In Liebe, Eure Hilde

BERLINALE 2024: Nomination for the Golden Bear

A calmly told film about Hilde Coppi (1909 - 1943), who was sentenced to death by the National Socialists as a member of the communist resistance group ROTE KAPELLE. Liv Lisa FRIES, the superstar from the German quality series BABYLON BERLIN, plays this extraordinary role with calm precision.

The German director Andreas DRESEN has been making very successful films that deal with Germany's past and present for 25 years. DRESEN has already been nominated twice for the EUROPEAN FILM AWARD (2002 for HALBE TREPPE / 2008 for WOLKE NEUN).

Partly in flashbacks (with wonderful images of the Müggelsee in summer), the story of the married couple Hans (Johannes HEGEMANN) and Hilde Coppi, who offered modest resistance to the Nazi regime through a communist-minded circle of friends, is impressively told. Both were sentenced to death in the merciless dictatorship. Their son Hans Coppi Junior was born while they were still in prison, and his voice can be heard at the end of the film as an 80-year-old man.

This film is a monument to the Coppis and their circle of friends that is worth seeing. Other roles include wonderful German actors such as Lisa WAGNER as a prison guard who is gradually becoming capable of compassion, Alexander SCHEER (EUROPEAN FILM AWARD 2019: nomination for GUNDERMANN) as a sensitive priest and Florian LUKAS (known from the German quality series WEISSENSEE) as a nasty prison doctor.

Well worth seeing!

The film tells a story of a group of young, reasonably well off and naive people, who fought the NAZI by trying to help USSR. However, as said by Hilde's son Hans, a German historian, after the war, many Nazi officers who participated in the torture and killing of those fighters were never prosecuted but joined the West German military, while his parents and other continued to be treated as traitors till 2008. That makes you wonder whether they were heroes fighting for freedom, or victims in the geopolitical conflicts played by the people in power.

In the film, all of the people in Nazi machines, the secret police , the prison guards, the hospital staff, the judges, were humane, kind and sympathetic. I am not sure how well this reflects the historical truth. Prison systems across the world were cruel in those days. Was Hilde just lucky to be treated humanely, or was it the filmmaker's desire of not hurting this beautiful soul, on the big screen?

Looking at the conflicts today that are killing so many people in the name of glorious goals, I wonder whether humans are really capable of learning. This film tells such a story that makes some of us think and see the wars differently.

While at it's core another traditional basic biographical structure, director Andreas Dresen does a solid work on presenting the relationship and history of the two character of Hilde and Hans Coppi with two strong lead performances from the cast and including some solid direction choices.

Stories about anti-Nazi and the war period has been done many times and Dresen offers at times some good direction and atmosphere approaches. Regarding it's writing being predictable and nothing too special when it comes to context, history and development, especially character development, the strong performances, solid camerawork and certain dialogue moments remain ambitious.

Who would expect a film set in 1942 Nazi Germany about a group of resistance fighters to be cheerful? But this film, based on true events, is compelling if at times confronting. Hilde is a young, pregnant woman who with her husband is caught with an illegal radio transmitter and is eventually sentenced to death. Through flashbacks the film tells the story of the couple meeting and the attempts at resistance they and their friends undertake. Oddly, these flashbacks do move around in time, mostly but not always moving further back, but it's always clear where the viewer is. Once caught, Hilde's prison experience is at times confronting, but I really appreciated that most of the prison staff are not presented one dimensionally but with touches of humanity as well. As noted in the details in IMDB, the film concludes with a few words from her son, born in prison and now 80. Overall, the acting, the cinematography and the editing are properly subservient to the storytelling so that only in retrospect does one realise how effective they are.

This is a movie to love but, at the same time, it's one that's very hard for any reasonably sensitive person to watch. I thought that Liv Lisa Fries in the lead role as Hilde Coppi was really quite excellent. I hadn't seen her in any other productions before this one and I was prompted to look at other work she's done and which I might also value.

"From Hilde, With Love", original German title "In Liebe, Eure Hilde" reminded me very much of another German movie "Sophie Scholl: The Final Days" which starred another remarkably good German actress named Julia Jentsch. Obviously the theme of both movies is very similar and the denouement identical. I'm sure I was not alone in thinking and hoping that the resolution of Hilde's case might have been different to Sophie's. Alas, no.

This movie, like Sophie Scholl, reinforces, if that were necessary, just how terrifying life must have been under the rule of the Nazis, where any action at all that might be construed as harmful to "the State" could lead to suffering and worse.

"From Hilde, With Love" is a quite excellent movie and one which I might try to watch again at some time although that will be difficult for me.

8 out of 10 from me.

JMV.