Lore - Review

This review may not be of interest to many of you out there as I know that even a slight mention of foreign language film turns people off, but seeing as I made the trip out to Phoenix Arts Centre especially to watch it, I think my opinions might as well be shared.

Lore, a German foreign language film directed by Cate Shortland, focuses on a young girl Hannelore “Lore” for short and the journey she and her younger siblings take through Germany after the war has ended. Unlike many other war films Lore’s family are in fact fans of Hitler, who end up facing the trails of losing their parents along with the war. I found it an interesting story because I think it is one of the first films that I have seen focusing on Germans losing the war rather than the British winning ,and it was a part of history that had never really crossed my mind beforehand. Lore is forced with the task of moving her 4 younger siblings including a very young baby to the other side of Germany to live with their grandmother; along the way she is forced to put her trust into a jewish boy they meet, even though she is very reluctant to do so due to her low opinion of him installed by her parent’s Nazi views. The relationship formed by the two, is very intriguing and at times, heart-warming as although she does not want to trust him, in order to keep her family safe she has to and even begins to rely upon him as the film continues.

Musically I found this film beautiful, I don’t usually tend to notice the scores within a film however the beautifully written music conjoined with cinematic elegance created by Shortland made the score stand out. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that the film was entirely in German, whereas music is the same in every country so it was easily relatable to anyone, but any fan of film scores should defiantly listen to this one.

To those who get put off by foreign films or those reluctant to watch them, this is a good place to start. Although it contains many deep themes it is mostly revolved around cinematic techniques and music to tell the story rather than dialogue, even in the places that dialogue was used it was not difficult to keep up with. This enabled me to be taken in by the power of cinema and shown how language should not stop this art form.

However, it has to be said that this film is not the most exciting and in places did tend to drag but I am solely putting this down to the nature of the plotline and the time in which it was set. I wanted to completely fall in love with this film, I was drawn in to watch it from a review on Film 2013 early this year but for some reason did not come out of the arts centre in the astonished way that I had hoped for when entering. With time of reflection it is clear the elements of the film which were brilliantly compositioned; but not much light has been shed in my head onto the reason which I didn’t fall in love with it, because everything I have to say is mostly good. And so, I must conclude that it has something to do with the narrative being different to what I am used to watching.

Even with a language barrier (helped along by subtitles) I am still able to admit a good performance was given by 19 year old actress Saskia Rosendahl who played Lore, she portrayed the character in a believeale way: although with me having very little knowledge of the time frame it was set in or the German language I admit that my opinion on this could in fact be mistaken.