Customer Reviews

Germany, Pale Mother

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Germany, Pale Mother focuses on the struggles of a German family during World War II as narrated by a daughter looking back on her parent's history. She addresses her Mother and Father directly trying to comprehend their experience of the war. The opening scene show her Mother,Lene, standing up to a Nazi officer with a German Shepard. The dog barks and bites at her clothes, but she does not scream or even make a noise. Later we see her wiping her eyes and trembling with fear. This scene demonstrates the complex portrayal of Lene who has the strength and determination to march across the country with her small child after sifting through the rubble that was once her home, but still wishes her husband had "joined the party" if that had kept him from going to war. The narrator tells her father that she can't imagine him as a young man because she always pictures him as the old man he became after returning from the front. A love story and family memoir brilliantly entwined with the tumultuous socio-political atmosphere of Nazi Germany. This film is considered groundbreaking because of its intense realism and the depiction of the female perspective of war, but superb acting and expert film making help it to stand out as a "modern classic."

I first saw this film in my History of Feminism class. It is a sad and somewhat unusual film, but it is worth it. Viewers should be warned that this film is not for most young children. It traces World War II from a female perspective. "Germany, Pale Mother" also has many citations of historical moments. A must see.

The first half of the film gives a fairly interesting snapshot of pre-World War II Germany, with a mix of politics, romance and familiy life on the homefront. Later, a more existential and abstact film emerges, as the characters seem to degenerate into quirky, eccentric, boring and unlikable types. Because it is also draggy, you need to watch this movie on 2X fast forward and follow the closed captions--not difficult to do and saves about an hour of your viewing time.