From Hilde, with Love

It feels heartless to be critical of such a well-meaning film. This is, after all, a tale of the heroism and sacrifice of real people. Oppressed by the tyrannical Nazi regime, the small group at the centre of 'From Hilde, with Love' fought back as best they could, accepted the risk and faced the consequences.

The problem with the film is, simply, that there is no sense of menace. The apparatus of the Nazi regime is largely absent until Hilde and her group are arrested. It does not breathe down their necks. It hardly appears to be interested in them.

As a result their plotting, organising and minor acts of civil disobedience have an inconsequential, undergraduate air. The atmosphere feels more like early-1960s Sweden than wartime Nazi Germany. You half expect them to break off their activities on behalf of the Soviet Union to compose a message of solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Nicaragua.

Under arrest, Hilde is shouted at. The food isn't good. The conditions are Dickensian. She has a baby and manages to keep him alive, assisted by increasingly humane prison staff. Little sense of menace intrudes. The likely sentence for Hilde's offence is not a threat but a fact, arrived at by a form of due process.

The film closes on a poignant note provided by Hilde's son. It is as effective a reminder of the bravery of these young people as anything else in the film.

Movie based on true events of how Hilde Coppi got involved in the german resistance group named "Rote Kapelle" ("Red Orchestra"). This resistance group was thereby focussed mainly on contacts with Russia. The movie thereby has a main focus on the arrest and imprisonment that took place around 1942-43, whilst Hilde Coppis involvement in the Rote Kapelle is shown through many flashbacks.

At first sight, this movie makes you think about the 2005 movie which is about "Sophie Scholl", whom was a member of the Munich resistance group "Weisse Rose". I personally think though that the two movies could not be more different. The movie about Hilde Coppi is way more slowgoing - and at times even a depressing watch - than the movie about Sophie Scholl. A lot of it has of course to do with what the director of the movie wanted to show: (1) a fast paced life with high risk resistance work in the movie about Sophie Scholl, versus (2) love and suffering in the movie about Hilde Coppi.

The acting and scenes are all very attractive to watch. Apart from some minor mistakes - including the often made mistake of using glasses with modern lenses having a green/purple anti glare coating - this movie looks pretty period-authentic. I personally think though that this movie could benefit significantly if it would be shortened to 90 minutes (instead of its current 125 minutes). It also could benefit from adding good music since it is pretty "silent" on that point.

Overall, I score this movie 5.6/10, resulting in a 6-star IMDb rating. Due to the relevance of the Rote Kapelle resistance group, this movie is an interesting watch for anyone who wants to learn more about how german people themselves tried to pose some resistance against the Nazi regime.

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.

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.