The biggest strength of this piece, for me, was in the directors 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 of his true origins, and the two embrace one another. The mother, trapped between her daughters full hearted consumption of Nazi propagada, and her daughters 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 respectively. 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 towards 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 Hile Hitler! To then suddenly break character flamboyantly, and flaps his arms about like a burlesque dancer, giggling. Where the film didn’t quite work for me was the in-between-scenes. The times it took a real life story of miraculous survival, and made these events out to be as if he were some sort of circumcised Forrest Gump. A sweet innocent, who’d wondered 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, that they had to be embellished and made to look silly so as not to raise the eye of ‘oh come on.’ But If Catch Me if You Can, can do it, Europa Europa could have too.
The need to include a voice over served fine as exposition, but did subtract from my ability to fully absorb myself with the experience of the character. I think it would have taken some time to write your way around the many story beats and contextual information an audience not in the know, would need to know. 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 tonally the director failed to establish a reality severe enough to feel a genuine sense of peril. This lead to a disappointing ending, 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.