
- Bruno.
- And I just wanted to say you
are the best teacher
I've ever had.
But I am a bad student.
So who is going to forgive me?
Papa!
- Millions who entered the
Soviet gulag died in
confinement or exile.
My grandfather was one of
them.
A survivor had told them how
Jakob had taught them chess
and how sometimes the only way
to win is to lose.
that people were like
chess pces.
My grandfather loved chess,
and he specially loved to win.
He started his last and
longest game the night they
took him away.
- Please papa, don't speak at
the funeral.
- How do you know about that?
What Emma has asked me to do
for her brother of course it's
not allowed.
She just doesn't want him
buried like an animal.
She begged me.
- Your mother told me I'll get
reported if I speak.
And if I don't do you really
want a coward for
a grandfather?
- Whatever you do, don't talk.
- What are they looking for?
- Teacher.
- Like chess pces, people can
be captured.
In Stalin's Russia you never
knew who you could trust and
how or why they would betray
you.
- But before the night was
over another man would
be dead.
- There.
That's your spot now, old man.
What are you looking for?
A bed.
Not in Bruno's hotel.
- You're not a prisoner.
- Prisoner?
Look around, old man.
Everybody on my side of the
door is either guilty of
holding back the ewe utopian
paradise or
- waiting to get their hands
around the
necks of our accusers.
- What do you think, brother
David?
Or don't you pacifists have
violent thoughts?
- Don't mind Bruno.
He's the inside man.
- Inside man?
- That's just what I call him.
Food gets delivered he
controls the distribution.
I'm David.
This is my brother.
Rudy.
- Sale. Jakob sale.
- Jakob sale?
The chess player?
So you might just get out.
- What is in your boot?
- My Bible.
I was a preacher on the
outside.
We held secret meetings in
homes and in the woods
at night.
- Then we were betrayed.
- I was arrested for praying
at a funeral.
- Praying?
You should have preached a
sermon.
- Not as long as I'm around.
- Attention!
- We have been informed that
one of you has
religious writings.
I'm going to count to 5 and if
no one steps forward you'll
all be punished.
1, 2, 3, 4
- I I have something.
- 5.
- Jakob sale, bring this back
while they're asleep.
Be faithful unto death and
you'll be given the
crown of life.
- Jakob sale, bring this back
while they're asleep.
- This is like the famine.
- My cousin's entire village
starved to death and not
because they did not have a
good harvest.
- Shut up.
We don't want to hear it.
- People were forced to trade
jewelry to buy food.
And when the children of one
family told their teacher that
their parents had secretly
baptized them, the teacher
rewarded them with bread.
But later that night they came
and stole the parents away so
that the children starved.
- Yasha, talk about something
else, like what I have to do
to get out of here.
- I think you will get out of
here when you learn how to be
nicer to me.
- Oh yeah?
When will everybody else get
out?
- When we defeat Nikolai.
- The littlest girl was found
dead but not before she had
gnawed off all her frozen
fingers.
- Yasha!
Tell a different story.
- Hey everybody, listen up.
Yasha is telling his story
again.
- Okay.
Well, one day I heard they
were recruiting workers for
the mines and my name was on
the top of the list.
- At the top of the list.
- I was the hardest working in
my village.
At least that's what the
commissar told me every time he
had a job for me.
Still mama did not like the
idea of me working
in the mines.
- Because of your
claustrophobia?
- No. Because I am afraid of
closed in spaces.
- Hey, you were telling us
about your escape.
- Well, mama tells me this is
not a good job for me and I
need to visit my relatives
right away.
So I did.
Of course she meant her
relatives in Kiev.
But I just went to my
brother's house down
the street.
- Yasha?
- It was yasha's family that
asked my grandfather to speak
at the funeral.
- He was too sick to go to
school today.
Yasha, I said you were sick.
- Probably the only kind thing
yasha's father ever did
for the boy was to keep him
home from school the day he
fired my grandfather.
Yasha's mother would do
anything for her son.
- But then I remembered the
teacher's words,
to always tell the truth.
Always tell the truth, yasha.
And that is when they brought
me here.
- And when did it dawn on you
that you were in prison?
- When I got my first taste of
blood.
- And what was it you said?
- I said this tastes as bad as
prison food.
- Yasha, tell us again when
you said when you
ate the food.
