Such a frustrating disappointment

i must have seen a different film!!

As Good As It Gets

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

There's no doubt that Rudolf Ditzen - or rather, Hans Fallada's book Every Man Dies Alone, or Alone in Berlin, is a masterpiece. This film 'adaptation' is far from it and is actually insulting the book and the true story and memory of Otto and Elise Hampel. A period drama set in Berlin during the heyday of Hitler's Nazi Party is an exceptionally ambitious, difficult and costly film to recreate, and the film maker and his team seem to me to have gone about this project in totally the wrong way - it's a confused jumble of priorities which negated the essence of the story and therefore the script completely lost sight of the intricacies and emotions of the real characters and the time in which they lived. The only real way to do justice to the novel is to serialise it as a television series; to explore the paranoia and the fear and the difficulties of living under the fascist regime, to show the poverty and hardship, the insidious mistrust of person for person, the degradation of society and the desperation of the inhabitants of Germany at that time. The film maker completely misses all of this, instead creating an atmosphere largely based on washed out colour and nothing being said. The costumes are far too neat and clean, everything is shiny and lovely and carefully placed, the casting is appalling - Emma Thompson, bless her, does pull in a good performance, but Brendan Gleeson plays himself as usual, and the detectives are just young boys completely out of their depth. And Depth is the biggest argument I have against this mockery of a great story ... there isn't any. It's superficial to say the least - only 10 percent of the characters from the original novel appear and the film maker pays little attention to those ten. It looks like it was filmed 'on the hoof' with very little thought for drama and direction, largely leaving it up to the mediocre actors to supply the viewer with the pathos needed. I wonder if when filming it more time was given over to style (which is largely inaccurate) than actual substance. This is not Alone in Berlin, it's simply a vacuous film that borrows a small idea from a truly dramatic, sad, and powerful real life story. Extremely disappointing and immature in every way.

First of all, if I would have been in the shoes of Otto Hampel, the one who inspired the character of Otto Quangel, I would not have exposed myself by buying cards in shops, I would have written those messages on plain paper or pieces of cardboard. Which I would have left in more populated places, such as tram stops, train stations, big shops, restaurants, etc. very crowded public places. It would have been even easier and less dangerous and with much greater effect. Or I would be writing at night with paint on the walls of the city Berlin. Interesting story, well done film, worthy of appreciation the acting of all actors, especially the protagonists, Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson.

Atmospheric, understated, shot mainly in B&W, convincing sotto voce performances from two superb actors/actresses - Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson - plus the less-known but still excellent Daniel Brühl, a Spaniard who plays an extremely convincing German, probably because he was largely brought up in Germany.Based on a true story from a novel (so it seems), it moves, movingly, to its final conclusion. There are few moments of definite dramatic tension and once the scene has been set, the plot plays out to its inevitable conclusion so, I guess, there was no real need.Why they changed the original title from Letter from Berlin is something only the producers/director know but the original makes far ore sense than Alone in Berlin.It's interesting to see that movies about 'the war' are still being made and it's absolutely essential that current and up-coming generations do not forget the madness and sheer inhumanity of it all, the acceptance of and the arrogance of the status quo at that time. We really need desperately reminding of that because, as we know, history repeats itself and the ignorant are out with their blinkers.If you want to take something away from this movie, take the knowledge that even small actions can have a ripple effect, that one person can make a difference and that without sustained opposition and resistance, evil will spread. It will, it does, we know this from history and current events, yet it's something we all ignore! It seems to be the way humans are wired. But don't let society wire you that way. Watch the movie and be inspired by selfless acts of bravery.

this is not a terrible movie, but it's hard to capture to real terror of Nazism. the book is a tough read but it's as near as I've seen to reality. the total fear of carrying out even the most trivial oppositional act. the certainty that your life is endangered if anyone knows what you're doing - even if it's your family. people always think they would have been in the resistance, but likely they wouldn't. this movie does a reasonable job of showing that only those with nothing to lose would even think about it.