Lore

There is a lot that is painful about watching Lore. Perhaps at the most shallow level, it is painful to watch a film where a baby cries this much. But there are lots of good reasons to cry.

The film is set in the dying days of WWII, and the death of Nazi dreams and German confidence did not come easily. Over the course of the film, the teenaged German protagonist who is left to care for her four siblings in incredibly trying circumstances is stripped of pretty much everything that made her life seem secure and beautiful. She is shaken to the core, and the audience is invited to come along on a pretty rough journey, a purgatory of sorts.

The acting is solid, though perhaps not perfect – but then it's pretty hard to know how such deep inner conflicts would look in real life. Perhaps it was done very well. The artistic touches seem to enhance the movie instead of taking over. (Terrence Malick should pay attention to this skill, but I know he's not, unfortunately, trying for the same thing.)

Since my mom's family experienced the chaos of being refugees in Germany at this same time, it was easy to connect personally to this film, which made it even more painful to watch. But perhaps the most painful moment came on reflection of reading another review of this film: “'Lore' offers up its lessons for all time. Citizens everywhere are often lost in the fog of their nation's propaganda, until reality comes crashing in…. This can't be real. I don't live in a country that could do this to innocent people." Perhaps our Western imperialist sins are not as obviously evil as the those of the Nazis, but one wonders how painful will be the waking up of our own generation of youth to the violent sins of their parents.

The film is beautiful and difficult and gets ***+ from me.