gregking4 Review of Lore

Lore (2012)

a bleak and foreboding coming of age drama set in Germany during the dying days of WWII

[6/10 · 16 September 2012]

Eight years ago, Cate Shortland's debut feature cleaned up at the AFI awards, winning 13 awards, an amazing achievement, albeit it in an fairly average year for local films. Over the passage of time, views have changed and now people have probably been kinder to the film. After an absence of eight years, Shortland returns to the screen with her second feature, Lore, which is based on one episode in Rachel Seiffert's best selling novel The Dark Room. This is a bleak and foreboding coming of age drama set in Germany in the spring of 1945, during the dying days of WWII. Fifteen-year-old Hannelore (newcomer Saskia Rosendahl) watches as her father, an SS officer, prepares to abandon the family home. He burns valuable documents before he heads off to the front and certain death. When news reaches the family that Hitler has been killed, Hannelore's mother surrenders to the Americans, leaving the teenager in charge of the rest of the family. She is charged with helping her siblings – younger sister Liesel (Nele Trebs) and twins Jurgen (Miki Siedel) and Gunther (Andre Frid) and baby Peter – travel across a divided Germany to reach their grandmother's house in Hamburg, some 500kms away. They journey across an inhospitable environment and face hunger, exposure from the elements and even capture. Lore is resentful of her responsibilities, and is also fiercely anti-Semitic. Along the way they meet Thomas (Kia-Peter Malina, from The White Ribbon, etc), a Jewish refugee and survivor of a concentration camp. But she has to form an uneasy alliance with Thomas in order to survive their treacherous journey. Lore is forced to rethink her ideology and National Socialist beliefs in the face of the new reality for the defeated and occupied Germany. Lore is a dark coming-of-age tale about the loss of innocence, awakening sexuality, identity and family. Lore is forced to deal with the consequences of her actions and question her beliefs, and much of the film unfolds from her perspective, which lends a fresh insight to the traumatic experiences and the harsh world around her. Although it is dealing with familiar themes and universal issues, the setting gives the material a freshness and realism. Films like the recent Wunderkinder and The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas have also viewed the horrors of war from a naïve children's perspective, which makes events even more harrowing. Shortland eschews conventional narrative structure here, often working in short, sharp takes, and she uses imagery and sensations to create a gradual sense of dread. Shortland has a distinctive vision for the film, and this is a more assured and mature piece of filmmaking than the flawed Somersault. The dialogue is all delivered in German, with subtitles, a risky move. The central character is initially unsympathetic, but Rosendahl's performance is mature and assured, and she captures the complex emotional journey of the character well. It is not an easy film to warm too, but audiences soon become emotionally invested in her plight and her arduous journey. Shortland is aided by the lyrical cinematography from Adam Arkapaw (who has previously worked on films like Snowtown and Animal Kingdom, etc), which captures the bleak beauty of the setting. There is some breathtaking imagery, and the close-ups of flowers and thistles and the bleak beauty of nature creates a stark contrast with the ugliness and horror of war and the desolation of the ravaged countryside. A co-production between Australia and Germany, Lore is a harrowing and affecting drama. The film is Australia's official nominee for the Best Foreign Language Film for the 2013 Oscars.