A Vision of Hell

We will have to wait another 50 weeks until the next Oscars, but the German-Australian masterpiece “Lore” will certainly be in any discussion of best foreign-language picture, if not best picture, period. It could well be the finest war movie ever made — not like a “Patton” or “The Hurt Locker,” but rather as a depiction of the horrors of war visited on ordinary people, families and children. The title character (pronounced “LAW-ruh,” short for her name, Hannalore) is the eldest of five children of Nazi parents at the close of World War II. Hitler has killed himself, and the Allies have begun the occupation of Germany. Anticipating their punishment as Nazis, Lore’s parents (Ursina Lardi, Hans-Jochen Wagner) bring the children to a mountain hideaway. When they realize their capture is imminent, they are forced to abandon the children, including an infant, Peter (Nick Holaschke), twin boys, Günther and Jürgen (André Frid, Mika Seidel), and 13-year-old Liesel (Nele Trebs), into the care of Lore (Saskia Rosendahl). What follows is more than just a struggle for survival, as the children set out on a trek to find their grandmother’s house in Hamburg. It is a journey through a Dante-like vision of the circles of hell, a death-pocked, war-ravaged landscape and a people reduced to penury and near-animal status. We are witnesses to a living nightmare. Do not think that “Lore” sugarcoats German responsibility or pleads for pure victimhood. Lore herself must struggle with the family beliefs she has inherited, especially when she is befriended and protected by a young Jewish man, Thomas (Kai Malina), recently released from a concentration camp. Lore’s enforced, accelerated passage to maturity is fraught with guilt, fear, danger and uncertainty; her coming of age is attended by the awakening to her own childhood and innocence shattered to pieces. The astonishing and spectacularly beautiful newcomer, Rosendahl, makes this transformation grippingly, profoundly real and deeply felt. She is surrounded by a cast of equal excellence, especially Trebs as her younger sister and Lardi as her mother. The Australian director and co-screenwriter Cate Shortland understands the power of movies as a visual medium in a way that few American directors do. “Lore” plays out as a continuing series of brief, quick-cutting vignettes, thus acquiring a kind of steady visual rhythm. The accumulation of these hundreds of images, from the terrifying (dead bodies, bombed out homes) to the mundane (a seemingly random object) to the sublime (a trusting glance, a nursing baby), tells us nearly everything we need to know about the characters and their irreparably damaged lives. “Lore” perhaps has more in common with “Gone with the Wind” than any other film. But befitting our postmodern times, it is enacted with far less artifice, and far more verisimilitude. We are invited to experience the loss of innocence as our own. And as the “war on terror” continues unabated, “Lore” allows us to reflect on the ineluctable truth that war really is hell. “Lore” is not rated. It contains much disturbing imagery and a few sexual situations. It is playing in the new Screening Room at The Moviehouse in Millerton, NY.