A Secret (Un Secret) by Claude Miller, 2007

Claude Miller directs this engrossing drama about a Jewish boy in post-World War II Paris who stumbles upon a mysterious toy in the attic, exposing his family's secret dark past and how it survived Nazi atrocities. Can the child grasp the devastating truth, or will it drive him deeper into his personal fantasy world?

Again a movie on World War 2, with a closer look at the collaborationism, which made some French under the Vichy government commit cruelty against Jews the same way the Nazis did in Germany. It is not a topic that is widely spread, despite the fact that we study it in history class in France, mainly because of the shame, and the fact that it is easier to see France as one of the winners of World War 2 and highlight the resistance — which was also a powerful movement. The reality is that by 1940, France had surrendered and became another territory of Nazi Germany. The collaborationism is something that I was surprised to see in "Elle s'appelait Sarah - Sarah's Key" as still widely unknown. The movie is interesting in the way it is presented, from the very particular view point of a Jewish family with a father very liberal with religion, and yet very aware of how things could turn. He uses the example of the Dreyfus affair to show his surrounding there is something about France that might be a threat through the Nazi occupation. The movie also shows the post-war France and the will to have it all forgotten, as if everything was perfect again, which is a phenomenon we know more from the recovering Germany. The movie is very beautiful, with perfect scenery and people, but looking into details, it is full of little clues that makes you anticipate the collapse, such as a street plate that honors Marshal Pétain... The storyline is based on three periods, the present in black and white, the colorful post-war, and the less and less colored short time before the war and during war, going back and forth as the story unravels. The performances are great, Cecile De France so beautiful, and the cast is amazing.

with Cécile De France (Hereafter, L'auberge Espagnole), Patrick Bruel, Ludivine Sagnier (Swimming Pool), Julie Depardieu (Paris Je t'aime), Mathieu Amalric (Cosmopolis, Le Scaphandre et Le Papillon, Un Conte De Noel), Nathalie Boutefeu, Yves Verhoeven, Yves Jacques (Les garçons et Guillaume, à table), Sam Garbarski, Orlando Nicoletti, Valentin Vigourt

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Lore by Cate Shortland, 2014

As the Allies sweep across Germany, Lore leads her siblings on a journey that exposes them to the truth of their parents' beliefs. An encounter with a mysterious refugee forces Lore to rely on a person she has always been taught to hate.

As in Cate Shortland's previous film Somersault, there is a lot of silence and contemplation, both main characters are at an age of discovering what is is to become a woman, and suffer from the lacking of teachings from their parents. The comparison stops there, with a far more dramatic destiny for Lore, becoming a leader in her family, carrying the responsibility that her mother left her with no promise of reversal. Humanity at its worse is trying to rebuild itself with the resemblance of value that is left, from one extreme to the other, and most of all, not really understanding what exactly is the right position to have. The only frail constancy is the relationship between Lore and her brothers and sister, and this man we know nothing about. Their journey is a fascinating one, somehow overexposing their emotion by not displaying any, with few words and powerful imagery.


with Saskia Rosendahl, Kai-Peter Malina, Nele Trebs, Ursina Lardi, Hans-Jochen Wagner, Mika Seidel, André Frid, Eva-Maria Hagen, Nick Holaschke, Sven Pippig, Philip Wiegratz

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Hannah Arendt by Margarethe von Trotta, 2012

A look at the life of philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt, who reported for The New Yorker on the war crimes trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann.