- I said this
- There were two ways out of
comrade
Nikolai's prison.
The first was to defeat him in
chess because he had promised
to free anyone who beat him.
But no one ever beat him.
- Do you think you can teach
me?
- So there was really only one
way out.
- How many pces did he lose
this time?
- Yasha? Yasha?
I thought I saw
- that's right, Karl.
The teacher is here too, now.
You remember teacher, me and
Karl how we sat
in the back row.
Bruno, if you lay a hand on
him, I'll
- you'll what?
- Yasha, get some wood.
- So in just 4 moves the red
dragon has been taken.
Comrade style.
Karl?
- We have a better teacher who
doesn't waste time
playing checkers.
Sorry, old man.
You've got less than five
minutes.
- What are you thinking?
- About yasha talking even
when he's sleeping.
- Yasha is yasha.
Karl is Karl.
Silent as ever.
- There's not much to say.
- We all need to talk
sometimes.
- What I need is not to talk
right now.
Something for my headache,
like a bullet.
- I do have one question.
Do you still believe in god?
Karl, what would a chess pce
be without the one who
guards it.
- I hate them.
He turned me in for nothing
more than believing in god.
And I hate god for allowing
it.
- Karl.
- No, teacher.
We're not in school now.
No more lectures about things
you yourself shouldn't believe
in anymore.
- Karl
- he hasn't called for you
yet, has he?
Let me tell you what happens
to you in that office, what
they do to break you.
He sits you down and asks you
to tell him that the white
paper is red.
And when you disagree, they
dig under your finger nail
until your willing to say it's
whatever color they want.
So you confess.
And after that you play chess
like you've never
played before.
- Grandpa, if you could do
anything at all right now,
what would it be?
- To play one last great game
of chess.
- After his conversation with
Karl, my grandfather started
looking for an opportunity to
play chess with
comrade Nikolai.
And he found one the very next
morning.
- What is wrong with Karl?
- You're too early for
breakfast.
- I don't want breakfast.
I want my spoon.
- This?
Oh, this belongs to Bruno.
What they call water is so
brown here.
Why do you even need a spoon?
- Why don't I just hold on it
for all the peas, potatoes and
carrots they might not strain
out of it tomorrow.
- This isn't yours.
Maybe somebody stole yours.
- Bruno.
- Just give it to me, old man,
before somebody really
gets hurt.
- Bruno, can I ask you a
question about what the spoon
looks like?
- It looks like a spoon.
- And how long have you had
it?
- He was born with it in his
mouth.
- Shut up.
- Bruno, how much ridges on
there on the handle of
the spoon?
- How many what?
- Ridges.
- What are you talking about
ridges?
- You do know what a Ridge is,
don't you?
- How am I supposed to know
that with my eyes?
- You can tell by the feel of
it.
- What does it matter how many
ridges it's got?
- Karl. Would you know the
number?
- It has 2.
2 ridges.
- Only 2?
- No.
3.
No.
1.
- It has 2.
- Isn't life difficult enough
as it is without us making it
worse for each other.
- Are you accusing me, old
man?
- No.
It's just that what we have
here seems like a simple case
of mistaken identity.
- I
- it's a simple mistake anyone
could make.
Specially someone whose eyes
aren't as good as they
used to be.
- There's a troublemaker!
Guard!
- Maybe you shouldn't have
done that, teacher.
- You're 7 years old.
Your father beat you with a
stick the first time you beat
him at chess.
Now, how do I know that?
- You have the papers?
- Papers?
- For me to sign admitting my
guilt.
- What about your integrity?
Your good family name?
- I'm ready to sign.
- You know we are going to use
this to send you
to Siberia.
- If I live that long.
- Then I will have my
secretary prepare
your confession.
Since you made my
interrogation so easy today, I
have something for you.
- Teacher, did he make you
play chess?
Why does he play chess with us
and not with you?
- Karl.
Yasha.
Nikolai.
- Nikolai.
Where had he heard that name
before?
In our house.
We had a chess board with one
missing pce.
Before I was born, my
grandfather played a chess
champion and beat him.
In his joy, he handed the red
queen to the champion's son.
But what he had given as a
gift Nikolai
- Nikolai, go!
- Had taken as an insult.
- Nikolai.
- And now the time for
vengeance had come.
