Change Your Image
hortschdan
Reviews
Deutsches Haus (2023)
Good concept, poor writing and direction and editing.
The concept - based on a novel - is fine. A young woman who works as a translator of Polish to English at a WWII war crimes trial in the 1960s in Frankfurt, is surprisingly unaware of the brutality and murders at Auschwitz. In hearing testimony, she comes to know of the horrors of the camp.
She also learns that her parents lived next to the camp when her father was a cook in the officers mess. She had fleeting memories of those times, but doesn't realize where they lived at the time.
Mixed into this basic plot are subplots having to do with a fiancee and his family; her older sister, a nurse with mental-emotional needs; a confused, young assistant prosecutor; and an incident during the camp days involving her parents and a defendant. Some of this material might work in a novel, but needs to be removed from s film or television series.
Some of the scenes are simply pointless or poorly executed. Some would-be artsy shots are silly.
Again, the concept of young Germans to their horror learning the truth about Auschwitz and her family's connected history is good. Telling the story in a series requires focus and discipline.
1864 (2014)
A series with an epic historical sweep
This series is extraordinary. It is centered on the complex events leading to and surrounding the wars between Denmark and Prussia over the Schleswig and Holstein duchies (?) in what is now Northern Germany. It connects the stories of ordinary Danes with the ambitions of powerful political figures willing to promote war regardless of the cost in human lives and society. Near the end I read summaries of the history of those times to better understand the events. Danish nationalists.preached war, and Prussian leaders were willing to accommodate in this battle with historic claims by both sides.
The production is amazing. The script is complex and includes the current time as well as events of about 1850 and then 1864. The present is tied to those long ago stories. The acting is wonderful. I imagine that Danish students learn much about those times just as American children learn about the U. S. Civil War. (The reasons for the wars differ, but the impact.
Outlier (2020)
Bad writing and directing
The writing sometimes is ridiculous. Maja, sure that the death is a serial killing, doesn't first go to the defense lawyer to explain her thinking. Not that we know of. She runs into a dead end with the chief and works on her own, finally saying that the lawyer wouldn't let her speak to the suspect. We never knew that she talked to the lawyer! And why, given her view, wouldn't the lawyer let her meet the client? Then she gets a surprise call saying that she can.
Police make absurd assumptions. They assume that a body found in a burned building is that of a missing jogger when there is no reason to think that. (We are pretty sure we know who it is.) Elle, a young woman who finds the victim's phone, doesn't give it to Maja after walking for miles trying to find someone interested. (The chief wasn't.)
Too many moments are just not credible.
Yes, it is slow, a product of creating Maja's character and of trying to be artsy, but the writing and handling at times are are just plain bad.
The Beguiled (2017)
A quiet film that builds to a crisis
Impatient viewers need not attend this film. It builds slowly, but that is for good reason. The tension is subtle but ultimately palpable. And then the dam bursts. The remote setting makes the sheltered school girls and their teachers all the more isolated from harsher realities even though cannon fire of a Civil War battle is all but a constant in the background. A quiet film in its way, but rewarding. If you are looking for non-stop action, don't bother. Quiet and then not so quiet emotions rule this film.