The past is part of the present and affects our future.
That is the thread that runs through this beautifully produced and brilliantly directed film. This is an idea that is vehemently denied by Neo Nazis in my own country, South Africa, even now.
The actors are simply superb and the story is very well written and one becomes totally absorbed as one follows the machinations and plot twists in the film; when one sees what happens in a country where human rights and their violation are at the whim of thugs.
The theme music is haunting and memorable as is Romy Schneider's performance in twin roles. The great love that the lovers demonstrate is but a dream for many people - that makes the separation and the loss all the more acute; one feels for the protagonists as they try to overcome the enormous challenges with which they are faced by a brutal, racist Nazi state which demands total subservience and which destroys minorities and the untermenschen quite pitilessly.
The film is rich in ironies. One is faced with many questions as one sees a wealthy person risk his life: the organisation he has founded challenges the violation of human beings in the Apartheid state, in northern Ireland, in South America and across the planet.
A recurring theme is that of lovers looking frantically for each other... and missing each other; the anguish and the emptiness that fills one as one searches for the one human being with whom one feels whole.
The fate of the two loving couples in this tale fills one with emotion. If this was based on true experiences, even partially, one just keeps saying, NO!, NO! NO!
The love that human beings can come to feel for other human beings is a divine emotion. It is a love that ensures the immortality of Homo Sapiens. When authoritarian states interfere with, and undermine that emotion then they undermine themselves.
This should not happen to any human beings; people who love, who care, who are kind should not have endured this - innocent people who just want to love and follow their careers and nurture them families should not be tormented like this.
The film shows Germans who write and publish against the Nazis in a similar manner to how whites, Africans, Indians and coloureds did the same in Apartheid South Africa. Germans caring for brutalised Jews is a recurring theme in post war German films. In my opinion not enough films can be made about that theme.
The state might be evil. People do not have to be.
That is the thread that runs through this beautifully produced and brilliantly directed film. This is an idea that is vehemently denied by Neo Nazis in my own country, South Africa, even now.
The actors are simply superb and the story is very well written and one becomes totally absorbed as one follows the machinations and plot twists in the film; when one sees what happens in a country where human rights and their violation are at the whim of thugs.
The theme music is haunting and memorable as is Romy Schneider's performance in twin roles. The great love that the lovers demonstrate is but a dream for many people - that makes the separation and the loss all the more acute; one feels for the protagonists as they try to overcome the enormous challenges with which they are faced by a brutal, racist Nazi state which demands total subservience and which destroys minorities and the untermenschen quite pitilessly.
The film is rich in ironies. One is faced with many questions as one sees a wealthy person risk his life: the organisation he has founded challenges the violation of human beings in the Apartheid state, in northern Ireland, in South America and across the planet.
A recurring theme is that of lovers looking frantically for each other... and missing each other; the anguish and the emptiness that fills one as one searches for the one human being with whom one feels whole.
The fate of the two loving couples in this tale fills one with emotion. If this was based on true experiences, even partially, one just keeps saying, NO!, NO! NO!
The love that human beings can come to feel for other human beings is a divine emotion. It is a love that ensures the immortality of Homo Sapiens. When authoritarian states interfere with, and undermine that emotion then they undermine themselves.
This should not happen to any human beings; people who love, who care, who are kind should not have endured this - innocent people who just want to love and follow their careers and nurture them families should not be tormented like this.
The film shows Germans who write and publish against the Nazis in a similar manner to how whites, Africans, Indians and coloureds did the same in Apartheid South Africa. Germans caring for brutalised Jews is a recurring theme in post war German films. In my opinion not enough films can be made about that theme.
The state might be evil. People do not have to be.