- David fell asleep right over
there and now he is not
there any more.
- Where is he?
- I've got to get out of here!
- Dig over there.
- Why?
- It's where David used to
sleep.
- It's loose like somebody's
been here before me.
- N.
- Safe journeys to wherever
you've been stolen to.
- The man still believed that
comrade Nikolai would free
whoever would beat him at
chess.
So my grandfather kept
teaching him how to play.
But so far there was still
only one way out of prison.
As they took one prisoner
after another.
- That's right.
There's chaos.
- Have you ever noticed
something about the people
that were taken?
They were all learning how to
play chess.
With you.
- You're telling us that the
comrade's been stuck in the
room with people who asked the
teacher to play chess
with them?
And the first initials just
happen to spell out -
Ivan, norbert, Fritz, Ernest.
- Hey. Joseph.
Are you just going to stand
there until they take you?
Help me with my tunnel.
- I will help when you lose
enough weight not to get stuck
in it.
Do you think you're the only
one who tried to dig their way
out of here.
- Wait.
What do you mean?
What?
- Yasha!
- That is what I like about
Joseph.
They will never steal him.
He's not afraid of anybody.
Not even Bruno.
I wish I was like him.
- Talking about me?
- We were just wondering how a
big man like you could get
himself thrown into a place
like this?
- Hey, what about my tunnel?
- Joseph, all you have to do
is convince me that you're not
a killer like they say.
- A killer?
Okay.
For yasha I will tell it.
- So it wasn't long after that
I was appointed chairman of our
beloved collective.
- Because you are so big.
- You think my sole
qualification was my size?
Is that it? Well?
- So? Were you qualified?
- You know Rudy, you're not
much better than that dead
brother of yours.
- Being a good mennonite is
what got David killed.
- Because of his little Bible.
Because we catholics we don't
read the Bible like you.
That means you're better than
we are.
Is that it?
- Joseph, I would like to ask
you a question.
- Go ahead.
Ask.
- Joseph, were you qualified?
Qualified to give this little
man a good night of
thrashing, yes.
But to be in charge, to be in
charge that was bigger joke
than yasha which I don't feel
like talking about right now.
- The last time I had bread
like this it was Christmas.
- Don't you know the rules?
There's no singing.
- What can they do to me?
Throw me in prison?
- Sector 13, everybody out.
- Teacher, your coat.
Your coat please?
Just for a little white.
It's the only one big enough.
- You see what you're singing
did?
- They took the coat.
They took the coat!
Ah!
- Why did they leave the hole?
- No. No.
It was only a coat and it's
warm today.
Put it on.
- Where are the religious
writings?
You, take those off.
- I don't have anything.
- He doesn't.
- Comrade, he doesn't have
anything.
Please.
- Happy now, lutheran?
Don't you know where they are
taking him?
Why don't you stick up for
him?
Aren't you both protestants?
Ahh!
- Sing a new song unto the
lord.
- Rudy.
- So who is going to wear
these?
- Teacher?
Yasha and I have been talking
and he wants me to ask you
a question.
- He can't ask me himself?
- He could but he wants me to.
Yasha wants to know if you
would teach us some of the
songs from back home.
- The songs you're always
humming for protection so they
will not be able to steal us.
Make us a choir.
- How about tomorrow?
- How about today?
- Maybe your Jesus won't be
able to protect you.
Is that it, old man?
- Bruno talking about
religion.
Somebody's crossing a line.
- You think I don't know about
religion?
I've been to church.
- Once.
At Christmas.
- So what?
I go to hell, is that it?
- Why would an atheist need to
worry about that?
- Listen, volvik, I've got as
much religion as the next man.
Wait a minute, old man.
You're not getting off that
easy. So?
What are the believers going
to do about their choir?
- It depends on the teacher.
- The teacher is afraid.
I can smell it.
- Are you, teacher?
Are you afraid?
- To tell you the truth, I am.
Bruno, we all should be more
than before.
- So the comrades are right?
- About what?
- About religion being an
opiate for the weak and
the useless.
- Why do you have to be so
angry?
- Angry?
Because everybody can see what
is coming and anyone with half
a mind is going to leave
before the whole country
falls apart.
They've taken my church.
They've taken my school.
They've taken my choir.
It's useless.
