Please just shoot me...
...if I ever get so damn cynical that, as the critics did, I describe an excellent film like this as cliched or cornball. At that point, I'll know there's nothing left for me in this world.
shareJust saw this on Trending because of your post, and have watched the trailer.
It looks excellent to me. A very interesting premise.
I like the cut of your jib, Richard!
I avoided the film previously as it looked to me like the usual tedious overwrought WW2 drama with modern ideas shoehorned into the heads of 1940s people.
I could not have been more wrong! It's nuanced, sensitive, well written, with a balanced view of the Germans and the British and is not afraid to shy away from showing the effects of the destruction of war after the glory of victory is over.
It reminded me a little of 'Brief Encounter' in its stiff-upper-lip British romance theme also.
I have a couple of nitpicks; how on earth did Miss Knightley have so many beautiful gowns, after six years of war and clothing rationing, and only one suitcase to carry them in? And why was the colonel using what looked like a Colt automatic pistol (when he beat up the Nazi in the Russian sector)? The British officer who shot the fleeing German was, correctly, shown using an Enfield or Webley revolver, which was the pistol issued to British officers at that time.
You were right the first time: "a balanced view of the Germans and British" is the perfect definition of "modern ideas shoehorned into the heads of 1940s people". The British and Americans had to do what they had to do to stop the nazis and end the war. Unfortunately, German civilians died, but there is nobody to blame other than their own government. Everyone understood that in 1945.
As for a British officer having a Colt .45 semi-automatic pistol, there certainly was nothing preventing him from having one.
What I meant by 'balanced view' was that both Germans and British were equally fleshed out as characters; in some war films the Germans are just stereotypical 'evil Nazis'.
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