Not bad

Rating: 6/10 (11 January 2014)

This film was ultimately unsatisfying, although it did have a few things going for it. Despite the strange, fake German accents, Emily Watson, Geoffrey Rush and the other actors played their roles with conviction. The cinematography was good, and it was an interesting and unusual perspective for a Hollywood film to focus on a small German village during World War II being bombed by the Allies -- with characters who are mostly ordinary Germans and not evil Nazis. My main criticism is that not much happens in the movie. There isn't much plot. A girl comes to the village to stay with foster parents. And stays there. Not very exciting. The child actor playing the boy she befriends, Rudy, is outstanding in every scene he's in. One puzzle is: towards the end he's drafted in some way (into the Army?) and he almost runs away, but nothing becomes of his supposed drafting. He just sticks around. I thought the girl playing Liesl was miscast. To me, she wasn't animated enough. It was a part that demanded a lot of emotion, but she mainly looked bewildered, and focused on saying her lines. It may have been how the lines were written. I didn't like the narration by the character of Death. I thought it was too twee, and didn't add anything to the the film. I thought the ending was moving, and, of course, horrific.