A documentary about the fabled New York Ukrainian restaurant becomes a portrait of wartime valor.
‘Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World’ Review: Come for the Pierogis and Goulash, Stay for the Freedom
As Veselka devotees will tell you, the welcoming aura of the place — the lack of pretense, the gorgeous murals and knickknacks, the extraordinary friendliness of the staff, many of whom are Ukrainian — melts right into the savoriness of the cuisine. Veselka is a place of love where the food is made from love; you can’t separate the two. For years, the restaurant stayed open 24 hours a day, mostly to cater to the world of East Village night crawlers .
Yet as moving as parts of the documentary are, I’ll be honest and say that I couldn’t escape the feeling that Michael Fiore, who wrote, produced, directed, and edited it, should have cut back on some of this stuff and done a more complete job of telling the inside story of the restaurant itself. Veselka is a place that would anchor a great segment of “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.
Around the time “Veselka” takes a detour to Coney Island to follow the fortunes of the visiting Ukrainian baseball team, the consciousness of the war more or less takes over the movie. Given the scale of the tragedy, it’s not like this is inappropriate. Yet the film’s attitude seems to be: Come for the pierogis and goulash, stay for the humanitarian valor. Fair enough, but I wish the movie had drawn a deeper connection between the taste of freedom and the taste of Veselka.
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