Butler's Cinema Scene

Sonia Warshawski

“BIG SONIA” My rating: B+

93 minutes | No MPAA rating

At first glance there’s nothing particularly big about Sonia Warshawski.

If anything, Sonia is tiny…though she does make an impression way out of proportion to her diminutive size.  Maybe it has something to do with her penchant for animal print fabrics and bright red lipstick.

In any case, one need watch the new documentary “Big Sonia” for only a few minutes to realize we’re dealing here with a major-league personality. In part it’s because of how the Polish-born Sonia handles the English language (she describes a situation as “bog-mindling”); a big chunk of it is her energy, remarkable for a woman who in her 90s int still running the tailor shop founded by her late husband decades earlier.

But mostly it’s her back story, that of a Holocaust survivor who carved out a new life in Kansas City, raising a family, starting a business and, with the fullness of time, becomes a  conduit to the past by giving public talks about the horrors of her youth.

“Big Sonia” — made by her granddaughter Leah Warshawski and co-director Todd Soliday — covers a lot of territory.

It examines how Sonia’s tailor shop — the last surviving store in the now-razed Metcalf South Mall — became a dash of European chic amid all our Midwestern drabness. One longtime customer describes it as “a neighborhood bar &  grill without the booze.” It becomes clear that many of Sonia’s customers are as interested in hanging out with her as they are in having their hems adjusted.

It’s about growing old with fierceness, about getting up six days a week and going to work long past the time when your peers have hung up their spurs.

And it’s about bringing to a new generation stories of the past, stories of horror and triumph — here brought to life through simple but hugely effective animation — that prove deeply moving not just to the high school kids who are Sonia’s primary audience but also the hard-case killers she visits at the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing.

One longtime inmate can only shake his head in amazement at Sonia’s life and fortitude. He vows never to feel sorry for himself again; after all, he didn’t have to watch his mother marched off to a Nazi gas chamber.

More than a few people claim that their encounters with Sonia have changed their lives.

And “Big Sonia” goes someplace new by looking at its subject’s three children to examine how the Holocaust experience has trickled down the generations.

The Warshawski offspring share memories of their father, John,  a holocaust survivor who often told stories (he found them hilarious) of stealing food out from under the noses of the concentration camp guards.

And they make it clear that all is not rainbows and unicorns with their mother, who despite an outward display of normalcy carries deep wounds from her youthful experiences.

One of her daughters, Regina Kort, tells of spending much of her life struggling with the weight of her family’s tragic history. But with the knowledge that her mother can’t last forever, she has decided to carry on the work of sharing the Warshawski story with the rest of the world.

“Big Sonia” is a quiet films that often builds to transcendent emotional moments.  It is an impressive testament to love and loss.

| Robert W. Butler