“Do you know who we are fighting the war against?” enquires the tall German officer pacing back and forth with a steady gaze upon the pretty Jewish boy in Nazi uniform, and the boy replies Russia, France, England, all of which are returned with a slight nod by the tall German. Finally though, stately, the German officer with his arms crossed against the chest, with an askance glance self correcting to freeze upon the boy, observes “Jews”, and continues “it’s a holy war that we are fighting”. This to me, is the most memorable scene of the movie.
A Jewish teenage boy is growing up in Hitler’s Germany. A rare sensibility, movie strikes upon the teenager, whose sister is jealous, for she would have liked it to be the son of the family. Alas, this teenage boy ain't so much a man, he hides in a beer barrel to stay away from the march of Nazis, but gets home late, too late to bid farewell to his dying sister. With these scenes, movie sets up a stage filled with fractured emotions where the background is gradually shifting, as if in a haze, into the hitler’s regime. A very good opening, I must say.
The boy escaping to Poland finds that Hitler has made an express pact with Stalin, sold Poland to Bolsheviks. He is left stranded on the river bank, cant go to Poland, for he is a Jew. What captures you is the mood of war, its not handled clumsily as it often is these days. No warfare, no ammunition, what you see is a poor boy who is caught up in the sensibilities of the time. It’s a first person narrative and the word is ‘standard’ . nothing out of ordinary, nothing out of place, pure narration and events unfolding rapidly before your eyes, as you are to witness them through the protagonist’s.
‘communism is beautiful’, ‘anti semitism’, ‘circumcision’, through fleeting instances, characters extol the virtues or rebuke painfully, each of these precepts. The incumbent and overpowering authority of war is all over the place, soldiers marching on dry grasslands and trampling on dead bodies day in day out. But none of this is shown, it is merely alluded to, and that I believe, renders the movie, an air of dignity. Too many movies on wars submit to the powerful urge to unleash brutality, for pain, fear and sympathy are the easiest of the feelings to elicit in the viewers. What better to do that than to have a bloodshed with pretty young girls and children killed, then show bits and pieces of their torn bodies shredded by machine guns of the invading armies. “Europa Europa” takes a different route, one more subtle and sublime. It is like a rare scotch whisky, refined and distilled to perfection that unravels mysteries of deep complexities with every sip down your throat.
Other foreign language movies on wartime have been, in my view as elegantly made as this one. For instance, Zwartboek, Baadar meinhof complex, downfall, lust caution, etc have all one thing in common, which is, none of them are taken away by the grandiose exposition of war. All these movies have made a conscientious effort to eschew the war itself, and restrict themselves to the pure evocative mood of the time. Which is all the more fruitful and satisfying to watch than the Hollywood junk.
In the false pretense of a German, the Jewish boy grows up in his respect as a racially pure and predominant German. But breaks into tears before his girl friend’s mother; confides in her.
Ah! Julie delpy is so pretty in this movie. She was a teenager when she appeared in this movie.
All in all, a classic of second world war, pure and almost believable.
All in all, a classic of second world war, pure and almost believable.
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