Europa Europa
The biggest strength of this piece, for me, was the director’s decision to allow shots of emotional significance to play for an uncommonly long time. A permission of time and space to let emotion breathe.
One such moment. When our adolescent Jewish protagonist reveals to the German mother of his girlfriend his true origins, and the two embrace. The mother, trapped between her daughter’s full-hearted consumption of Nazi propaganda, and her daughter’s boyfriend, a young Jewish boy in love with a girl who could never love his true self.
The visual metaphor sequences were quite startling, if not a touch overdrawn. They created a fascinating dialogue between the competing ideologies of the Fascist Reich and the Communist USSR. It revealed the innate flaws of their respective ideologies in their cult-like upholding of Hitler and Stalin. A particular sequence of note had Hitler and Stalin embrace one another, dancing an elegant ballet in a communist orphanage, candy falling from the sky toward children quick to embrace it.
Tonally I was most engaged when the film took a turn for the surreal or when it revealed a moment of deeper character truth. A favourite scene had our young Jew hidden in the uniform of a Nazi youth, practising his Heil Hitler, then suddenly breaking character flamboyantly, flapping his arms like a burlesque dancer, giggling.
Where the film didn’t quite work for me was the in-between scenes. The moments where it took a real-life story of miraculous survival and framed these events as if he were some sort of circumcised Forrest Gump. A sweet innocent who wandered his way into luck beyond reality. If the story was true, which it is, they should have found ways to block these scenes to ground them in reality. Perhaps the director realised there were moments so beyond belief they had to be embellished and made to look silly, so as not to elicit an oh come on. But if Catch Me If You Can could do it, Europa Europa could have too.
The need to include a voice-over worked fine as exposition, but it detracted from my ability to fully absorb myself in the experience of the character. I think it would have taken time to write around the many story beats and contextual information an audience unfamiliar with history would need to understand.
Overall a thoroughly insightful picture. It soared in its portrayal of the surreal, its examination of vicious ideology, and had a handful of truly special character moments. It suffered when the director failed to establish a reality severe enough to create a genuine sense of peril. This led to a disappointing ending where the narrative fizzles due to a lack of consequence.
Having said all that, I adore this film. Europa Europa, a wonderful study on humanity and adolescence during WW2.
