Oorlogswinter

So, you are the Mayor of a small town in Holland - being occupied by the Germans near the end of WWII. What is the best way to safeguard your family and your town? Do you go along with the Germans - smile, shake their hands - accommodate them? Or do you resist and show your hatred openly for them?

That is the dilemma facing the Father of the main character in this film - a young man named Michiel. His Father is the Mayor and Michiel does not respect him as he takes the non confrontational path to appeasing their German occupiers. MIchiel likes his Uncle who is an active part of the Resistance.

Michiel and his sister get caught up in resisting the Germans quite by accident - as they help a downed American airman. The story is tense with a number of twists and turns - and a final very satisfying ending where Michiel learns the true meaning of courage. It sounds schmaltzy, but it isn't.

The best part of the movie is it challenges the watcher to assess what would they have done? It is easy sitting in 2014 America to criticize those people in occupied lands: "They should have done more to resist" - "Thye should not have gone along with the Germans."

Anyone who smugly believes that they would take the "heroic" path and resist openly in such a situation needs to see this movie.

14 year-old Michiel lives in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation in the latter part of WWII. Although he's still only a kid, he happens upon a downed British flier and bravely decides to help him--even though the expedient thing would have been to stay out of this. To complicate things, Michiel's father is the local mayor--and a man who has long tried to appease his Nazi overlords. What is the boy to do?

The film is excellent in every way. Martijn Lakemeier did a great job in the leading role and the film was a quality production throughout. I also appreciated it because the film was very difficult to predict. Sure, you know the Nazis would lose and the war would be over in only a few months--but there were so many twists and turns in the film that it kept me guessing. It helped that this was not a 'happily ever after' sort of family film but a gritty one that was about a boy who needed to grow up very, very fast and make some very adult things. Well worth seeing and a decent film for the family despite its R-rating.

Aristides-2 and malcolmgw have already mentioned some of the holes in the plot that you can drive a truck through, such as Jack's leg being broken and rotting away one day but being magically healed when he clambers across a river along the underside of a bridge on the very next day.

Aside from absurd details like this, the historical premise of the movie is unrealistic. The events portrayed are supposed to have happened in January 1945, at a time when the Germans were running from the Russians in the East and mobilized their last reserves of manpower, weaponry, and fuel for the futile Battle of the Bulge in the West.

And yet this movie will have us believe that, just then, a whole company or so of German soldiers - all young men in their prime, well- fed, well-armed and -motorized, spic and span - are tasked with playing cat and mouse all day long with a bunch of hapless villagers in the Dutch countryside? And that, with 5 years of battlefield experience, none of them can hit a standing target at 50 paces?

I get that the makers of movies are more interested in human virtues and morals than in historical facts, but it nevertheless detracts from a move when the historical background is so poorly treated.

"Dirk should never have got you involved." After 14 year old Dutch boy Michael (Lakemeier) finds a wounded British soldier during WWII he has to pick a side, resistance or appease the Nazi's. This is a very good coming of age story. It shows how a 14 year old in a war zone is forced to grow up earlier then he should and how he deals with hiding the fact that he is helping "the enemy" from everyone, even his family. The title of the movie is deceiving, to me anyway. There is not a typical war movie, in the fact that there is no actual fighting. It is set around a boy and the part of the war that we don't usually see. This is a very good movie, but this is another one that is not for everyone. It is a little slow moving in parts, but as a foreign movie that is expected. The acting by the boy is very very good and at 17 years old looks to have a long career ahead of him. Overall, a very, very well done movie that deserves to be seen. One of the most dramatic war movies I have seen. I like it. I give it a B.

Would I watch it again? - I don't think I would, but it was good.

*Also try - Enemy At The Gates

" The Netherlands' official submission to 82nd Academy Award's Foreign Language in 2010"

We saw this recently at the Academy screenings, and thought it one of the better foreign films we have seen this year. Hope it gets a nomination at least, and thus a US release! Contrary to some of the reviews here, we thought the acting was excellent. It's not Saving Private Ryan, but nevertheless quietly intense. More psychological than a battlefield story, it plays beautifully with the woven story of coming of age and into responsibility. As actors and as frequent voters for the foreign film category, definitely recommending this. -- Stephen and Ann Tobolowsky