Life in Nazi Germany as seen through the eyes of young people, German and Jew.

Rating: 10/10 (14 March 2014)

I have never seen a film which is introduced by Death in quite this way, but that spectre speaks at the beginning of this film. It is set during the hey-day of the savage Nazi era. How very appropriate!
The film is about an illiterate child who is given to strangers who are paid to look after her.
The woman abuses and humiliates her husband publicly and openly. Somehow, he maintains his equanimity despite the relentless provocation and stress to which he is subjected.
Into this cauldron comes a vulnerable young girl who quickly becomes attached to the surrogate father. She is pretty and is befriended by Rudi, a pleasant little blonde boy who escorts her to the new school.
Nazi 'ethnic cleansing' is at its height. The little, uniformed children sing 'Deutschland uber alles' and racist songs at school. The young ones parade in smart, brown uniforms boasting Nazi symbols. Huge Swastikas in red and black festoon the town of 10 000 or so inhabitants.
Jews are driven out of the town. Everybody has to espouse racist values otherwise they would get into trouble. A man who is discovered to be a Jew (whose son is at the front) is hauled out of his shop, beaten up and taken away. Old Pappa is conscripted into the local German army as punishment. The scenes are surreal.
Rudi's father, is conscripted. The scene depicting the uniformed soldier's departure as he says goodbye to his wife and children outside his home is heart-wrenching. This is how it has been for millennia.
Was it like this when US soldiers left to invade Vietnam,Iraq, Grenada and Afghanistan? The Germans come across as very human – they're afraid, they're trying to conform, they're vulnerable, they're even delicate. They are a far cry from the Teutonic caricatures on which I was force-fed as a child.
Geoffrey Rush as the adopted father (Pappa) plays his role with insight and warmth and wins everybody over. Gradually, young Liesl learns to read – helped along by Pappa. And she tries to find books.
The Burgomeister's home has a huge library. Liesl wants to read all the time. The mistress of the house allows Liesl to read the books but they cannot be borrowed.
In Stanger, the non white library had a tiny book-stock which was stashed in a cellar-like structure located at the side of a steep hill. The pristine white library was part of the municipal complex of buildings.
I had not realised that many of the books which I was able to access espoused Neo Nazi perspectives and values and I was being indoctrinated.
Pappa plays an accordion which belongs to a soldier who saved his life in World War I. A Jew. When that Jew's family has to flee a son ends up being hidden in Pappa's home. The Jew's mother does not have papers so she cannot escape.
The essence of this movie is in the sibling relationship which develops between the older Jewish refugee (who appears to be in his twenties), so wise, educated and mature and the young Teutonic teenager. The Jew talks about how Aristotle said that 'the memory is the scribe of the mind'. Finally, when he has to leave, he consoles her by saying,
'Write. You will always find me in your words.'
Most people are aware that Vietnamese, Iraqi, Korean, Afghan, Balkan and many African homes have been bombed within our living memory. We have been helpless as innocent families and their homes and amenities from hospitals to schools to police stations have been reduced to rubble. We have seen Vietnamese children maimed by napalm, we have seen families dismembered. And we have been helpless.
The people have to hide from death in cellars. Sometimes, there is no warning. We see the every day life in the village and we see all the love that keeps the village surviving.
The love that the teacher has for the children whom she teaches, the love between parents and children, the love that service providers have for the people whom they serve... the enormous love which enables a village of some 10 000 souls to survive. But they have been 'anointed' with the shroud of Nazism and they have been forced to imbibe Nazi values. And so Death has more recruits here... As the Germans were being bombed in the film I thought of Warsaw, Moscow,Amsterdam and London that they had bombed. I thought of Delhi, Peking, Shanghai and Rangoon that the free West has bombed. And I thought of the diminutive, poor Vietnamese children and women that some Americans were happy to bomb and dismember.
Rudi is infatuated with Liesl and at times he wants to kiss her. Every lad (and most girls) knows about the effect that these lovely young girls have on us. Many young boys have surreptitiously kissed giggling school girls through out eternity. Liesl is not so enamoured and tries to push him away at times. Then, in the end, she kissed him when he was unable to kiss her back.
This is a moving and beautiful film which will stay with me for a long time. The theme music by John Williams is apt and the cinematography and the attention to detail makes it so authentic. I loved it.
I thought that it was well worth watching as a piece of history, as a document about the effects of racism, as a guide on how not to behave, as a depiction of how people grow and survive despite the savage policies of a government gone mad. I am so grateful that I was able to see this film.