Slow tedious movie with anticlimactic end

Rating: Null/10 (29 June 2003)

I've just seen the movie (available on VHS actually for the reviewer who complained) and have read the universally admiring comments made below - and I'm afraid I didn't have the same reaction.
First, it's not a BAD movie at all - it's obviously made with care, and has a very realistic feel throughout - it seems almost as if a camera were simply rolling at a school and the film was then edited. The details of dress, of horseplay, of conversation all sound quite realistic.
Unfortunately for me, that didn't mean they were interesting. The movie seems almost formless - until the uninteresting climax we expected throughout. If I had found either the central character or his brother appealing, I might have a different reaction - but I don't. They are very realistically presented - and quite unlikeable.
The whole movie feels very episodic - with one episode having little to do with the subsequent episode. I suppose much of life is this way - yet in a drama, I want to see something that's more shaped into a story.
I kept wanting to fast forward the movie to see how much longer it would go on. Nor is the story very original -- from The Two of Us (which may have been the first French movie I ever saw) to The Angry Harvest to A Love in Germany (though that time a Polish POW instead of a Jewish civilian), we are used to The Pianist to Enemies to the Diary of Anne Frank, the hiding of Jews during W.W.II is very well-trodden ground. No subject is ever entirely plowed - and if there were some particular insight this time, I might have been more intrigued. Alas...
I actually regret the reaction I had - because this movie apparently means so much to so many - but although the review stating that it felt "lived in" is completely true, that didn't make it interesting. One may have a remarkably accurate memory of something - and more remarkably be able to recreate it on screen, but this meandering story simply didn't hold my interest.