Into the Darkness

WWII history is an interest of mine, so this movie caught my eye when scrolling for WWII films I had not yet seen.

The occupation of Denmark by the Nazis is of particular interest to me after studying WWII and reading novels like "Hornet Flight" by Ken Follett.

This movie starts out very broad. There are a wide range of characters and the film does a good job of providing some depth to each of them. This, in my opinion, is the best part of the movie.

A wealthy industrialist Danske family navigates the occupation in a variety of ways due to conflicting opinions within the immediate and extended family.

It was a historically accurate film with views from both sides of the war that sadly ended far too quickly, leaving the audience craving more from the characters so deeply introduced.

So much could have been made of this. But what a dissappointment.

Decent acting, but varies from actor to actor. The main problem is that the movie is just too long to be frank! I wouldnt say its a waste of time to watch it, but its not a 'must watch'. Plenty of better danish 2. World War movies if you ask me.

I was looking forward to this movie. Its about a family trying to do the right thing to get through the occupation by Germany, as easy and painless as possible. But the germans, and the situation, keeps crawling in on the family.

My first issue is that you get thrown into the movie, and the actors. You dont get time to know them first. That means that for the first 30 minutes you struggle to find out who is who...

And my second issue that the family gets into way to much stuff! Damn.... Its like they are the whole war!!!

And then it suddently ends! Just like that! Cut! You search a little on Google and finds out that there will be a part two. And it will be released in 2022! They are filming it as I write this.

I watched this because I knew very little about the danish situation during the second world war nazi occupation. The story about the family is woven as a string of episodes only loosely connected with the major developments. Things do happen in the stories of multiple family members and others, but expected consequences of actions and what occurs are to a large extent absent and unexplained.

The characters of Jesper Christensen , Bodil Jørgensen and Mads Reuther make the strongest impressions of the Skovs with Gustav Dyekjær Giese and Sara Viktoria Bjerregaard surprisingly bleak despite strong developments in their life stories. All personal stories are quite shallow so it's hard to get engaged in any of them.

Unfortunately, the looseness of the storytelling inhibits the potential in the story, despite the possibilities a more held together presentation could have achieved. Therefore I don't think this is a film one must see, but the actors are not terrible and if the subject interests you it could be worth a watch. Just don't expect anything epic or spectacular.