When I saw the flick today, from the very first minutes of the movie I saw people talking and acting like today's people, set into some 1930s stage. I don't know if it's just the bad acting or the bad director that made the movie so implausible to follow.
The actors neither speak or act like people spoke or behaved back in the 1930s.
Within the first 10 minutes the words "Nazi" and "Hitler" were uttered several times - completely omitting that, back then, the true apprehended menace was the local authorities. Back then, the politics wasn't perceived as being the result of just one single mad man. It was a huge and, back then, popular organization that was ruling the country. I haven't read the original book; probably it's written the same way, but if it does, then it's, too, not using the words that have been used back then and written from a retrospective. So to me, this flic is rather a fictional wannabe than a realistic biopic.
Though I admit the film was portraying only a child's view on the situation, from my point of view it is emotionally quite vapid. All the important moments in the film that might have caused the slightest suspense or compassion were left out. Even the situation where the train conductor checks for the family name is depicted like they were just buying a pound of butter.
Which brings me to mention the completely irrelevant and petty musical score. I wouldn't call the few dull notes in the movie a "score" anyway. The musical score didn't at all convey any emotion whatsoever.
The depicted situations all were so nugatory staged and poorly scored, it was often utterly hard to bear. When the family left their mansion at the beginning of the movie I begged for some emotional musical score to convey the loss. But no, why bother viewers with emotion ...
Then, dialogs were often spoken like being read from a text sheet. The intonation was horrible. Important words were hidden in a discharge of words. No pause was disturbing the spate.
The only exception to the cast was the elder woman playing the housekeeper/nanny. She was acting marvellously, conveying emotions from every word and every micromotion. And I felt the actor depicting the son character acting quite authentic.
Finally, I don't quite unterstand why French scenes were subtitled while the Swiss actors (even the children) were to talk German instead of Swiss German. The children even were dubbed. Well, as I wrote before, the flick was implausible to many regards.
For everyone who wants to follow a year in a child's live bothered with some relocations but otherwise living a life everyone else lived back then, they will enjoy the movie. But for everyone else, expecting only a fraction of a quality flick like "Der Engel mit der Posaune", they will certainly be disappointed. To me this film is just a plain subsidied direct-to-video quality level production.
The actors neither speak or act like people spoke or behaved back in the 1930s.
Within the first 10 minutes the words "Nazi" and "Hitler" were uttered several times - completely omitting that, back then, the true apprehended menace was the local authorities. Back then, the politics wasn't perceived as being the result of just one single mad man. It was a huge and, back then, popular organization that was ruling the country. I haven't read the original book; probably it's written the same way, but if it does, then it's, too, not using the words that have been used back then and written from a retrospective. So to me, this flic is rather a fictional wannabe than a realistic biopic.
Though I admit the film was portraying only a child's view on the situation, from my point of view it is emotionally quite vapid. All the important moments in the film that might have caused the slightest suspense or compassion were left out. Even the situation where the train conductor checks for the family name is depicted like they were just buying a pound of butter.
Which brings me to mention the completely irrelevant and petty musical score. I wouldn't call the few dull notes in the movie a "score" anyway. The musical score didn't at all convey any emotion whatsoever.
The depicted situations all were so nugatory staged and poorly scored, it was often utterly hard to bear. When the family left their mansion at the beginning of the movie I begged for some emotional musical score to convey the loss. But no, why bother viewers with emotion ...
Then, dialogs were often spoken like being read from a text sheet. The intonation was horrible. Important words were hidden in a discharge of words. No pause was disturbing the spate.
The only exception to the cast was the elder woman playing the housekeeper/nanny. She was acting marvellously, conveying emotions from every word and every micromotion. And I felt the actor depicting the son character acting quite authentic.
Finally, I don't quite unterstand why French scenes were subtitled while the Swiss actors (even the children) were to talk German instead of Swiss German. The children even were dubbed. Well, as I wrote before, the flick was implausible to many regards.
For everyone who wants to follow a year in a child's live bothered with some relocations but otherwise living a life everyone else lived back then, they will enjoy the movie. But for everyone else, expecting only a fraction of a quality flick like "Der Engel mit der Posaune", they will certainly be disappointed. To me this film is just a plain subsidied direct-to-video quality level production.