I was looking forward to watch the movie, after recording and editing a segment for the DVD release in the US, featuring Margarethe von Trotta, Barbara Sukowa and Janet McTeer.
The movie surprised me by creating an internal conflict between what we are politically correctly thinking and what she stood for, in a philosophical way. She was indeed quite a thinker, and in a way, a free woman, free from her origins, free from her upbringing, and freed from her own past. Yes, she might have written all the bitterness and pain the people trialing Eichmann felt, but she detached herself from the personal, and studied the situation as in a world where people would behave in an expected manner, and modeled it to understand what has gone wrong. Her accusations are hard to take, and perhaps her expectation for a entire community to unite and remain organized in a total chaos targeting them are a little high. And on the other hand, her views of the Nazi regime authorities were a little too much about organization and not so much about people's personality. But as hard to believe as it is, it indeed created two complete opposites that in her argument created one of the worse chapters of our history.
I forgot to mention the performance of Sukowa which is very good, on top of it because she is performing in English most of it, and developing complex ideas in an intelligible way. It is a pleasure to attend what could have been one of Arendt classes and lectures. Her husband played by Axel Milberg is amazing in creating that intimacy that helps us see Arendt beyond her lack of sensibility as a philosopher. Janet McTeer is the most unusual character, reflecting on the superficiality and brilliance of the mind of Mary McCarthy.

with Barbara Sukowa, Janet McTeer (Portrait of a Marriage, Albert Nobbs), Julia Jentsch, Axel Milberg, Ulrich Noethen, Michael Degen, Nicholas Woodeson, Victoria Trauttmansdorff, Klaus Pohl

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A Woman in Berlin (Anonyma - Eine Frau in Berlin) by Max Färberböck, 2008 (UR)

with Nina Hoss (Barbara), Evgeniy Sidikhin, Irm Hermann, Rüdiger Vogler, Ulrike Krumbiegel, Rolf Kanies, Jördis Triebel, Roman Gribkov, Juliane Köhler (Two Lives - Zwei Leben, Aimée & Jaguar), Samvel Muzhikyan
From the director of Aimée & Jaguar

Based on the best-selling diaries of an anonymous German woman who survived the Soviet invasion of Berlin at the end of World War II, this gripping drama tells the story of a photojournalist's (Nina Hoss) forbidden relationship with a Soviet officer (Yevgeni Sidikhin). After being sexually assaulted by members of the invading Red Army, she turns to the officer for support, but soon finds herself falling for him.

Another very particular viewpoint on World War II, by a very particular woman at the exact moment when Russians arrive in Berlin and take over the city, after a long draining war, witnessing too many horrors. They arrive in Berlin where only the young, the old and the women are left, where they release all their anger, animal instinct, and of course abuse women. It is not an easy story to watch, and right after watching Generation War (Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter), it looks like the logical continuation of a horrible war and how it has dehumanized too many. Nina Hoss is beautifully strong and the entire cast believable. The movie is suffocating and at times relieving. The director, Färberböck, managed to trap us into an never ending revenge and spiral of horror in which some, very few, can find a way out.

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Generation War (Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter) by Philipp Kadelbach, 2013 (NR)

Generation War vividly depicts the lives of five young German friends forced to navigate the unconscionable moral compromises of life under Hitler. Level-headed, highly decorated officer Wilhelm (Volker Bruch) goes off to the eastern front with his sensitive younger brother Friedhelm (Tom Schilling). Deeply in love with Wilhelm is Charlotte (Miriam Stein), a young nurse who looks forward to serving in the Red Cross. Greta (Katherina Schüttler) is a talented singer who longs to become another Marlene Dietrich, while her Jewish boyfriend Viktor (Ludwig Trepte) fights for his life while hiding among members of the Polish Resistance.

This is a very singular viewpoint on the war from a German view, but also from the very particular viewpoint of five people experiencing it, not bad people initially, relatively open-minded, liking everything the youth of this generation liked, meaning parties, ideas, music, and somehow too, their country. Except that the context sends two to the front, one to be a nurse, one to the concentration camps, and the last one to be the cheer-up singer for the troops. The actions they are to make is going to define who they are and their survival. Because you have sufficient time to understand who they are and the context of things, it allows you to have more patience, an understanding of why they have to do what they do, sometimes decide to do what they do. They are somehow powerful and victims, irresponsible and desperate. Of course, the movie is not (and I am sure it doesn't pretend to be) a portrayal of the war and the Nazis, nor it tries to justify the Germans for having done all the horrors of the Nazism. I believe as the original name says ("Our Mothers, Our Fathers" in English), that it is about understanding what that generation had to go through, and allows the next ones to see them as human too, at least some of them. The issue with this movie is that it is so focused on one story that it omits to nuance it (which is not its role), and therefore seen individually, it creates statements that are not acceptable. On the other hand, there has been so many movies that depicted all Germans as evil that I find it ok for once to try and dig in what was going on in the lives of some.

