The Fixer (1968)

IMDb plot summary: In Czarist Russia, around 1911, a Russian-Jewish handyman, Yakov Bok, is wrongly imprisoned for a most unlikely crime.
Directed by John Frankenheimer. Starring Alan Bates, Dirk Bogarde, Georgia Brown, and Hugh Griffith.

There's a lot to enjoy aesthetically about this movie. There are some really lovely shots and some especially effective uses of lighting. I found myself always interested by the images I wa watching, if seldom by the words I was hearing. I feel like I simultaneously get too much and too little context for this story. There are plenty of moralizing speeches about anti-Semitism, so it makes it very clear what this movie is "about," but at the same time I can't quite figure out how the story fits into its specific place and time, how the history is being told, why this particular time and place and situation is the story being used to convey the message. I think it's a very well-made movie but I struggle to grasp it fully.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Fixer > Call Me by Your Name
The Fixer < It (2017)
The Fixer < Rabbit Hole
The Fixer > Molly's Game
The Fixer > The Majestic
The Fixer > The Lair of the White Worm
The Fixer < The Thing
The Fixer < Who Framed Roger Rabbit
The Fixer < Good Time
The Fixer > 1408
The Fixer < Hamlet (1990)
Final spot: #1157 out of 2972.