Lore

Director/writer Cate Shortland has created something truly remarkable, forcing us to find within ourselves sympathy for a young Nazi. The story is grim and dense, but features one hell of a lead performance. Shortland combines wonderful visuals with a brutal story of survival, involving family and patriotism, and a running commentary on the state of Germany after the fall of the Third Reich.

As the German army collapses in the spring of 1945, the breakdown of a family serves as a microcosm of a country in despair in the closing days of World War II. Lore (Saskia Rosendahl) and her four younger siblings are abandoned as their Nazi- supporting parents are forced to flee the Allied forces. As they travel on foot to their grandmother's house in Hamburg, the children encounter a young Jewish refuge, Thomas, on whom they are forced to rely for both food and safe passage through Ally-occupied lands. As she is exposed to the lies of their parents, and begins to develop feelings for one whom she has been taught to hate, Lore is forced to come to terms with a belief system that is quickly unraveling.

It's the children that have to do all the heavy lifting in the film dramatically, and they carry their weight, and then some. The film is anchored by a remarkable lead performance from Rosendahl, who comes across as a seasoned veteran, despite this being her debut performance. Her character goes from obnoxious adolescent to young adult, via a series of confronting moments where her morals and beliefs are challenged. Her vibrant youthful spirit is replaced with a burning rage with a war torn Europe as the backdrop.

A new perspective on an event often forces an audience to confront disturbing realities they may wish to avoid. Although "Lore" relates a story from the second world war, it reveals the point of view of those we do not often consider: children of a high-ranking Nazi official. This story may not be pleasant, but it is certainly fascinating.

The unusual thing about Lore is that, perhaps for the first time, we witness the devastation that Germany itself suffered as a result of World War II. And that was no little thing, something many are not aware or perhaps do not acknowledge.

As for the film, following the end of the war and specially the death of the one many Germans had come to think of as a saviour there is a sense of hopelessness and devastation.

In the family that the focus is placed, the mother has to entrust the safety and wellbeing of her children to her teenage daughter Lore. This mother had to flee for reasons that remained unknown.

What follows is that Lore had to abruptly grow up, without any training or warning and face a battle for survival as she heads to a place of safety. The film therefore is a chronicle of the journey undertaken by 4 children, led by a teenager, from a place of abandonment to a place of safety.

During this journey, they had to face the best and worst of human nature in their encounters with others. Some tried to help, whilst others only cared to take advantage of their predicament. An interesting scene was in the house of a woman who had a framed photo of the Fuhrer and said: Can you believe the lies they said about him? e only wanted to help? The endeavour got even more interesting when their paths crossed with a young Jewish man, who though seemed helpful the young lady in charge had to face a dilemma: In this difficult hour, do we get the help we desperately need from someone willing, or because I was brought up believing he is part of a filthy, inferior people I should just disregard him? The sexual tension between the two is also pivotal for the outcome of this adventure.

Furthermore, it seemed incomprehensible to this young person, how the country of superior people that was meant to lead the world is now occupied and divided into a Russian, American and British zones. He hear somewhere in the film: I am German and this is Germany.

A striking, sensitive film about growing up suddenly, the extreme sides of human nature and where the ultimate battle for survival can lead us to.

You'd think that, 68 years after the end of the second World War, every perspective would have been covered by the numerous films that have been made about it. But 'Lore' proves that it's still possible to make a movie about an unknown aspect of the war.

In this case, it's the situation in Germany just after the victory of the allied forces. It's a very interesting perspective, because things get turned around. The Nazis are no longer powerful rulers, but hapless losers, afraid to get caught by the Americans. And the Jews, although still despised by most Germans, are the ones who get things done with the allied troops.

The movie shows a country in an almost apocalyptic state, with dead people and destructed buildings everywhere. Citizens can't trust each other and are willing to do anything for some food or transportation. The powers are constantly shifting; an ally can suddenly turn into an enemy.

It's in this utterly destructed and disheartened country that a family without parents is finding its way, led by Lore, a girl of approximately 16 or 17 years old. Her parents, high-ranking Nazis's, have left her to hide from the Americans, and it's up to her to lead her younger sister and three little brothers (of which one is still a baby) to her grandmother in the north of the country. They have to beg for food and shelter, sometimes paying with the jewels her mother left behind.

Australian director Cate Shortland is very good in capturing the mood of desperation and defeat. She uses faded colours, almost like a Polaroid picture, and shows lots of close-ups. Not only of faces, but also of hands, feet, clothes and shoes. It accentuates the oppressive atmosphere in post-war Germany, and the terrible fate of the children. The story gets a twist when the children meet a young man, who for some reason is willing to help them. The relationship between Lore and the young man is ambiguous, for several reasons.

'Lore' is not easy to watch. There are several disturbing and gruesome scenes in the film. But it's a gripping tale of the human urge to survive in almost inhuman circumstances. And most of all, it reminds us of the utter horrors of war. This war, and any war.

Lore (2012)

A gorgeous, depressing, rare film about a family of Germans who need to survive the chaos and poverty of the end of World War II. This is a really terrific movie even though it has a single, basic, ongoing, sad arc--moving from place to place in search of food and safety as the Allies, mostly unseen, take over administration of the country in 1945. What it manages to say is not just that war is bad, or that people have the ability to survive anything if they must, but that beliefs and politics are stubborn and irrational.

It's this last part that comes through it all as the shining purpose. It's one thing for this band of children to beg for food or walk though forests weary and assaulted by marauders. But to have them run into others who, like themselves, don't know where to turn or what is going on, and still have a devotion bordering on worship for the fuhrer is mind blowing. But believable.

The filming--scenes, light, color, moving camera, and the sheer range of all of these from scene to scene--is stunning, absolutely terrific. As you might grow weary of all the weariness, you never grow weary of the movie because it's so rich in other ways. And it's never dull, either, as characters come and go and their motivations turn on a dime. How it ends, both literally and emotionally, will stay a surprise, and yet when it happens it makes such perfect sad undramatic sense.

There are all kinds of war movies, and this is an important insight into one of the least explored aspects to it all--the terrible aftermath. It's an Australian production, mainly, shot in Germany in German. And it's a really special, thoughtful, beautiful film.

It's a punchline movie.

The ending ties it up well and puts it in proper perspective. Human perspective.

The movie, for me, is largely symbolic, archetypical. Lore is not really a person she IS the immediate post-war Germany.

Everything that she experiences, all her opinions, all the opinions she is exposed to and indoctrinated with, are the points of view of millions of the German populace.

How she deals with it, or denies it is how Germany dealt with and denied it. The 'it' being the entire ethos that permitted/enabled WWII.

In a sense all cultures are a form of mass hysteria, mass hypnotism. Societies indoctrinate as part of their nature, actually part of their definition is the values with which they indoctrinate their populace.

If the values are extreme and violent, the populace often follows. It the society fails at its aims and is physically destroyed, then the population becomes valueless and must die or reinvent itself.

Post WWI German society didn't die, so this is a movie about the pressures, the pressure cooker, in which gave birth to its reinvention.

So, as a piece of symbolic representation, it's magnificent.

There are no plot holes, every bit of dialog, every image, in necessary for understanding.

And patience is required. The viewer assembles all the images, all of Lore's perceptions.

And the pressure cooker cooks.