"Krupp - Eine deutsche Familie" or "Krupp: A Family Between War and Peace" is a German mini-series from 2009, which means it already has its 7th anniversary this year. It was made by the late Carlo Rola and runs for slightly under 4.5 hours total. These German mini-series frequently have this runtime as it makes it easy to fill it into three parts of 90 minutes each or slightly under as in this case. Maybe you have heard the name Krupp before already. If not, this film is about a very famous steel manufacturer from Germany and the actions starts over 100 years ago, but also includes a lot more recent stuff, which is why several characters are played by more than one actor due to the age difference. One example would be Heino Ferch and Thomas Thieme playing one of the main characters. These two also reunited for a mini-series on the Hotel Adlon from several years later. So two known names already and there are more known names in here for sure. You can check the cast list. Let me just say that Iris Berben and Benjamin Sadler play the two most important characters and the movie has a lot to do with that mother-son relationship.
I personally would not say that this was a good or great watch really. However, I did enjoy the middle part with the problems of Sadler's character getting his wife accepted by his family and also including the scenes when Father Krupp tries to get involved with the Nazis in order to become even richer, a fairly dark era in the Krupp family history. This I also enjoyed of personal preference. First of all, this middle part was the only one that interested me historically really, but it's also because I like Thieme a lot and here he took over from Ferch. Other than that, I must sadly say that parts 1 and 3 were not relevant enough for my liking which is, why I give this one ultimately a negative verdict. The most embarrassing thing here was probably how many times Krupp (and in what cringeworthy manner by Berben especially) was mentioned during these over 4 hours. You could almost make a drinking game based on that. On a more serious note, I also found the acting and character writing sometimes not good at all. As a whole, the bad outweighs the good and the strong level from part 2 is not existent at all in parts 1 and 3. I give this one a thumbs-down. Not recommended, especially not at this duration.
I personally would not say that this was a good or great watch really. However, I did enjoy the middle part with the problems of Sadler's character getting his wife accepted by his family and also including the scenes when Father Krupp tries to get involved with the Nazis in order to become even richer, a fairly dark era in the Krupp family history. This I also enjoyed of personal preference. First of all, this middle part was the only one that interested me historically really, but it's also because I like Thieme a lot and here he took over from Ferch. Other than that, I must sadly say that parts 1 and 3 were not relevant enough for my liking which is, why I give this one ultimately a negative verdict. The most embarrassing thing here was probably how many times Krupp (and in what cringeworthy manner by Berben especially) was mentioned during these over 4 hours. You could almost make a drinking game based on that. On a more serious note, I also found the acting and character writing sometimes not good at all. As a whole, the bad outweighs the good and the strong level from part 2 is not existent at all in parts 1 and 3. I give this one a thumbs-down. Not recommended, especially not at this duration.
