Before I saw Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh, which is currently playing at film festivals and will be released theatrically in the spring, I had never heard of Hannah Senesh, her personal diary, or her treacherous parachuting mission into Nazi-occupied Europe. Halfway through this biopic, which tells the story of her extraordinary life, I knew I needed to know more about this amazing young woman.

Director Roberta Grossman’s narrative of Hannah’s life is told from the point of view of Hannah’s mother Catherine (narrated by actress Joan Allen). Hannah’s early life is captivating, especially because Grossman was able to gain unprecedented access to the Senesh family archives. The film reconstructs Hannah’s early life – her bourgeois childhood in Budapest, the rise of anti-Semitism in Hungry, her conversion to Zionism and eventual move to Palestine – through archival video footage, family photos, and dramatic reenactments. Dialogue comes courtesy of excerpts from Hannah’s diary, her mother’s recollections, and interviews with historians, friends, and relatives.

Hannah’s early life is easily chronicled in letters, photographs, and home videos. But after her 1944 parachuting mission into Yugoslavia, and capture at the hands of the Nazis, archival materials become sparse. At the story’s climax, Blessed Is the Match takes a cinematic turn: the film becomes a complete reenactment with actors playing Hannah and Catherine. Allen’s narration continues to be interwoven with excepts read aloud from Hannah’s diary, but the actors do not speak as they live out the final months of Hannah’s life. During a post-screening question and answer session, Grossman explained that though this was “not the most popular decision” the reenactment was necessary.

The pivotal sequence of events that Grossman wanted to document – the heart-breaking mother-daughter story – unfolds while Hannah and Catherine are incarcerated in the same Hungarian prison. (Hannah is accused of being a spy and committing treason against Hungary, and her mother is arrested as a means of coercing Hannah into revealing her secret mission to the Nazis.) It would seem that the most captivating way to tell such a dramatic story would be through a full re-creation; a historian’s dry recount of the cruel twists of fate that characterized the end of Hannah’s life doesn’t have the same effect as watching these unbelievable events acted out on screen. Still, the final cut is part traditional documentary and part reenactment – it feels as if two very different films were edited into one 86 minute piece.

Blessed Is the Match is not a perfect film, but it is a great educational experience that inspires a desire to learn more about Hannah and her romantic idealism. The film’s cinematic shortcomings do not detract from the very powerful subject matter. Hannah’s short life (she died at 23) is a testimonial to determination and self-sacrifice. In her diary she writes that the two most important things in her life were her people and her mother. She lived and died fighting for both.

Since her body was laid to rest in the Israel in 1950, Hannah has become an icon of self-sacrifice and the power of resistance – even though her resistance was ultimately unsuccessful. Post-screening, Grossman explained she began idolizing Hannah after reading her diary in junior high school. Thirty years later that love became a documentary film. To the filmmaker’s credit, Blessed Is the Match is not a fan letter; rather, the film manages to document and portray the complexities of a once-ordinary person thrust into extraordinary circumstances. As Grossman said, “The most profound love is nuanced.”

Part of that nuance is the guilt Hannah felt for her mother’s incarceration – even though it meant the two women could be together. And, unbeknownst to Hannah, the incarceration in Budapest meant that her mother was not sent to a concentration camp. Much like Anne Frank’s famous diary, Hannah’s writings – particularly her second-to-last poem “Blessed Is the Match,” from which the film takes it title – are moving pieces of literature that capture the complexities of a young woman trapped in one the greatest tragedies of modern history.

Hannah’s life, and in essence the film’s message, can be best described by renowned German writer and critic, Walter Benjamin, who himself died fleeing from the Nazis. "We ask of those who will come after us not gratitude for our victories, but the remembrance of our defeats. This is a consolation – the only consolation afforded to those who no longer have any hope of being consoled."

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About the Author Jessica Mosby is a writer and critic living in Oakland, California. In the rare moments when she's not traveling across the United States for work, Jessica enjoys listening to public radio, buying organic food at local farmers markets, trolling junk stores, and collecting owl-themed tchotchke.