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Jemima Bucknell

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Tag Archives: Nazi

Iron Sky

30 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by Jemima Bucknell in 2012, Film

≈ 3 Comments

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battlefield earth, celestine prophecy, Iron Sky, moon, National Socialism, Nazi, Sarah Palin, Timo Vuorensola, Udo Kier, youtube

iron-sky2

In Iron Sky we see the rise of the 4th Reich, who have been building war machines on the moon since 1945 and watching an extensively abridged version of The Great Dictator to inform their growing generations of Hitler’s glory. When two astronauts (sent by the president as part of an elaborate voter campaign) land on the moon’s unexplored shady surface, they are accosted by a group of very stylish, gravity-defying space men. Washington, the first African-American on the moon, is assimilated into the Nazi co-op in an atrocious experiment and with the naïve Renate, and ambitious Klaus (two Gen X moon Nazis vying the future of National Socialism) they descend on Earth for a new holocaust.

Begun as a teaser trailer aired at Cannes, and then a viral sensation on YouTube, the warped brainchild of Finnish director Timo Vuorensola is an idea so extraordinary, its almost irresistible. It had a cult status before it started production, and is partly fan-funded. Shot in Finland, Germany, the United States and here in Australia, the special effects are great for its budget and the camp costume design is a marvellous mockery of the seductive SS uniform.

This feat of a team effort, 6 years in the making, does not necessarily vouch for the weak plot, babel performances or out-dated politics. The United States president resembles Republican candidate Sarah Palin but, please, she is SO 2010. The Nazi jokes are likewise exhausted and surprisingly enough the holocaust isn’t really mentioned at all.

Where conspiracy/cult movies like The Celestine Prophecy, or Battlefield Earth have a kind of niche market or faith, Iron Sky, parodying conspiracy, didn’t dare take itself too seriously or as seriously as the kind of audience it might attract. It may have been funnier, if it had been a little more evangelistic and less like a really bad Hollywood spoof from 5 of the 10 writers of Date Movie.

* a version of this post originally appeared at filmblerg.com

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Lore

24 Saturday Nov 2012

Posted by Jemima Bucknell in 2012, Film

≈ 2 Comments

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Adam Arkapaw, Australia, Cate Shortland, Germany, Holocaust, Lore, Max Richter, Nazi, Saskia Rosendahl

Director Cate Shortland won much appreciation for her superb first feature Somersault. Finally, her long-awaited follow-up, Lore, is a German-language Australian co-production, adapted by Shortland and Robin Mukhurjee from Rachel Seiffert’s British novel The Dark Room.

It is May 1945. Peter, an SS officer, is taken into allied custody followed by his wife, Asta, leaving Lore, their eldest daughter, to take her younger brothers and sister to their grandmother in Hamburg. There are no trains running, so they set out on foot across a divided and desolate post-war Germany. The children are soon joined by Thomas, a Jewish survivor, and in him they find a protector and provider whom Lore is both repelled and attracted by.

Lore and her siblings, at first full of music and playfulness, become subdued by temporal dislocation, faced with the aftermath of war, dead bodies, homes in disrepair, citizens in humiliating refuge. Shortland has channeled Elem Klimov’s 1985 war masterpiece Come And See, as the violence and disruption of innocence unfolds as new danger meets them in the mystic spring-fresh green forestry, wet with new beginning. 

The title suggests the picture’s folkloric quality, its distance from its own harsh reality and the intense bond between myth and morality. Name and identity are the most significant and therefore vulnerable agitators of the beliefs instilled in Lore and Thomas’ and how it effects what becomes a burgeoning, inharmonious affair, is an ambiguous and challenging experience.

Kai Peter Malina, as Thomas, is difficult to connect with – all horror is written on his face, his dark eyes a reflection in which Lore is faced with the human manifest of all her hate, guilt and confusion. Saskia Rosendahl exquisitely captures Lore’s bewilderment with budding sexuality, the truth of her parent’s crimes, the burden of adoptive parenthood and her lonely repression of all these concerns in the interests of survival. Her incredible beauty is used to signify her enduring spirit but behind her poster-child visage, is felt the falseness and cruelty of such superficial worship.

Max Richter’s remarkable, German-inspired original score, which is both harrowing and virtuous, is ornately complimented by Adam Arkapaw’s mix of dream-like framing and documentary-style coverage of ruin. Both music and film played a large part in holocaust history, from a propaganda perspective, to documentation, to all film’s made about it since – it has a history of its own and Lore manages to evoke all of it, which is a testament to Shortland’s knowledge of her subject matter.

* a version of this post originally appeared at filmblerg.com

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