"I tell you: there was never a trip like this! The motives are terribly sad, but we are going to have a lot of fun. This is another dimension of history."

 

With these words, two unconventional 70-year-olds, Arnost Lustig and Jan Wiener, set out to revisit the Europe of their childhoods. But the two friends are only partially right: the trip will take them on an original and unorthodox exploration of WWII and the communist era, revealing moments of joie de vivre, fighting spirit, romance, and humor. It is, however, not nearly as pleasant a journey as they had expected.

 

We first meet Jan Wiener in Lenox, Massachusetts, where the 77-year-old is pummeling a punching bag in his garage. "Boxing taught me to take a blow and get up" he growls, between punches. "It's very similar to life-you have to keep to rules that are strict."

 

On a spring day, Jan meets his friend Arnost in Washington DC to plan the upcoming trip over a large map of Europe. It is our first opportunity to observe the pair in action. Their banter is peppered with affectionate teasing. Jan is the straight man, Arnost the card. Jan tries to talk about history, Arnost wants tales of romantic adventure. It is a report which foreshadows some of the troubles to come. When Arnost gives Jan a hearty backslap and exclaims "I cannot wait to go with this man," Jan deadpans, "I can wait."

 

Fighter then follows Jan and Arnost as they journey to the old country. Jan revisits the office of the Czech collaborator who granted him an exit visa but told him not to expect to live long enough to wear out more than one pair of shoes. From that moment on, Jan was determined to survive and return to Prague to get revenge on this man for humiliating him. As a decorated war hero, he returned to the same office, found the collaborator, put a gun to his head, and reminded him of his treatment of Jews six years earlier.

 

While asking Jan about this episode, Arnost alludes to the communist regime, and quite unexpectedly, Jan confronts Arnost: "How can you say that when you were part of the same goddam murderous organization?" Until this point, Arnost was only an interlocutor helping shed light on Jan's life, now suddenly and rather unwillingly, his own life is exposed to critique and analysis.

 

In the coming days, Jan and Arnost's conflict flares up repeatedly: in the police station where Jan was accused of being a British spy for his RAF service during the war, and in the decrepit and abandoned communist labor camp where he was sent for five years of hard labor.

 

The two men find common ground in Terezin, the ghetto and adjoining concentration camp where Arnost spent his formative years, and where Jan's mother was murdered by the Nazis. Fighter includes excerpts from The Führer Gives A City To The Jews, a propaganda film used by Hitler to fool the Swiss Red Cross into ignoring rumors of Nazi atrocities.

 

Next, the two friends hit the road south, retracing the steps of Jan's escape. Their first stop is Slovenia, where Jan returns for the first time to the house where his father committed suicide in 1941. Next, they travel to Trieste, where Jan stowed under a locomotive and spent 18 hours under the toilet hole, clutching an excrement-slicked steel plate just over the train's wheels. Here, also, Arnost speaks about his own father's fate. Czech novels and films are famous for their seamless transition between tragedy and humor. We get a taste of this when Arnost tells us how his jocular father used to howl with laughter listening to Hitler's speeches on the radio. "The sad end of this story," says Arnost with a complex smile, "is that Hitler was definitely laughing longer than my father. Because I don't think that he laughed very much in the gas chambers."

 

As the two progress along Jan's escape route, the rift between them begins to reopen. Arnost seeks to reinterpret Jan's stories, and Jan bristles at what he considers a revisionist approach to his most sacred memories. By the time they arrive in Cosenza, Italy, Jan is gripping so tightly to his past that the present can only disappoint him. The world that he remembers from his youth is gone. One after another the people whom he visits tell him that they don't remember him. The husband of a former girlfriend humiliates him. The POW camp from which Jan escaped is overrun with weeds. Dejected, Jan lashes out at Arnost.

 

The film reaches its dramatic peak in a climactic fight during which the two men vow never to speak with one another again. Here is the torrent of anger which Jan says kept him alive through the war, now turned on his friend and the documentary crew. As Jan pulls off his microphone, it is clear that the filming is over. But this is not enough to diminish Arnost's admiration for Jan, and as the two pack their bags and return to the United States, Arnost delivers an emotional monologue on Jan, heroism, their friendship, and the sacrifice one makes by becoming a fighter. We leave Jan Wienerback in his yard in Lenox, only now, rather than boxing, his wife soothingly tries to teach him Tai Chi.