I'm useless and I am going to
die that way, a useless
old man!
- So Ludwig, Gustav I remember
your voices from
back home.
And Eric, Adam, Otto.
But I'm going to need more
than just you.
So Joseph and volvik and you
too, Bruno.
If you want.
- See, I told you he was not
afraid.
- Can we be courageous some
other way?
- So how do we begin?
- First I try the voices.
- It was my idea.
I will go first.
I will a very loud voice so I
will sing tenor.
- Yes. I remember your voice.
- What song would you like to
hear?
- How about silent night
without words or sound?
- You don't think I know the
words?
* Oh, holy silent night ...
- That's good.
- It's freezing.
- Then everybody come
together.
- Come on.
You want to get warm, don't
you?
- Then let's go.
- Put the teacher in the
middle.
- No, please.
Can we do this without
fighting?
- Now we really are a choir.
- Yasha, if you could only
hear yourself when you sing.
- What about you, Bruno?
What if you could hear
yourself?
- Yasha, I'm a communist, what
would I sing?
- The internationale.
- You think that's the only
song I know, smart guy?
- It has to be a spiritual
song.
- You think I don't know
church music?
- So prove it and sing
something.
- Right here in front of
everybody?
- So whose afraid now, Bruno?
- Listen to me.
I'm not afraid anything.
- So why don't you sing then?
- All right.
I'll do it!
But no laughing.
- You laughed at yasha.
- Because his singing is
ridiculous.
- Just sing and get it over
with already.
There's a song my mother used
to sing.
I'm just singing the first few
words.
- That's all I need to hear
what sort of voice you have.
- How did I get picked for
this?
- I volunteer you because you
are so brave.
- Bruno, just sing the first
line.
- That's almost as good as me.
- So Bruno, you're not the
100 % comrade we all thought.
Bruno, try again only higher.
- I think I've found my
soloist.
- All right.
So whose next?
What about you, Joseph?
Or don't catholics sing hymns?
- What would an atheist like
you care what we
christians do?
- I want to hear Bruno again.
- No wonder they never tried
to stop us from digging out
of here.
- Maybe we are on top of a
bunker.
- Bunker?
I told you we can't dig deep
enough because of
the concrete.
- So we just dig shallow.
- And have them see us?
- I made it.
- Yasha?
- Yes.
- It's your birthday.
- I didn't know it was my
birthday.
Where are we going?
- Solitary.
- What do you want yasha for?
- Religious writings.
- Yasha is an idiot.
He can barely read.
- Step out of the way, big
man.
- It's always the religious
writings with you people,
isn't it?
Can't you make up a better
excuse?
- A present from the kitchen.
Just enough for you this time.
- Teacher?
- What did you do that for?
How are they taking people
away in the middle of the
night without us hearing it?
- Infer.
What do they mean?
- We need a detective.
- I think comrade Nikolai
takes them away with
black magic.
- Bruno, do you think god is
letting bad things happen to
us because we deserve it?
- I don't know, yasha.
- What do you think they are
going to do with the teacher?
- I don't know.
- Do you think they are going
to set him free?
- Of course.
They'll be setting us all
free.
In fact from now on I think
they've become suddenly nice
guards and they'll be serving
us tea and cake.
- What are you going to do
when you get out, Bruno?
- Maybe I'll take a train to
the sea to eat caviar.
- You, volvik?
- I'm going straight to my
wife's restaurant to eat her
white bread.
- I'm going to go to a fancy
restaurant and eat handfuls of
sunflower seeds.
Don't worry, Bruno.
I will invite the brothers.
- The brothers?
- The choir.
Our church.
- Shut up!
This is not a church and you
are not my brothers!
Specially you, yasha.
I'm not from your ridiculous
family or your stinking
little village.
Listen to me.
They took Jakob to kill him!
Just like they killed David,
Rudy, Joseph and all the rest.
Just like they're going to
kill us.
All of us!
But if he does come back
alive, I'm going to break his
scrawny for poisoning us with
his ideas and his singing and
his brotherhood.
And all of it.
- Marta, what can you do with
a bell?
- Please.
I need to get this to my
grandfather.
- Americans call it jazz.
I was trained soloist in the
Russian opera.
But they ruined my singing
voice.
Strive for quality.
Purity.
Why did this big prisoner
sabotage my solution?
