Christian
German composer Max Richter who also scored Waltz with Bashir (2008) and Shutter Island (2010) scores a beautiful and haunting musical landscape that matches the contemplative directing from Australian writer/director Cate Shortland. It never failed to captivate me at every scene and with every note. Similarly the sound is amazing in every detail and add layers to the sometimes sparse dialog.Saskia Rosendahl is stellar as breakthrough difficult and subtle role to portray. The directing is very good and allows glimpses of human feelings, frailty, fear and frugality in the midst of madness.A slow, steady and apt examination of difficult situations, death and horror, seen by an unprepared, misinformed youth. Aren't we all also unprepared and misinformed in many ways?
Kirpianuscus
a war story. different by form. but not surprising. because it is a wise, touching, admirable, strange exercise for define the essence of war. three children across a Germany in fall. a travel to comfort. as a parable because the desert, the fear, the refuges, the danger and the friendship, the love and the family becomes windows to a new reality. dramatic and convincing. a film who presents the war in a special perspective and that fact does it realistic. the oasis of poetry, the splendid performance of Saskia Rosendahl, the dark beginning and the final scene, the need to understand an universe who seems be chaotic, the transformation of the rules of an age and the joy of few delicate scenes. a film about war. from an useful perspective.
jauneoiseau
For me this was a moving story which was well told however it didn't condescend to the audience and assumed that we had a basic understanding of WW2 and its implications including some kind of empathy with the characters and how confusing and traumatic it would have been to go through what they did at that time.I appreciated the ambivalent feelings Lore had towards Thomas and really relished in those moments where their eyes met and there was such a mix of tension, resistance and desire. I really wanted there to be something between them and I believe Lore did too in the end but it was all too late. I think Thomas maybe blamed himself a bit for the death of Gunter. I don't know why he walked away from them but then I don't know if the Grandmother would have had him in her home in the end as she seemed like a bit of a hard bitch.Beautiful camera work and the soundtrack was perfect.
Harry J. Kokhran
A family of five children, left alone from their parents, is forced to travel through Germany searching for their grandma and some peace.It ain't easy to make a movie so weak about the WWII aftermath, but Lore try his best. Children, death and despair all together should suggest some tears but not in this case. The young characters are confused and confusing, the cinematography serve the only purpose to bask itself in close up and flares and everything, despite the argument, is beautiful and equal, just like a commercial.The director had a good story to tell - from an unoriginal point of view I must say - but she ends portraying only the doubts of a Nazi teenager
AD
