Skybird
03-28-13, 11:58 AM
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/zdf-tv-miniseries-reopens-german-wounds-of-wwii-past-a-891332-druck.html
Saw it, found it not spectacular, but also not bad: a solid piece of filmmaking. The difference is that it leaves the audience alone without commenting much on what is shown, only allowing ordinary people's stories to speak for themselves how they got tossed into the malstrom and then struggled to cope with it. Some died, some survived, some failed more and others less in trying to stick to some basic humanism in their doing. But nobody who enters a war and survives, leaves it unchanged.
World War II ended 68 years ago. It has certainly taken time to grapple with the history of that period, but by now virtually everything has been studied, examined and said. For future generations, enlightenment no longer occurs through knowledge and confrontation with the hard facts of real barbarism, but through emotions. It's as if the Germans, even the very young, to whom tales of the Nazis must feel as if extraterrestrials were at work, still shudder when they think about what their grandmothers and grandfathers were capable of.
(...)
Perhaps the most forceful lesson that the five friends -- Greta, Charlotte, Wilhelm, Friedhelm and Viktor -- convey is the critical question asked by future generations: "What would I have done?" And it is stripped of any moral pretension, even exposed as ultimately banal or at least marginal. No one, even the most sophisticated, decent, well-meaning or well-educated, would have remained untouched.
(...)
The five friends in the series -- prototypical but not theoretical, and all rather individual figures -- lose their innocence without being malicious. As the scriptwriter Stefan Kolditz has described his project, "you don't get very far with this generation by merely applying the categories of good and evil." Our humanity lies precisely in the fundamental inconsistency of individuals. The recognition and admission of our own inadequacy, a deeply Christian trait, protects against repression of our own dark sides and against the exploitation of others' weaknesses. The show's plot becomes accessible to audience members by keeping them unsettled, preventing them from fully identifying with some noble hero.
Saw it, found it not spectacular, but also not bad: a solid piece of filmmaking. The difference is that it leaves the audience alone without commenting much on what is shown, only allowing ordinary people's stories to speak for themselves how they got tossed into the malstrom and then struggled to cope with it. Some died, some survived, some failed more and others less in trying to stick to some basic humanism in their doing. But nobody who enters a war and survives, leaves it unchanged.
World War II ended 68 years ago. It has certainly taken time to grapple with the history of that period, but by now virtually everything has been studied, examined and said. For future generations, enlightenment no longer occurs through knowledge and confrontation with the hard facts of real barbarism, but through emotions. It's as if the Germans, even the very young, to whom tales of the Nazis must feel as if extraterrestrials were at work, still shudder when they think about what their grandmothers and grandfathers were capable of.
(...)
Perhaps the most forceful lesson that the five friends -- Greta, Charlotte, Wilhelm, Friedhelm and Viktor -- convey is the critical question asked by future generations: "What would I have done?" And it is stripped of any moral pretension, even exposed as ultimately banal or at least marginal. No one, even the most sophisticated, decent, well-meaning or well-educated, would have remained untouched.
(...)
The five friends in the series -- prototypical but not theoretical, and all rather individual figures -- lose their innocence without being malicious. As the scriptwriter Stefan Kolditz has described his project, "you don't get very far with this generation by merely applying the categories of good and evil." Our humanity lies precisely in the fundamental inconsistency of individuals. The recognition and admission of our own inadequacy, a deeply Christian trait, protects against repression of our own dark sides and against the exploitation of others' weaknesses. The show's plot becomes accessible to audience members by keeping them unsettled, preventing them from fully identifying with some noble hero.