with Volker Bruch (The Reader, The Red Baron - Der rote Baron), Tom Schilling, Katharina Schüttler, Miriam Stein, Ludwig Trepte, Henriette Richter-Röhl, Götz Schubert, Hildegard Schroedter

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Two Lives - Zwei Leben by Judith Kaufmann and Georg Maas, 2012

with Juliane Köhler (Aimée & Jaguar), Liv Ullmann (Persona), Sven Nordin, Ken Duken, Julia Bache-Wiig, Rainer Bock (War Horse), Thomas Lawincky, Klara Manzel, Vicky Krieps, Dennis Storhøi, Ursula Werner

Europe 1990, the Berlin wall has just crumbled: Katrine, raised in East Germany, but now living in Norway for the last 20 years, is a "war child"; the result of a love relationship between a Norwegian woman and a German occupation soldier during World War II. She enjoys a happy family life with her mother, her husband, daughter and granddaughter. But when a lawyer asks her and her mother to witness in a trial against the Norwegian state on behalf of the war children, she resists. Gradually, a web of concealments and secrets is unveiled, until Katrine is finally stripped of everything, and her loved ones are forced to take a stand: What carries more weight, the life they have lived together, or the lie it is based on?

This movie is brilliant, complicated, intense, and at the same time effective and beautiful, interesting, unpretentious... The characters are complex but the acting is so perfect you understand their complexity and learn to love them. The story is of course tragic, with a context that unfortunately is much too real, with the Nazism and the post-war Germany, so it is not a comedy, and intelligent script replace special effect and heavy action, so don't expect mainstream spy movie. And still, I really believe this is a movie worth watching by all audiences.

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The Monuments Men by George Clooney, 2014 (PG-13)

with George Clooney (Gravity, The Descendants, Out of Sight, Up in the Air, Michael Clayton, Ocean's Thirteen), Matt Damon (Ocean's Thirteen, Behind the Candelabra, Invictus, Margaret, True Grit, We Brought a Zoo, The Informant!, Herafter, Inside Job, The Adjustment Bureau, Promised Land, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Contagion), Bill Murray, John Goodman (Monsters University, The Artist, Flight, The Princess and the Frog, Trouble with the Curve, Argo, The Emperor's New Groove (Kuzco), You Don't Know Jack), Jean Dujardin (The Wolf of Wall Street, The Artist, Little White Lies - Les Petits Mouchoirs), Bob Balaban (Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight, Deconstructing Harry), Hugh Bonneville, Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine, Bandits), Dimitri Leonidas, Justus VonDohnanyi, Holger Handtke, Michael Hofland, Zachary Baharov

Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, the film is an action drama focusing on an unlikely World War II platoon, tasked by FDR with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners. It would be an impossible mission: with the art trapped behind enemy lines, and with the German army under orders to destroy everything as the Reich fell, how could these guys - seven museum directors, curators, and art historians, all more familiar with Michelangelo than the M-1 - possibly hope to succeed? But as the Monuments Men, as they were called, found themselves in a race against time to avoid the destruction of 1000 years of culture, they would risk their lives to protect and defend mankind's greatest achievements.

Sometimes, a movie is just really good, because of the actors, the direction, the cinematography, the script... It doesn't necessarily gets a lot of attention, tho important, or funny, or both... This one is one of them. It is familiar, the cast looks like they had a good time, and so do you. Perhaps, this is the main goal of a movie, getting into it and having a good time. Additionally, this one highlights how so much of the art was looted during WW2 and later found in an attempt to return them. Fascinating.

