Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter

It never hurts to see the other side of the barricade of any war. It often turns out that even on the bad side there are usually the same people as the rest of us. People, who have their good side, but also the bad side. And I’m glad that the Germans have finally found their self-confidence so they can tell us their story. And even though they did it with the help of the television money, I can’t say this mini-series wasn’t worth it. You wouldn’t even think it was a television series. It shows an absolutely great story of a group of friends who are separated by the war and the camera tells their individual stories. It was really interesting. In this movie, the Germans were hard not only on themselves, but also on various nations throughout Europe. The concept of self-reflection is then reflected in the other camps as well, which I think not everyone is able to accept. There are both good people and bad people. Which is actually the standard of war. Due to this, there are scenes that are emotional as well as scenes that will make you sick. Technically speaking, I have no reservations about this series. I have not seen so well-done war story in a very long time and it was an honor to see it in an almost 300-minute-long running time. I admit that I would be able to take even more of this. The Germans reaffirmed their position of a filmmaking country that is the best at dealing with its past. In the best and pretty vigorous way. (18.05.2014)

For a country that was the aggressor in the war and, nota bene, also lost the war, it is more sensitive for them to deal with this sort of topic, especially when faced with accusations of genocide and a decent amount of war crimes. German television attempted to confront skeletons in the closet with an ambitious miniseries. The best and essentially the only sensible way to deal with a painful past is to present the victory of the Allies not as a defeat of Germany, but as a defeat of fascism and the liberation of the country from Nazi dictatorship. I have seen enough German films that were just swarming with anti-fascists, who had nothing else to do but to save Jews from transports and help resistance fighters, where one could only wonder where that regime came from and how it could function when it clearly had no followers. However, I don't think that's the case here. I can point out a number of minor flaws in this film, but when I weigh all the pros and cons, in my opinion, it is the best German work on this topic so far, at least in a series for a broad audience. Of course, indoctrination with Nazism was greater due to the long-term influence of the Hitler Youth on young soldiers than the series anticipates, but it conveys the essential message convincingly. If every nation dealt with the demons of the past at least this way, we could breathe a sigh of relief in many respects. The stories of the five friends from the series helped those in Germany who did not personally experience World War II - and the overwhelming majority of them do not - to form an opinion on the darkest period of their modern history and to make characters like those from the series a model and part of their post-war democratic and anti-Nazi identity. I don't see it as a solid 5 stars, for example, because the German acting elite is missing (although I'm certainly not saying that the performances were bad) or because the screenwriter, as is often the case with such extensive works, sometimes gets carried away. For example, the way the screenwriter dealt with Friedhelm's war database ending certainly looks terribly beautiful and pathetic in the script, but in practice, it contradicts the character's spirit and the reality of the final days of the Reich. A bullet in the back would have been far more practical and probable when attempting to surrender. On the other hand, I find this imperfect series so charming that I will probably overlook that. In any case, in my opinion, its qualities significantly surpass the popular German film Stalingrad. Overall impression: 85%. (06.06.2014)