Another small piece of the vast picture puzzle of the Holocaust is turned face up in this docudrama about the Rosenstrasse Protest in Berlin, an event I had not known of, that began in late February, 1943. The details are given in an addendum that follows this review.
The film narrative sets the story of this protest within another, contemporary story that begins in New York City, in the present. Here a well off, non-observant Jewish woman, whose husband has just died, shocks her children and others by insisting on an extremely orthodox mourning ritual. She goes even further, demanding that her daughter's non-Jewish fiancé leave the house.
The distressed daughter, Hannah (Maria Schrader) then learns for the first time from an older cousin that during WWII, in Berlin, her mother, then 8 years old, had been taken in and protected by an Aryan woman. Hannah drops everything, goes to Berlin, and finds this woman, Lena Fischer, now 90. Hannah easily persuades the woman to tell her story. It all seems rather too pat.
The film thereafter improves, focusing through long flashbacks primarily on the events of 1943 that surrounded the protest, in which the fictitious central character is the same Mrs. Fischer at 33 (played magnificently by Katja Riemann), a Baroness and accomplished pianist who is married to Fabian (Martin Feifel), a Jewish concert violinist, one of the men detained at the Rosenstrasse site.
The narrative does briefly weave back to the present from time to time and also ends in New York City once again. While scenes in the present are color saturated, the 1943 scenes are washed out, strong on blue-gray tones.
The quality of acting is generally quite good, what we might expect given the deep reservoir of talent in Germany and the direction of Margarethe von Trotta, New German Cinema's most prominent female filmmaker, herself a former actress.
The story of the protest is told simply. Only one feature is lacking that would have helped: still-text notes at the end indicating the eventual outcome for those people taken into custody at Rosenstrasse, an outcome that was, as the addendum below makes clear, incredibly positive.
"Rosenstrasse" has not fared well in the opinions of most film critics. Overly long, needlessly layered, purveyor of gender stereotypes, manipulative with music: so go the usual raps. It is too long. But I found in this film an austere, powerful, spontaneous and entirely convincing voice of protest from the women who kept the vigil outside the place on Rosenstrasse where their Jewish relatives and others were detained. I found nothing flashy, contemporary or manipulative in this depiction.
The very absence of extreme violence (no one is shot or otherwise physically brutalized) intensified my tension, which increased incrementally as the film progressed. You keep waiting for some vicious attack to begin any minute. The somberness of the film stayed with me afterward. I awoke often later in the night I saw the film, my mind filled with bleak, melancholic, chaotic images and feelings conjured by the film. For me, that happens rarely. (In German and English). My rating: 8/10 (B+). (Seen on 05/31/05). If you'd like to read more of my reviews, send me a message for directions to my websites.
Add: The Rosenstrasse Protest: Swept up from their forced labor jobs in what was meant to be the Final Roundup in the national capital, 1700 to 2000 Jews, mostly men married to non-Jewish women, were herded into Rosenstrasse 2-4, a welfare office for the Jewish community in central Berlin.
Because these Jews had German relatives, many of them highly connected, Adolf Eichmann hoped that segregating them from other prisoners would convince family members that their loved ones were being sent to labor camps rather than to more ominous destinations in occupied Poland.
Normally, those arrested remained in custody for only two days before being loaded onto trains bound for the East. But before deportation of prisoners could occur in this case, wives and other relatives got wind of what was happening and appeared at the Rosenstrasse address, first in ones and twos, and then in ever-growing numbers.
Perhaps as many as six thousand participated in the protest, although not all at the same time. Women demanded back their husbands, day after day, for a week. Unarmed, unorganized, and leaderless, they faced down the most brutal forces at the disposal of the Third Reich.
Joseph Goebbels, the Gauleiter (governor or district leader) of Berlin, anxious to have that city racially cleansed, was also in charge of the nation's public morale. On both counts he was worried about the possible repercussions of the women's actions. Rather than inviting more open dissent by shooting the women down in the streets and fearful of jeopardizing the secrecy of the "Final Solution," Goebbels with Hitler's concurrence released the Rosenstrasse prisoners and even ordered the return of twenty-five of them who already had been sent to Auschwitz!
To both Hitler and Goebbels, the decision was a mere postponement of the inevitable. But they were mistaken. Almost all of those released from Rosenstrasse survived the war. The women won an astonishing victory over the forces of destruction. (Adapted from an article posted at the University of South Florida website, "A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust.")

I have to admit I laughed a few times during this trivial 2004 holiday movie, but it's already moving out of my short-term memory. In a career that is sliding rather swiftly toward tabloid obscurity, Ben Affleck, once a promising comic character actor who became enmeshed in the Hollywood publicity machine to recreate himself into a romantic leading man. Judging from this film, the transformation doesn't seem to be taking, as he continues to lack the gravitas that would make him credible in such parts. While his buddy Matt Damon takes on smart roles in films like "Syriana", Affleck appears in this type of commercial pap. At least the superficial character of successful but lonely advertising executive Drew Latham suits Affleck better than most of the other roles he has tried.
Directed by Mike Mitchell (whose most famous film is 1999's "Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo") and scripted by no less than four screenwriters (always a bad sign), the flimsy plot revolves around his character's need to "rent" a family living in his childhood home in order to live out his fantasy of having the old-fashioned Christmas he never had. The concept is actually intriguing because there is something to be said about the cathartic release of sentimentality we are all directed to feel amid the frenzied commercialism around the holidays. The real problem, however, is that the movie feels like an extended sketch lacking any logic or authentic emotional resonance. Affleck seems to be on overdrive attempting desperately to be lovable, but the net result is an exhausting turn by an actor who has an increasingly annoying habit of playing stupid people in ill-conceived films. Fortunately, he has the likes of James Gandofini and Catherine O'Hara playing the Valcos, the couple who decide to accept Drew's monetary offer to pretend to be his parents.
Gandolfini plays Tom like a gruff, non-violent relative of Tony Soprano, but he does what he can in the role. From her classic SCTV Days to Christopher Guest's mockumentaries, O'Hara is always a comic gem no matter the vehicle, and unsurprisingly she earns the best laughs as Tom's wife Christine, whether dryly delivering a one-liner or posing in an inch of make-up for a dominatrix photo shoot. In what is becoming her standard screen role, Christina Applegate plays their mistrusting daughter Alicia, who of course becomes Drew's love interest. Despite some good moments where she is enjoying the deceit of playing Drew's sister in front of his girlfriend's family, her character seems to change in lightning-flash strokes making it hard to see what Drew would see in her. The story spins completely out of control by the last third with one contrived situation piled on top of another until plot strands are tied together in short order. It's rumored that much of the movie was improvised since there was no finished shooting script. It shows, but I also have to admit I stuck with it to the bitter end.