A Holocaust survivor kept his story under wraps for decades—until he decides to share it with a troubled young woman. The Optimist gives viewers an inspiring reminder that sometimes the pain we suffer can help others deal with their own pain. But the movie depicts suicide and some of the atrocities committed at Auschwitz during World War II, and we hear a few profanities too.
Secrets are the suitcase bombs of our lives. We carry them with us, ever-mindful as they tick and whirl unseen. Our goal in holding these secrets? To be buried with them, it seems. But they have no timer, no red button to push. We fear that they’ll explode without warning, without reason, destroying the lives around us. Destroying ourselves.
Herbert Heller has carried a secret most of his life, a secret he’s done his best to erase. He destroyed whatever might remind him—even the telltale tattoo on his arm, now marked only by an acid-etched scar. His own children don’t know what Herbert hides, locked away.
But when his doctor gives him sobering news, Herbert realizes that he doesn’t want to carry his secret to Sheol. The past is painful, yes. But people deserve to know. Perhaps they need to know.
However, sharing a secret so long held is difficult—more difficult, perhaps, than Herbert expected. Who can he trust? With whom can he unpack his past? The floors covered with human hair, the smokestacks belching ash? Who could understand the horrors he saw, heard, felt in Auchswitz-Birkenau?
Perhaps Abby would. Abby, the quiet, troubled teen. Abby, who has secrets of her own.
[Note: The following sections contain spoilers.]
The Optimist is based on the recollections of the real Herbert Heller. But the framework of the film is fictionalized, and in this story, Abby works as an in-patient intern for Ruth, a counselor and therapist who also serves as something of a historian/documentarian.
Ruth has recorded the stories of Holocaust survivors before, and she agrees to pick up the camera again for Herbert. But when she sees that Herbert seems to have a special connection to Abby, Ruth wisely gives the two space—leaving the room with the camera running.
What is that connection? Pain. What Abby’s pain is connected to, Herbert doesn’t know, but he senses the girl could use a confidante. He remembers when she came to the hospital, watching her gurney rush past, surrounded by doctors and nurses. He notices the bandage on her throat. “Maybe if you could tell me about your scar, I could tell you about mine,” he says.
Herbert knows he needs to tell his own secrets before he carries them to his grave, and that in itself is a good thing. But he wants to tell Abby specifically in the hope of helping her. And slowly, Herbert becomes something like a friend, a mentor, perhaps even a father (or grandfather) to Abby. And Herbert may, quite literally, save Abby’s life in a moment of crisis.
As Herbert recalls his own story, he recounts moments when he was helped by those around him. His father’s optimism—though misguided—proved to be a source of hope and strength for young Herbert as they dealt with the terrors of Nazi concentration camps. Herbert meets the composer Viktor Ullmann, who continued to compose and play music while in another Nazi camp—Terezin—encouraging his fellow captives. (The real Viktor Ullmann composed more than 20 works there before he was sent to Auschwitz.)
A fellow prisoner essentially sacrifices his life in order to give Herbert a chance to pick up a mysterious package—a package that ultimately saves Herbert’s life. A kindly neighbor saves young Herbert from antisemitic bullies before Herbert is sent away—then commits an even greater act of kindness and courage after Herbert makes his way home.
Herbert and his family are Jewish. The movie doesn’t indicate how observant they are, but the level of religiosity doesn’t matter to the Nazis. As Herbert’s recollections begin, they force all the Jewish citizens of Prague (where the Hellers live) to stitch stars of David on their clothes, making them easily identifiable. But Herbert’s mother stitches the stars on with pride, drawing Herbert’s attention to the triple stitch she makes at the top of the star. When Herbert sees that stitch, she says, “You’ll know it’s from a mother who loves you.”
As time goes on, both the Germans and many non-Jewish Czechoslovakians grow increasingly antisemitic: A group of children with whom Herbert played soccer suddenly turns on him. “We don’t play with Jews,” one says. Jewish businesses get vandalized.
In the concentration camp, a guard tells young Herbert that he’s a good worker “for a Jewish boy.” Herbert answers with a forced smile, “Yes sir. For a Jewish boy.”
Abby attends a Christian funeral. We hear half-joking references to magic.
Abby doesn’t have a lot of friends. The two we meet in The Optimist are Herbert and, before, an eclectic free spirit named Sabrina. “I’ve always felt different from other people,” Abby tells Herbert as she talks about Sabrina. “Then I met someone who just got me.”
The two women become extraordinarily close, and a viewer might infer that Sabrina and Abby may be romantically inclined (an inference perhaps strengthened by Abby’s masculine fashion sense). But the movie leaves it up to the viewer; it only explicitly tells us that the two are, simply, very good friends.
Abby’s parents are separated or divorced. While going through one of her father’s drawers, Abby comes across a number of pictures showing her dad in bed with a variety of women—and in one of those pictures, Abby sees Sabrina. (Nothing critical is seen in any of the photos; even Abby’s father wears T-shirts in them. But they’re clearly meant to be a visual record of the women Abby’s dad has slept with.) Sabrina—who, if she’s the same age as Abby, would likely be underage—admits to Abby that she worked for a while at an “elite escort agency,” and Abby’s father apparently hired her. (We can infer that most of the other women depicted in his pictures were prostitutes, as well.)
While definitely not meant to be titillating, we see men interred at Auschwitz holding their hands in front of their genitals, along with a few bare backsides.
