Dresden

It was hard watching the film because it contained so much pain and fear that you could actually "feel" it. The filmmakers did a really good job by showing the "reality" of the war because "Dresden" is damn realistic. Maybe sometimes a bit too much and you often ask yourself if it was definitely necessary to show all these cruel details.

But the film also does not just consist of the usual love story between two people who are actually not allowed to love each other but rather tries to show through that love both sides of the attack - the German and the British side. And that fact makes the film kinda special because it really works.

When you are going to watch a movie called "Dresden", it's logical to think that historical bombing of Dresden must be the main argument in it. Unfortunately in this movie the bombing is almost residual in its plot.

We can see a beautiful (but unbelievable) love story between a British officer of the RAF and a pretty German nurse (all in a few days). No real problem about this, but for my was a disappoint because I waited for something different, for more history and less story.

Finally, bombing of the city happens, of course, but it results no impressive. It was one of the most terrible bombings made in history, but in my opinion this is not reflected in the movie, and this is the main cause of its fail.

Briefing, not a bad movie, but if you want to see a war movie or a disaster movie, try another.

James Cameron is to blame. In his 1997 hit "Titanic" he used, in a rather tasteless way, a real-life tragedy as backdrop for a larger-than-life love story. Now some stupid German TV producers wanted to do just the same and came up with something even more tasteless.

The first thing I noticed while watching this much anticipated "TV event" was, that all the British spoke German. I wondered why that British pilot in Dresden tried to avoid talking to Germans, because when he spoke, it was always in perfect German without any accent (I might add, that in the "Making-of" features which promoted the film beforehand, it was pointed out that only British actors were cast for the British parts, for greater authenticity). Have you people never heard of the concept of "subtitling"?

The story of this film comes straight out of our favorite handbook "How to write a screenplay for beginners", so everything is trite, obvious and corny, from the way our heroine meets her hero just as she is about to get engaged, to the point where she is miraculously re-united with her dying father so he can whisper "I'm sorry" before drawing his last breath... And as you might expect, the directing is as trite and unimaginative as is the story.

When it comes to the bombing, there is a lot of explosions and fire, which is not the least impressive, as we have seen better explosions and bigger fires in hundreds of Hollywood films. Of course they throw in some gore (but not too much, as this is supposed to be prime time material), so no one can blame them of not having shown the "real" horror of war.

Some thing I liked was the cast and the acting, especially that of some of the supporting actors, for example Wolfgang Stumph as a priest and Katharina Meinecke as Annas mother. I really liked Susanne Bormann as the heroine's sister. I'd rather have followed her through the film instead of Felicitas Woll's Anna, that annoying prig who never hesitates to dump her fiancé (without telling him, of course) in favour of a handsome Englishman she barely knows. Oh, how I hate this kind of women.

Just like Kleiner_Fuchs after watching this movie and other recent Teamworxx productions like "Sturmflut" I thought that, had Cameron not made "Titanic", these people would probably not rely so heavily on the ever repeated formula of a fictional doomed love with a hazardous historical background (though this is by no means a new concept). Contrary to my predecessor I think that in "Titanic" this worked out fine. But this may be mainly because a ship is a so much smaller microcosm than a city and the actual historical figures,though playing minor parts in the story pop up every few minutes.

It might have worked in "Dresden" as well, had not been the focus so strictly on the English pilot and the Mauth family (plus a few scenes with Annas co-worker and her Jewish partner). From what I have read and seen on TV and listened to I have learned that there are so many interesting and heartbreaking actual stories. I think the makers of the movie should have worked more of them in for it was obvious in the movie that the parts that were the most shocking were the ones that were based on real events - just sad, that they were so few of them.

Also, since the movie was so very focused on a love story that obviously not many people cared about, the structure of this mini-series was somehow awkward. Why make a two-parter about the bombing of Dresden if the bombers don't actually leave the ground until the last scene of part one and only reach the city halfway into part two? Had this been cut down by an hour and shown as one 2-hour TV-movie I believe it might have had a greater impact.

Still I give this movie 6 stars, because the final 45 minutes actually do work. Of course, the focus is mainly an Anna and the two men running around in the city with her but there are many touching and horrifying scenes in which we as viewers get a little insight into how terrible and traumatizing it must have been to be at this place in this night. Sure, the actual events were still much worse and to tell survivors after viewing this one understands what it was like in Dresden is insulting, but it is mostly in small scenes like the one where a group of people asks a young soldier to shoot them because nobody will survive this anyhow, that I felt a big lump in my throat and got a better understanding of the horror than in the (arguably well done for a TV production) scenes of the inferno.

Tha final scene in which the rebuilt Frauenkirche is re-inaugurated worked for me. I think I understood a lot better now, after watching this movie, how important the building was for the people of Dresden, and why for many of the survivors it was a symbol of their wounds slowly healing and coming to terms with these traumatizing events.

But as a whole, this movie is not about "Dresden", thus it should not have this title. It is just about a bunch of uninteresting poorly written, cliché-based cardboard characters that are, though being mostly played by very competent actors, so completely unappealing, that they ruin the movie.

What a change from the usual rather run-of-the-mill dramas I'm used to on ZDF.

I wasn't expecting too much, but was hooked from the first minute. I was really pleased to see a good healthy mixture of well-known actors, however I did get the feeling that sometimes the concept and trauma of the whole idea was too overwhelming for even them to actually carry it off believably. I got the feeling that it was mentally exhausting for all involved.

That's the only negative point, but I understand that this subject is such a sensitive one, one that reflected everybody's personal feelings. If no-one feels sensitive about an issue such as this, then we are all in trouble in the future.

I felt that John Light definitely did it for me with his (apparent) stoicism, when all the time the shock and horror of what is actually happening , almost in a surreal way, unfolds beyond his (characters') eyes and becomes more and more embedded in the soul. The idea of being a victim when the "good guys" are actually bombing the hell out of the place you're stuck in, puts a very different subjective aspect on the story. The poignancy reflected in the story on both sides had me very moved for a long time. Of course there are many aspects and issues that were maybe left with the surface barely scratched, but many issues were definitely broached, and that's what counts. How do you condense a culmination of 6 years of war into one "short" TV-event? Answer, it's nigh-on impossible, but the effort was made very bravely, well-done.

A great deal of thought-provoking moments and a no-win situation were another top point, where I feel these sorts of films, be it romance, drama, documentary or otherwise should never cease. We unfortunately need the horrific visions, (and the brain can conjure up plenty of horrific scenes without actually having to have everything laid out on a plate, the essence is important, the rest can and often has to be left to the imagination, one of our most powerful resources) to remind ourselves of how terrible things can become, because human beings are very forgetful of just what has happened in the past and never should happen again.

I was very glad to have watched this drama and will definitely be recommending it further.