Good but not Great

Rating: 5/10 (13 January 2009)

I let my girlfriend choose this film else I would have passed on it because of the topic: Germany, WWII, Jewish Holocaust. I did enjoy the film although parts of it were weak. I've read the many reviews offered by others and unfortunately, couldn't find something that mirrored my concerns.
The scenes were well done. You felt the time periods clearly and the camera movement was supportive. The acting was just OK. Personally, I find German to be much different than British English so I would have enjoyed the film more if the actors spoke German and we had to read subtitles. It's a bit tough to enjoy a good German film when the actors are spouting British expressions like "atall." Having said that, this is one of those nerdy films where everything isn't cut and dry and you have to think afterward, not unlike a attending the theater. Given that, is it the actors' fault that we cannot quite understand what is going through their heads? There are two leads: a female ex-Nazi SS guard and a legal student who later grows up to be a lawyer. Apparently, the woman Kate is such a good actress that many other viewers are gushing about her talent while I'm thinking she was so wooden at times that I wondered if she was in fact 1-dimensional. The man behaved unrealistically.
My main problem was with the plot. SPOILER ALERT! The first half of the film clearly identifies the world of the boy and the lady. We see setting, emotion, interaction and a sense of purpose. The second half of the film is a blur apparently consisting of fragments of the boy's life later when he is a college student, a young man and a middle-aged man. This is combined with characters that pop in and out of his life for no particular reason leaving you wondering exactly what is important and what isn't. i.e. whatever happened to, if you show the gun in Act I, you'd better use it in Act II? At one point, the college student determines that he owes the lady assistance but isn't sure how to proceed. His professor advises direct communication and he agrees but then backs out without any explanation. Now while the childhood is shot in one German city and the college life in another, we are suddenly interrupted by a montage through a concentration camp museum which may have been Auschwitz (isn't it still in Poland?) with no explanation of how he got there, why he is allowed to wander unescorted or what is he looking for. Perhaps he decided to pin all responsibility for all the deaths at that camp on his ex-lover and therefore refused to assist her at her trial? Does that even make sense knowing that her duties at best would have been extremely limited given her illiteracy? And more montage where we see him court a classmate but divorce her years later after they have a child. If the wife and child are so unimportant, why are they even in the film? Lastly, after divorcing his wife for unstated reasons and unpacking in a new residence, he happens on a book that he used to read to the lady now in prison and decides to dictate it to a tape recorder, then mail both recorder and tapes to her in prison without attaching any letter of explanation or introduction or even providing one on the tape. Huh? If he dumped his wife and child out of secret pining for an ex-lover, why accidentally find the book and why not talk to her? Worse, he apparently does this for at least 10 years until she is unexpectedly released from prison after 20 years. But wait, it gets worse! He finds her a place to live and a job and offers to pick her up when she gets out but refuses to acknowledge their past or attempt to pick up where they left off. Seriously, who acts like this for 10 years? But, the ex-guard is not much better. While on trial, she patiently explains her duties and limited ability to make decisions and dispassionately explains how 300 prisoners were allowed to die rather than escape during an Allied bombing, yet is suddenly unable and unwilling to admit that she cannot read or write even when the judges make it quite clear that failure to do so will result in strict sentencing while her ex-coworkers get off with almost no punishment by comparison. Huh? Lastly, after her predictable suicide, the man travels to NYC just to sit with a now incredibly wealthy Jew to ask for an apology which is not forthcoming. Who actually behaves like this? When you consider how the Jews treat the Arabs around Israel, or how Europe in general responded to the Yugoslavian disaster, any profound comment is lost. Lastly, what Jew is able to survive the Holocaust, move to America and marry rich? Seriously!
If the film is German, then I appreciate the effort to apologize for WWII. It's a good start anyway. If it is from anybody else, it is contrived to the point of silliness.