De forbandede år

Decent acting, but varies from actor to actor. The main problem is that the movie is just too long to be frank! I wouldnt say its a waste of time to watch it, but its not a 'must watch'. Plenty of better danish 2. World War movies if you ask me.

So much could have been made of this. But what a dissappointment.

I watched this because I knew very little about the danish situation during the second world war nazi occupation. The story about the family is woven as a string of episodes only loosely connected with the major developments. Things do happen in the stories of multiple family members and others, but expected consequences of actions and what occurs are to a large extent absent and unexplained.

The characters of Jesper Christensen , Bodil Jørgensen and Mads Reuther make the strongest impressions of the Skovs with Gustav Dyekjær Giese and Sara Viktoria Bjerregaard surprisingly bleak despite strong developments in their life stories. All personal stories are quite shallow so it's hard to get engaged in any of them.

Unfortunately, the looseness of the storytelling inhibits the potential in the story, despite the possibilities a more held together presentation could have achieved. Therefore I don't think this is a film one must see, but the actors are not terrible and if the subject interests you it could be worth a watch. Just don't expect anything epic or spectacular.

Starting on April 9th 1940, this follows a Danish family, and the friends, colleagues and such, of its various members, as they struggle through the moral grey area, the non-stop compromising, that can be unavoidable when trying to live your life in an occupied nation during a World War. Agreeing to work with with the Nazis sounds like tacit support of them, but what what if is the only way to to avoid having to fire dozens of people with families to feed?

While I haven't read the novel upon which this is based, I can say without a doubt that this is one of the book adaptations that appreciates the challenges that come with that. It manages to handle a massive amount of material, with over a dozen major characters, involved in a handful of different subplots(one could argue that there might be a couple too many), without simply ending up overwhelming. It does move very fast, and there are definitely times where you struggle to keep up with why this or that person behaved in a certain way, as their growth sometimes flies by and it's hard to keep up with it. There are times where it goes from one of these storylines to another too abruptly. This is definitely a movie that requires the viewer have a strong base of knowledge about Denmark during WWII. It is not going to hold your hand, and you are frankly going to be confused, if you go into this not knowing very much about that. The acting is convincing and these all feel like real people. You've known people similar to them in your own life. Some events are dramatised, yet most of this is credible and authentic.

This contains a little bloody violence, as well as brief sexuality and nudity. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys fiction dealing with the period. 8/10

WWII history is an interest of mine, so this movie caught my eye when scrolling for WWII films I had not yet seen.

The occupation of Denmark by the Nazis is of particular interest to me after studying WWII and reading novels like "Hornet Flight" by Ken Follett.

This movie starts out very broad. There are a wide range of characters and the film does a good job of providing some depth to each of them. This, in my opinion, is the best part of the movie.

A wealthy industrialist Danske family navigates the occupation in a variety of ways due to conflicting opinions within the immediate and extended family.

It was a historically accurate film with views from both sides of the war that sadly ended far too quickly, leaving the audience craving more from the characters so deeply introduced.