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Sarah's Key (Elle s'Appelait Sarah) by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, 2010 (PG-13)

with Kristin Scott Thomas (Bel Ami, Salmon Fishing In The Yemen, Partir, The English Patient, The Horse Whisperer), Mélusine Mayance, Niels Arestrup (Farewell, Un Prophete, War Horse), Frédéric Pierrot (The Girl from Paris), Michel Duchaussoy, Dominique Frot, Natasha Mashkevich, Gisèle Casadesus, Aidan Quinn
Duration: 111 minutes

Paris, 1942: To protect her brother from the police arresting Jewish families, a young girl hides him away, promising to come back for him. Sixty-seven years later, her story intertwines with that of an American journalist investigating the roundup.

This movie makes an important point from the start, this is not about Germany, this is about what happened in France, with French people from both side, behaving the way they did, and about the lack of that historical memory from French people of our current generation, blurring the role and responsibility that we had collaborating with Nazis and facilitating the extermination of Jews, in for example the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup. It is a very human sad story, unfortunately too true, with, thank god, a minority ready to take risks and protect the few that managed to escape. The dark secret of Sarah is traumatic since we see it at the beginning of the movie and we never talk about it for more than half of the movie, while the story goes on. Kristin Scott Thomas is great as a journalist that turns out to be too close to the story, confronted to the family of her husband. It is an important movie for the reality it finally shows with a perspective on nowadays oblivion.

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The Reader by Stephen Daldry, 2008 (R)

with Ralph Fiennes (In Bruges, The English Patient, Skyfall, The Hurt Locker), David Kross (War Horse), Kate Winslet (Titanic, Mildred Pierce, Contagion), Susanne Lothar (The Piano Teacher - La Pianiste), Alissa Wilms, Florian Bartholomäi, Friederike Becht, Jeanette Hain, Alexandra Maria Lara (Youth without youth, Farewell - L'affaire Farewell), Bruno Ganz (Youth without youth), Volker Bruch (The Red Baron - Der rote Baron), Karoline Herfurth, Hannah Herzsprung, Linda Bassett (Kinky Boots), Kirsten Block

Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes) reflects on the formative sexual relationship he had with older woman Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet, in a Golden Globe- and Oscar-winning role) as a young teenager in this poignant drama set in post-World War II Germany. The passionate affair ended when Hanna disappeared. But years later, Michael learns she's on trial for horrific Nazi war crimes. David Kross plays the teenage Michael in this film based on Bernhard Schlink's best-seller.

Most troubling movie in a long time, perhaps most troubling movie ever. It is a beautiful story of coming of age, melted in a horrible context, which let its characters to become other, and eventually, the target of a bigger system they embrace, sometimes in the most innocent way, somewhat, in a inhuman manner, mixed between the authorities and their own sensibility. Seen from the eyes of a keen man, forgiving the human nature, it puts in question the even more irrational behavior of Nazis during world war 2 and their covering up afterward. Most of all, it is the contrast between what we understand of the childhood of berg and his coming of age in a world revealing itself ugly, in the most conflicting way. I don't remember crying, I guess I was still figuring out what that makes Schmitz, which perhaps I am still figuring out, four years later. How can someone be so ignorant, so stubborn, perhaps so responsible, so guilty, and at the same time, so innocent. How can we rationally judge, and how can we forgive, when there always one to blame, when something horrible happens. The cast is just perfect, most amazing. And the movie excels as much as the book, which I happened to read later on.

It is from the same director as the poignant "The Hours" and the movie I cried the most in "Billy Elliot". Looking forward to "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close".