You know, running this place
is not much better than being
a prisoner here.
In her untimely death, she no
longer has need for that.
- Fix your off key singer.
- Comrade didn't like yasha's
singing.
- What's that?
- My granddaughter sent it to
me.
She's dead.
- He tried the same thing with
Victor and Victor thought
his wife was dead until
someone set him straight.
Victor, isn't that right?
What?
A dead girl sent you a bell?
- Another letter.
What's this one say?
- It's the same thing last
year and each year before that
for 12 years now.
Dante.
- Inferno.
- Whose ever heard of anybody
burning?
- No wonder he didn't punish
us for singing.
He likes it.
But not with yasha spoiling
it.
- We don't know that.
- It seems pretty clear to me.
- Yasha is part of the choir.
- Not anymore he isn't.
- Look.
This is not a hard decision to
make.
- Yes.
It isn't because we are not
singing for the comrade.
We are not singing anymore at
all.
- You think we have a choice?
- Listen to me, I do not sing
for a mad man.
My choir sings for the
pleasure of heaven and for
that, no willing man anywhere
is unfit.
- I'm telling you we sing
without yasha.
- I'm with volvik.
- I'm with teacher.
- I say the choir votes on it.
- Teacher.
- Volvik.
- Volvik.
- Teacher.
- Volvik.
- Teacher.
- Volvik.
- Six.
- I never wanted to sing in
the first place.
- I don't think the comrades
spy should get a vote.
- What did you call me, fat
man?
- Why don't you come over to
our side and do something
about it if you can.
- Remember the doctrines?
They're like the Jakob from
the Bible.
And his twin, esau.
Brothers who became enemies.
- Stop it!
Everybody stop.
Okay.
Okay.
- So who remembers the stories
the teacher used to
tell at the school house?
- I always liked the one about
Jakob's ladder.
Jakob was wanted man on the
run.
And one night as he slept in
the fld
- with his head on a rock for
a pillow, he had a dream.
- A good dream?
- A very good dream.
- Jakob had a vision that he
was under a ladder like a
great staircase with angels
going up and down from heaven
to earth and up again.
- Good, papa.
Your name is Jakob, too.
- Maybe the ladder was Jakob's
way out.
- I'm going to ask god to help
us to build that ladder.
Amen.
- Bruno?
Can you deliver a message?
I'm ready to start my choir
again.
Oh, but with changes.
- No music?
- Something better than new
music.
A musician.
- Musician?
- Yes.
A musician.
- Who?
Teacher, I may be a great
singer but I am no musician.
- Yasha, look at me.
Tell me what I am.
- You are a teacher.
- Exactly.
So I'm going to give you an
instrument and
- and teach me to play.
So I get to sing and play.
- This is going well.
- Yasha, I need to speak with
you privately.
If you're the only one who
gets to sing and play an
instrument, the others will be
jealous.
- Why?
- Well, because all they get
to do is sing.
It will seem unfair.
Trust me, yasha, I've got it
all figured out.
- Where is this instrument?
- Oh.
You can teach me to play this?
Don't you think my voice will
over power everybody
in the middle?
- Remember the rules state the
musician is too busy in
time keeping to sing.
- But don't you think the
tenor section will suffer if I
do not sing?
- Suffering is all we've been
doing during this.
- What we need most is an
instrumentalist is someone who
shouldn't distracted by
singing.
Someone who knows just when to
ring the bell to separate
the verses.
Remember, no jealousy.
- But I like singing.
- Yasha, you don't need to
worry about the tenor section.
Just raise your arm like this.
- I'm left handed.
- I don't know if we can use a
left handed musician for
these songs.
- I'm right handed.
I can do it.
- I can learn to play with my
right hand.
- I know you can.
If you just concentrate on
playing.
So men, the bell ringer is the
pivot who faces me.
Yasha, when I point to you
ring the bell.
* Love never failing ...
* our helper he is ...
- Immortal help prevailing!
- Yasha, can I show you a
trick used by the bell
ringers in Canada?
- Canada?
- Open your mouth.
Close your mouth.
Can you breathe?
Good.
* A mighty fortress is our god
...
* a love never failing ...
* our helper he amid is it the
flood ...
* immortal help prevailing ...
* he came to save us all ...
* his craft and power are
great ...
