A WOMAN IN BERLIN (2008) ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Max Färberböck
Nina Hoss, Evgeny Sidikhin,
Irm Herrmann, Ruediger Vogler
Here's a movie that's guaranteed not to cheer you up: a German account of the fall of Berlin, where the invading Soviet army apparently celebrated the collapse of the Third Reich by raping every woman in sight. It's the end of a war from the vantage point of the vanquished, not soldiers or politicians this time, but civilians who find that when the fighting stops, hell is just beginning. It's a little loose structurally, and a grim ride throughout. Women greet each other in the bombed-out streets by comparing notes on how many times they've been assaulted. They even trade jokes about it. At the same time, it's suggested more than once that whatever the Russians are doing to them, what the Germans did to the Russians was worse. As a movie made for a German audience, it's an exercise in national masochism, but it's also undeniably heroic, a testament to what people will do, and endure, to survive.
