Beautiful images, sad/sentimental story, lacks depth

Rating: 5/10 (4 January 2006)

So, there's this boy and his little sister, and they go through a lot of suffering during World War II, after their mother dies during a bombardment. However, that's not really the reason for their suffering.
They have no place to stay, because they don't want to stay with their evil aunt. But that's not the reason either.
They suffer because they're starving. Ah, they have no money for food, and that's why they're suffering! Well, actually... Let me try again.
It's tough to lose a family member, during war or anytime else. You could have made a perfectly good film around that alone. Then there's the aunt. How is she evil? Oh, she's angry that the boy hangs around home all day, doing nothing. She also sells the clothes of the boy's late mother (her own sister, I take it) for food, and only gives half to the boy. That makes her evil. (Who wrote this script, an angry teenager?)
And then they've got no food.
Let's face it, there's really no good reason for them to go through so much suffering, except to make the audience sad.
Making innocent characters suffer is a sure way to engage the audience -- however, it's a cheap trick, and a shallow substitute for proper characterisation. The only character we get to know is the protagonist, and by the end of the film, he still seems like a bit of a cipher. Okay, so he loves his sister a lot, briefly mourned the death of his mother, and kinda looks up to his father... but mostly, he just loves his sister. Oh, yeah, and he's going to die (we learn this from the beginning). The next hour and a half is his slowly drawn out death sequence.
All other characters are ciphers, easily summed up in a word or two: The sister? (Sickeningly) cute. The aunt? Evil. Farmer? Wise. Their late mother? Nothing less than perfect.
The film sucker-punches the audience to cover for its outrageous characters and aimless plot, with the sole intention of making the audience sad. I guess it worked.