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.

I won't add to the reviews already written, but I want to comment on how this film moved me personally. I saw this film at the Vancouver International Film Festival and rated it "Excellent" for its stunning visual accomplishments, superb acting, its continuous suspense and mystery, and for the moral challenges it presents through its storyline. This is a film that will stay with you a long time after you have left the theater, even if your parents did not live through this era in Europe (as mine did). The film touches on so many human elements -some very conflicting- ranging from hope, compelling compassion, and the draw of sexuality, to revenge, murder and hatred. It brilliantly blends the social and the individual with it's backdrop of the socio-historical landscape of Germany right at the end of World War Two and how the power of that situation impacts on the lives of its protagonists. If ever there was an artful illustration of how one generation is affected by the actions or inactions of a previous generation, Lore excels in demonstrating that.

I just saw this film at the Camera Cinema Club in San Jose. This is an immensely complicated film about the children of an SS officer and war criminal. The father disappears. The mother gives herself over to the Americans, and the children (aged 15 down to 7 months) are left to fend for themselves and make a 500km trip to their grandmother's in Hamburg. Germany is in ruins. People are starving and sick. They deny the Holocaust and mourn their dead leader who committed suicide in a bunker. Throughout it all, the 15-year-old lead character Lore must somehow get her siblings to grandma's house while slogging through the chaos of the failed Third Reich.

As I said, it's immensely complicated. It feels like a slice of life even if it is fiction. The cinematography is excellent. The lead actress, all of 19 in real life, is obviously very talented. I gave the film a 7 out of 10 because it's a bit too disjointed for my tastes, but perhaps that's an effective way to portray Germany's disarray at the end of the war.

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 is an intense drama involving a period of post-WW II German society that is rarely if ever examined and to do it, as this film does, from the viewpoint of German children caught up in these tragic days is worth a visit just out of curiosity. However, this film does not just take a dispassionate look from the viewpoint of historian's or news print, rather because of the wonderful direction of Cate Shortland, this movie moves completely away from ordinary story telling into the far less examined area of psychological change.

Superficially this story is about a family of young children who are forced because of Germany's WW II defeat to make their way from the Black Forrest to their grandmother's home near Hamburg in northern Germany. The story concerns the time before that long journey, the incidents of that journey and finally their arrival at their grandmother's home. Sounds simple and straight forward but the devil, as they say is in the details, or rather the story.

As the story unfolds while the children attempt to reach the grandmother's home, the viewer explores through the eldest, who leads this group, many of the consequences of her past history as a child growing in this family with all the mental baggage implied by this maturation. The drama is carried by this eldest child, Saskia Rosendahl, to whom many of the film's incidents occur.

Moviegoers might be struck by the close-ups used by the director; most of the movie's shots are taken at that range and viewers may not like the method. It contributes to an extremely distinct film, along with the story as well as Rosendahl's superb acting, which must affect the viewer and this after all is why we attend movies to begin.