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The English Patient by Anthony Minghella, 1996 (R)

with Ralph Fiennes (In Bruges, The Reader), Juliette Binoche (Breaking and Entering, Chocolat, Certified Copy, Paris), Willem Dafoe (Fireflies in the Garden), Kristin Scott Thomas (Bel Ami, Salmon Fishing In The Yemen, Partir), Naveen Andrews, Colin Firth (Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy, The King's Speech, A Single Man), Julian Wadham (The Iron Lady), Jürgen Prochnow, Kevin Whately, Clive Merrison

Set against the backdrop of World War II, this Oscar-winning drama stars Ralph Fiennes as a badly burned pilot who recounts a tale of doomed romance to the nurse tending him. As his story spills out via flashback, so do secrets about his identity.

I watched this movie when I was 12 (it was allowed in France, forbidden for children under 12 :). I was by myself, since it wasn't the kind of blockbuster movies my friends would go to the cinema for, it was my first movie in English with subtitles, I was a bit nervous, and a teacher of my school was sitting right behind me, which made me uncomfortable during the love scenes, and also and mostly because I cried a lot.
This is the movie that made me fall in love with Kristin Scott Thomas. She was sublime, emotional, funny, strong, passionate. Ralph Fiennes was handsome (still is, but in this movie, he was really hot (actually quite cold, but with a lot of charm). Juliette Binoche was exuberant but cute. Anyway, at the end, she got the Oscar, not Kristin, which got me terribly upset.
Coming back to the topic, it took me a second time, 16 years later, to fully understand the movie historical context, the role of Willem Dafoe (I always see him as the bad guy, this time I guess I was wrong), and also perhaps the true content of the relationship between Fiennes and Scott Thomas, although I might have grasped back in time the essence of it, in an instinctive way. Anyway, this movie is a masterpiece, it is profound, rich of emotions and subtleties, an excellent portrayal of what war can be, when you are not political, when you do not really belong, except perhaps to someone. It is beautifully shot, almost artistic. And the remains of the love stories of this movies stay with you as soft sad memories, unreachable, yet emotionally palpable.

Wath Trailer (took me a while to find it!)

Winter in Wartime (Oorlogswinter) by Martin Koolhoven, 2008

with Martijn Lakemeier, Yorick van Wageningen (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo), Jamie Campbell Bower (The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2), Raymond Thiry, Melody Klaver, Anneke Blok, Mees Peijnenburg, Jesse van Driel, Dan van Husen, Ad Van Kempen, Tygo Gernandt

This sumptuously photographed drama focuses on 14-year-old Michiel as he wrestles with family loyalties, painful choices between safety and courage, and the harsh realities of the last, desperate winter of World War II.

The movie is amazing, misleading, great acting, cinematography. Perfect. With emotions and questioning. Not a simple story, something to think about.

Aimée & Jaguar by Max Färberböck, 1999

With Maria Schrader, Juliane Köhler, Johanna Wokalek

"In 1943, as World War II's Battle of Berlin rages, with air raids forcing families into their cellars for shelter and bombs exploding all over the city, Felice Schragenheim and Lilly Wust fall in love. Felice, a dark and beautiful Jewish woman who is constantly in danger of being apprehended by the Gestapo, works for a Nazi newspaper under a false name, feeding what she learns to underground resistance leaders. Lilly, a flowery blond housewife living in bourgeoise comfort, raises 4 little boys, passing the time until her Nazi husband, Gunther, returns from the war. When the two meet, and Felice makes advances, Lilly responds, falling into total submission under Felice's spell. They nickname each other Aimee (Lilly) and Jaguar (Felice), spending every night dancing to popular 40s jazz music with Felice's eccentric lesbian friends, and every day raising the four boys who treat Felice like a second mother. It is not until the end of their affair, when Lilly--and soon thereafter, the authorities--learns that Felice is a Jew, and tragedy befalls the couple." Rotten Tomatoes

A beautiful movie, tragic of course, of two women who lived a love that was not allowed in this time of war, not only because they were two women, but one was Jew. It still needs to exist, and the little time of their story is like a fairy tale in the middle of horrors. The actresses are touching. I fell in love...