Lore

It's a punchline movie.

The ending ties it up well and puts it in proper perspective. Human perspective.

The movie, for me, is largely symbolic, archetypical. Lore is not really a person she IS the immediate post-war Germany.

Everything that she experiences, all her opinions, all the opinions she is exposed to and indoctrinated with, are the points of view of millions of the German populace.

How she deals with it, or denies it is how Germany dealt with and denied it. The 'it' being the entire ethos that permitted/enabled WWII.

In a sense all cultures are a form of mass hysteria, mass hypnotism. Societies indoctrinate as part of their nature, actually part of their definition is the values with which they indoctrinate their populace.

If the values are extreme and violent, the populace often follows. It the society fails at its aims and is physically destroyed, then the population becomes valueless and must die or reinvent itself.

Post WWI German society didn't die, so this is a movie about the pressures, the pressure cooker, in which gave birth to its reinvention.

So, as a piece of symbolic representation, it's magnificent.

There are no plot holes, every bit of dialog, every image, in necessary for understanding.

And patience is required. The viewer assembles all the images, all of Lore's perceptions.

And the pressure cooker cooks.

You'd think that, 68 years after the end of the second World War, every perspective would have been covered by the numerous films that have been made about it. But 'Lore' proves that it's still possible to make a movie about an unknown aspect of the war.

In this case, it's the situation in Germany just after the victory of the allied forces. It's a very interesting perspective, because things get turned around. The Nazis are no longer powerful rulers, but hapless losers, afraid to get caught by the Americans. And the Jews, although still despised by most Germans, are the ones who get things done with the allied troops.

The movie shows a country in an almost apocalyptic state, with dead people and destructed buildings everywhere. Citizens can't trust each other and are willing to do anything for some food or transportation. The powers are constantly shifting; an ally can suddenly turn into an enemy.

It's in this utterly destructed and disheartened country that a family without parents is finding its way, led by Lore, a girl of approximately 16 or 17 years old. Her parents, high-ranking Nazis's, have left her to hide from the Americans, and it's up to her to lead her younger sister and three little brothers (of which one is still a baby) to her grandmother in the north of the country. They have to beg for food and shelter, sometimes paying with the jewels her mother left behind.

Australian director Cate Shortland is very good in capturing the mood of desperation and defeat. She uses faded colours, almost like a Polaroid picture, and shows lots of close-ups. Not only of faces, but also of hands, feet, clothes and shoes. It accentuates the oppressive atmosphere in post-war Germany, and the terrible fate of the children. The story gets a twist when the children meet a young man, who for some reason is willing to help them. The relationship between Lore and the young man is ambiguous, for several reasons.

'Lore' is not easy to watch. There are several disturbing and gruesome scenes in the film. But it's a gripping tale of the human urge to survive in almost inhuman circumstances. And most of all, it reminds us of the utter horrors of war. This war, and any war.

Set in Germany at the end of the Second World War, this film takes up where others like Downfall leave off and asks questions about how the erstwhile beneficiaries of Nazi rule cope with their new world. The film tracks the journey of five innocents as their life of privilege collapses and they are forced to come to terms with the effects of dreadful events over which they had no control but to which they have given their tacit support.

Four of these children are really too young to bear any culpability. Only the oldest, Lore, is really capable of comprehension and it is through her eyes that the film is focused, as she slowly realises just how much her parents are implicated in the horrors of the Nazi regime, and, as an extension of this, herself and the whole German people. Lore is helped to this realisation by Thomas, a Jew who appears to have been liberated from a concentration camp. But Thomas also has a psychological burden and may not be all he appears.

This is another fine film from Cate Shortland, someone who surely should be making more films more often.

The unusual thing about Lore is that, perhaps for the first time, we witness the devastation that Germany itself suffered as a result of World War II. And that was no little thing, something many are not aware or perhaps do not acknowledge.

As for the film, following the end of the war and specially the death of the one many Germans had come to think of as a saviour there is a sense of hopelessness and devastation.

In the family that the focus is placed, the mother has to entrust the safety and wellbeing of her children to her teenage daughter Lore. This mother had to flee for reasons that remained unknown.

What follows is that Lore had to abruptly grow up, without any training or warning and face a battle for survival as she heads to a place of safety. The film therefore is a chronicle of the journey undertaken by 4 children, led by a teenager, from a place of abandonment to a place of safety.

During this journey, they had to face the best and worst of human nature in their encounters with others. Some tried to help, whilst others only cared to take advantage of their predicament. An interesting scene was in the house of a woman who had a framed photo of the Fuhrer and said: Can you believe the lies they said about him? e only wanted to help? The endeavour got even more interesting when their paths crossed with a young Jewish man, who though seemed helpful the young lady in charge had to face a dilemma: In this difficult hour, do we get the help we desperately need from someone willing, or because I was brought up believing he is part of a filthy, inferior people I should just disregard him? The sexual tension between the two is also pivotal for the outcome of this adventure.

Furthermore, it seemed incomprehensible to this young person, how the country of superior people that was meant to lead the world is now occupied and divided into a Russian, American and British zones. He hear somewhere in the film: I am German and this is Germany.

A striking, sensitive film about growing up suddenly, the extreme sides of human nature and where the ultimate battle for survival can lead us to.

Lore (2012)

A gorgeous, depressing, rare film about a family of Germans who need to survive the chaos and poverty of the end of World War II. This is a really terrific movie even though it has a single, basic, ongoing, sad arc--moving from place to place in search of food and safety as the Allies, mostly unseen, take over administration of the country in 1945. What it manages to say is not just that war is bad, or that people have the ability to survive anything if they must, but that beliefs and politics are stubborn and irrational.

It's this last part that comes through it all as the shining purpose. It's one thing for this band of children to beg for food or walk though forests weary and assaulted by marauders. But to have them run into others who, like themselves, don't know where to turn or what is going on, and still have a devotion bordering on worship for the fuhrer is mind blowing. But believable.

The filming--scenes, light, color, moving camera, and the sheer range of all of these from scene to scene--is stunning, absolutely terrific. As you might grow weary of all the weariness, you never grow weary of the movie because it's so rich in other ways. And it's never dull, either, as characters come and go and their motivations turn on a dime. How it ends, both literally and emotionally, will stay a surprise, and yet when it happens it makes such perfect sad undramatic sense.

There are all kinds of war movies, and this is an important insight into one of the least explored aspects to it all--the terrible aftermath. It's an Australian production, mainly, shot in Germany in German. And it's a really special, thoughtful, beautiful film.