- Line up!
- Thank you for accepting my
offer.
- Thank you for stepping into
my trap.
Sing for me.
- To restate my request, if
you win the men will sing.
If I win, you keep your
promise.
- Sit.
- Please forgive an old man
the insensitivity of
his youth.
- Today the rules are
reversed.
Instead of my challenger
suffering the consequence for
losing a peace, he suffers the
consequence for every pce
I lose.
- Ooh!
- Ooh!
- It's over.
Check mate in 5 moves.
Check.
- Speed chess.
- Start the count.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- Ow!
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- Check.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- Check.
- 5, 4, 3.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- Check.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- Check.
- 5, 4, 3, 2 - stop the count!
- Checkmate in 2 moves.
- What did he say?
- Checkmate in 2 moves.
- It is not myself I want to
go free.
I wish you to free someone
else.
I would ask you to free
- I'm not a monster.
- Rachel, I am so ashamed.
It was all my fault.
I shouldn't have asked him.
- So he's the one.
You know what I would do if my
accuser found his way in here?
I would start by making his
life a little more miserable
than usual.
Then I would arrange for a
little accident.
Maybe you would like me to
arrange an accident?
- Rachel, someone from the
prison, someone high up wanted
the teacher.
- Rudy?
- They let you go?
- They promised they would set
yasha free if I did, so I
asked your father to speak so
they would have the excuse
they needed to arrest him.
- Yasha, yasha, I just saw
your papa.
- Papa? Where?
Has he come to take me home?
- Stop.
I said stop!
- Checkmate.
- Yasha, I guess your papa
must have run out of vodka.
- That's right, yasha.
I remember whenever people
were taken from our village,
your papa always got them a
bottle of vodka.
Where did all that vodka come
from?
Yasha, everybody knows how he
got his vodka.
It was his reward for turning
in practically every man in
our village including me.
Including you.
- Teacher!
No!
- Rachel, my dead brother he
is not really dead.
- Why? Why do I need to
forgive them?
These liars.
Rotting in hell.
- It was yasha's mother's love
for her son that Nikolai
had used to take my
grandfather away.
- Back in my village there was
a man who drank too much
so he took a stick to his wife
and to his boy and it made the
boy's head stupid.
Finally the boy was sent away
on a vacation and he found a
new family.
And even though they did not
have a nice place to live and
did not have enough to eat his
new family sang songs.
And his friend taught him to
play a bell.
And he was happy.
I love you, papa.
- That little ceremony out
there, you know why he did it?
Because he's not all there.
- Shut up, Bruno.
- You are telling me to shut
up?
Well, I didn't exactly see you
participate!
And you, you're supposed to be
our leader.
I didn't see you until it was
almost over.
Tell them.
Tell them, Jakob.
Tell them it's not so easy to
forgive.
You and your music.
You're the one that's made
them all crazy like this with
your bloody son of god dying
for our sins on some rotten
slab of wood.
Come on, old man!
Tell them we'll soon be free
of this prison because the
devil himself is coming to
loose us.
And when he does, we'll crush
these Soviet!
Huh?
How do you like that?
Ahh!
- I thank you for singing in
my choir and for helping to
make my time here something I
wouldn't trade for anything.
The ladder, Bruno.
Jakob's ladder.
The way to paradise is through
the gates of mercy.
Forgive me.
- For what?
- For not setting a better
example.
If you get out before me, tell
my family I'm not
angry anymore.
- I forgive you!
Do you hear that?
We forgive you!
* A mighty fortress is our god
...
* a love never failing ...
* our helper he amid the flood
...
* immortal help prevailing ...
* against our ancient foe ...
* his strength and power are
great ...
* on earth is not his equal
...
* a mighty fortress is our god
...
* his love never failing ...
- Look, if we don't make it
out of here alive and I never
had the chance to say this,
after your chess match with
the comrade none of us could
hear the name of the man you
were setting free but I was
watching you so I could see
the name on your lips.
- Bruno.
- And I just wanted to say you
are the best teacher
I've ever had.
But I am a bad student.
So who is going to forgive me?
Papa!
- Millions who entered the
Soviet gulag died in
confinement or exile.
My grandfather was one of
them.
A survivor had told them how
Jakob had taught them chess
and how sometimes the only way
to win is to lose.