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‘Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World’ Review: Come for the Pierogis and Goulash, Stay for the Freedom
A documentary about the fabled New York Ukrainian restaurant becomes a portrait of wartime valor.
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. 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. We also meet the devoted Ukrainian workers who keep the place going, like the taciturn chef Dima or the charismatically austere operations manager Vitalli Desiatnychenko, who is haunted by the war he has lost so many friends in.
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