O Menino e a Guerra

Extremely hard to follow i still don't know what was happening.

OK movie set in southern France during the waning years of WW2. Noah Schnapp stars as Jo, a young French boy who finds a man hiding in the woods while he is helping out with the family's sheep. He follows him to a neighbor's house and discovers that the house is being used to harbor Jews who are travelling to Spain for safety.

The movie is intended for younger audiences and many of the scary elements you would see in similar movies has been considerably toned down. Even the German army that has occupied the town seem oddly tame.

While the movie is well acted, the characters lack any depth and are rather cliched. Noah Scnapp and Anjelica Huston are oddly cast being American. The movie is OK overall.

Better movies in this genre are Downfall, Au Revoir Les Enfants; and Schindler's List.

It is always easy to paint one group of people as all evil and another as all good, but this story beautifully portrays the consequences of individual choices. While most German soldiers went along willingly with the Final Solution, there were those who quietly did what they could to resist. A good friend of mine who survived Auschwitz did so because a high-level German electrical engineer took him under his wing for more than a year and a half, hiding this Jewish boy in plain site from those who would gladly have killed him. And there were many individuals, French and other non-Germans, who willingly cooperated with what the Nazis were doing to the Jews. Each of us needs to ask ourselves what we would do, given the opportunity to stand up to evil like this, even if it put our lives at risk?

I for one am glad that this film quietly tells the story of the courage of an entire simple French mountain village, beginning with a shepherd boy who cared about the welfare of others. The very ordinariness of what is portrayed here, within the extraordinary larger context of the Second World War, is part of what makes this story so special. Yes, it is fictional but it is based on real events. This film is also beautifully filmed and is movingly expressive of human courage. As Proverbs 24:11-12 states, "Deliver those who are drawn toward death, and hold back those stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, "Surely we did not know this," does not He who weighs the hearts consider it? He who keeps your soul, does He not know it? And will He not render to each man according to his deeds?" I for one strongly recommend this film as truly worth seeing!

Waiting For Anya tells the story of a small village in the French Pyrenees. The scenery is beautiful and you'll feel immersed.

I think many people looking to learn more about the time period will enjoy this film.

This is a scenario we have seen many times, in many different movies: a family, a group of children or some other sympathy-worthy bunch of individuals, escape from Nazi persecution by crossing the Alps or the Pyrenees or some other obstacle to reach freedom and safety. Many of these movies are truly gut wrenching, engrossing and emotional experiences, sadly, this movie is not quite up to that standard. In fact, it's rather bland.

The makers of this movie mean well, you can see that, but they miss the mark. The scenery is gorgeous. The outdoor shots of the village mostly look suitably authentic. The interior shots though look more like what Hollywood thinks a provincial home, shop or school should look like rather than the real thing. The casting is slightly odd too. It seems a peculiar choice to cast two high profile American actors as French peasants when everyone else in the movie is French or German as the case may be. Angelica Huston and Noah Schnapp are fine actors. I like them both, but they are miscast here. The story here isn't particularly interesting and certainly doesn't evoke the emotional response it should. The story seems rushed and there is a lot that is left unexplored. We never see below the surface of the characters or learn what makes them tick. We don't get to know the characters well enough to really care about them. There is no sense of threat or danger, no dramatic climax and the ending falls flat. Some scenes seem very amateurishly staged. For instance, there is a scene towards the end of the movie where an entire village is supposedly rejoicing. It is the most halfhearted, anemic, poorly attended celebration I have ever seen.

To cut a long story short, this is not a bad movie; there's just nothing special about it. There are so many better and enjoyable movies in this genre that I find myself wondering why the heck they made this one at all. If you really want to see this sort of thing done right, may I recommend the movie 'Fanny's Journey', which was recently streaming on Netflix. It is one of the good ones and there are many others.