Suicide is a major theme in The Optimist. In flashback, a young Herbert watches a Jewish family—preferring immediate death to the concentration camps—jump from a rooftop and land in front of Herbert and others. (We don’t see the impact, but blood spatters across young Herbert’s face.) In Auschwitz, a man flings himself onto an electrified fence, killing himself. (In this case, we do see the man’s death.) Herbert tells Abby that suicide seemed to be a viable choice for many—“one moment of shock, and then an end to all suffering”—and he later admits that there were times when he considered taking that route, too.
Two characters make a suicide pact: One survives, the other does not. Someone takes a handful of pills to a secluded spot, but she’s stopped before she can ingest them. Abby’s apparently being supervised by Ruth after a drug overdose. We see her rushed into the hospital after that overdose, and she wears a bandage over her throat for much of the rest of the film—the result, it would seem, of an emergency tracheal intubation.
We see and hear about the atrocities committed in Auschwitz. In Herbert’s flashbacks, we see when he was first interred in Auschwitz. The Nazis force everyone to stand in lines, naked, so they can better decide whether to send them to work or directly to the gas chambers. Dead bodies are hauled around in wheelbarrows. The floor of a warehouse contains piles of human hair (some still in braids), and we hear that the Nazis make “snot rags” out of them.
We’re told that the very young and the very old are killed immediately at Auschwitz: Someone advises Herbert, “If you’re 13, tell them you’re 16. If you’re 40, tell them you’re 30. If you’re tired, tell them you’re strong.” One man, who unsuccessfully tries to stifle a cough, is immediately taken away to be killed. “I can do the work!” he shouts as he’s hauled away. Smokestacks spit out smoke and ash constantly in the background—a grim testimony to the camp’s ultimate purpose.
Herbert later talks about how lucky he was in the job he was given in Auschwitz—one that allowed him free access to water. Drinking a lot of water, he explains to Abby, would help with the pains of starvation.
In a short scene, we see several sets of twins, some wearing bandages, outside a shed in Auschwitz. Herbert explains that Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi “doctor” at Auschwitz, was obsessed with twins: The movie doesn’t go into detail into Mengele’s experiments, but we do hear some screams in the background.
Even before the concentration camps, Jewish citizens get beaten and dragged away. In flashback, young Herbert gets attacked by a group of boys, and they bloody his nose before he can escape. He runs into a neighbor’s apartment, and she tells the boys that she’ll take a clawed gardening tool and slam it between the lead bully’s legs if he ever attacks Herbert again.
In the present, Herbert tells people that his forearm was burned by a hot water heater. He later confesses that he burned off the Auschwitz tattoo there with a chemical used to clean bathroom enamel.
A mother slaps, then hugs, her child. Several people are dragged away by Nazi soldiers. In Auschwitz, a man gets treated for a broken arm—one that’s also covered in bruises. Herbert loses family members in Auschwitz.
About five s-words are heard.
Two characters drink and swallow pills to grave excess (one passes away and the other gets hospitalized). When Herbert first meets Abby, she’s in an inpatient rehabilitation center run by Ruth: Later, Abby’s permitted to go home in the evenings, but she’s still required to spend daylight hours in the facility.
In Nazi-occupied Prague, a Jewish man quips that the Jewish population ignores the issues growing around them: “They just keep drinking more champagne,” he says, as he and many others drink champagne.
We hear about survivor’s guilt. A woman vomits. A character steals pills.
During the war, Herbert escapes from Auschwitz—stealing a bike, hiding the truth from authorities and making his way through a sewer en route to freedom. All are completely understandable actions, under the circumstances, but still warrant a mention.
Herbert notes that his always-optimistic father lied to him regularly, telling him, even in Auschwitz, that everything was going to be OK. “That lie kept me alive,” he tells Abby later. “But I think it also kept me stuck.”
The Optimist is based on a true story, and as the credits roll, we see the real Herbert Heller talking with a young fan—crying as she thanks him for sharing his story at a school assembly she attended.
“You were the most important thing to happen to me in high school,” she says. I’d imagine that many others who heard Heller’s story might say the same. In the movie, Herbert’s story certainly changed Abby’s life (though her story is fictionalized), pushing her from the self-destructive path she was on toward a better, brighter future.
One could assume that Herbert’s father—always eager to look on the bright side, even as that side became darker and more difficult to believe in—was the optimist of the movie’s title. But perhaps it’s Herbert himself. He comes not offering platitudes or feel-good assurances but a hard-won understanding and acceptance that even the darkest moments can be redeemed. He’s grown to appreciate sharing the “real truth, not just some acceptable truth.” Herbert offers no promises of happily ever after; he knows too many who never found their happy endings. But he does believe that, with work and hope and help, even the darkest time will grow brighter. Even despair can yield to something better.
Herbert’s reluctance to share his story is understandable. But when he begins to offer it to others, it stops being “just” a tale of loss and pain and unimaginable horror. It becomes a statement of resilience and strength.
And while this isn’t a Christian film, it reminds me of two elements that can be found in the bedrock of our beliefs: One, that truth, even hard truth, is preferable to the lies the world tells. And two, that truth—if we embrace it and share it—can help people around us. Our suffering can help others find their strength. Our experiences, even hard experiences, can be used for good.
But what we see here are still hard experiences.
While The Optimist is never gratuitous or grotesque, the fact that it walks us through the gates of Auschwitz—and we see all its horrors through the eyes of a teen—makes this story profoundly, disturbingly affecting.
And we should note, too, that the movie’s depictions of suicide—as well-intentioned as they might be—can be deeply troubling and, indeed, problematic. Mental health experts often warn those struggling with depression and suicidal ideation to stay away from such depictions.
All of those issues make The Optimist one to approach with caution. But should you decide to watch, you may find yourself echoing those touched by Herbert’s story—perhaps, forever changed.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
