Two (very different) movies about WWII

Sunday, October 11, 2008 --

Inglourious Basterds

Dir: Quentin Tarantino

You never would guess it judging from the previews, but it turns out that the Inglourious Basterds are bit players in their own movie! I wonder if the opening weekend crowd who made it the #1 movie in America left disappointed when that fact dawned on them. I know I did, after expecting another extreme, skull-bashing good time from the enfant terrible of American cinema. Alas, the pace of this movie is more "Jackie Brown" than "Pulp Fiction." In other words...it drags.

In breaking-up the film into five chapters, Tarantino (QT) highlights the fact that he is trying to cram two movies into one: the first involves a 'Dirty Dozen'-like crew of Jewish soldiers out to wreak havoc behind German lines (if you've seen the previews, you have seen all of the good scenes). The second is the story of a young, Jewish refugee hiding out in Paris and planning her revenge against a brutal Nazi commandant who killed her family (a deliciously evil Christoph Walz). The film is chock-full of cinematic references only a true cinephile would love (down to a cameo by the great silent film star Emil Jannings, multiple Leni Riefenstahl references, and a brief disquisition on the UFA film studio under the Nazi regime!) But really, did the opening weekend crowd appreciate them??

The film is populated with excellent character actors--the best scene in the film involves Diane Kruger as a double agent, Michael Fassbender as a British spy, and August Diehl as a skeptical Nazi, sitting together in a French restaurant, each trying to con the other. Each actor takes full advantage of the generous screen time they are given. The build-up is amazing, but like every other prolonged scene in this movie, the payoff is unsatisfying.

The film descends into a ridiculous Jewish revenge fantasy, that I will only reveal is not historically accurate. I hate movies that aren't historically accurate (see my review of "The Miracle of St. Anna"). But the filmmaking is first-rate, so I am willing to give QT a pass, even though I can't recommend his latest.

Anonyma - Eine Frau in Berlin

(A Woman in Berlin--US title)

Whereas the previous film was fantasy, this film is unrelenting in its realism. The true story of one woman's survival in Berlin, after the Russians invade the city, is brutally honest in its depiction of life under occupation. It is commendable both in its verisimilitude -- the Russian soldiers speak and act like Russians (not like actors asked to imitate Russians) -- and in its unblinking confrontation with a past that has been ignored and denied for a generation (the woman who published her diary in 1959 was met with such scorn she withheld her name and any further publication until after her death).


At the center of this film is a scorching performance from Nina Hoss as the title character, 'Anonyma.' Her beautiful face is etched with every degradation she is forced to endure, and hardens every time she walks past the leering, jeering soldiers, whose catcalls she alone comprehends (being one of the few Russian speakers in Berlin). It is in those rare times that her ever-present frown breaks into a smile that you realize how the daily misery of survival has worn her down.


What is striking in this German film is that it doesn't claim any moral high ground: yes, the atrocities against the civilian population of Berlin were horrific--but the soldiers who perpetrated them had just come from a horrific experience themselves (a fraction of the atrocities the Nazis committed in Russia are described, but not depicted).


As with another recent film that was criticized (unfairly) for being sympathetic to, or "too soft" on the Germans ("The Reader"), this film is not an attempt at rehabilitation or sympathy for those Germans who lived and prospered under the fascist regime of Adolph Hitler. It is simply a depiction of those lives caught in the vortex of the worst criminal in human history. It is brutal and nuanced and very true.