Resistance

Having read and enjoyed the novel I decided to rent this movie, but while awaiting delivery I read all the reviews I could find. A very high proportion of these user reviews, both on IMDb and elsewhere, described a film that was totally boring, a complete waste of time, had nothing to do with resistance and was generally pointless.

All I can say in reply to these reviews is that films about war are not necessarily about violence, gunfire and cruelty. Put briefly, this film is a gentle story set in a beautiful Welsh valley, a tale of frightened farmer's wives left mysteriously without their menfolk, a group of German soldiers traumatised by war, an expression of human feeling and resistance to war in many and varied ways. If this doesn't appeal to you, then watch Rambo! If, however, you are a sensitive soul with a belief in human goodness, then watch this film and enjoy it! My only gripe is that I found the dialogue a little hard to follow - and there are no subtitles. Having said that, I accepted this difficulty and found that it didn't really affect my pleasure - the film doesn't rely heavily on dialogue. All-in-all a most enjoyable film and one that I will watch again - it certainly helped to hear the director's commentary on the DVD.

In 1944, the D-Day for the invasion of Normandy by the Allies has failed and Europe has not been released from the German forces. The men of an isolated Welsh village disappear and their wives believe that they have joined the resistance and soon German soldiers arrive at the village. The farmer Sarah Lewis (Andrea Riseborough) and the German Commander Albrecht (Tom Wlaschiha) befriend to each other along the year.

"Resistance" is an awful, boring and pointless movie with one of the most stupid fictional story of the World War II. The pretentious story with the German basically winning the World War II associated to a dull romance simply goes nowhere and is a total waste of time and good cast. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): "Resistência" ("Resistance")

A fairly interesting premise, and a story that might have been far more interesting if I didn't find myself having to switch on my superpower sense of hearing to make sense of the irritating mumbling between the characters.

Of course, no sooner had I upped the volume the music started playing - an eardrum-throbbing violin.

The net result was that I found myself spending more time playing with the volume buttons on the remote control than I did watching the film - a shame as it was on the whole pretty atmospheric.

I couldn't see the point of the Michael Sheen character, but the German Hauptmann was quietly convincing - if perhaps a little too quiet when he was not speaking German.

A really disappointing film. Adding 40/50 minutes of people staring in silence at someone or at something doesn't make a film poetic, gentle and sensitive, it's just a trick to water down the screenplay and save a lot of money for a low-budget film. The screenplay, by the way, is quite ordinary and unconvincing. In fact the action and the dialogues are so rare here, that almost all of them, the essential ones at least, are in the trailer. It's even funny to think that the film is practically the trailer plus silence and some beautiful views of the welsh mountains. This could be easily a 10-15 minutes short film without losing anything of the plot.

Even in the most English parts of Wales you can't understand them for their welsh lint and singalong voices. Also, the story was lacking any bite. And the plot holes are too many.