The best coming-of-age stories derive their power from being endings as much as beginnings. There\u2019s often a clarifying, poignant harshness in the losses they depict. That applies \u2014 with sobering grace \u2014 to the memory ballad \u201cAmrum,\u201d set on Germany\u2019s titular North Sea island in 1945, when the winds of a world war\u2019s conclusion blow into a 12-year-old boy\u2019s life with unexpected consequences.<\/p>\n
The movie bears a curious credit: \u201cA Hark Bohm film by Fatih Akin.\u201d Bohm, who died last year at 86, was a highly respected film writer, actor and academic, a veteran of Germany\u2019s New Wave. Realizing he\u2019d be unable to direct his fictionalized childhood remembrance, he entrusted it to his mentee Akin<\/a>, the firebrand behind modern German classics such as \u201cHead-On\u201d<\/a> and \u201cIn the Fade.\u201d<\/a> The project became, according to Akin, like \u201cadopting a child.\u201d<\/p>\n In story terms, that child, a stand-in for Bohm himself, is wide-eyed, sensitive Nanning (well-cast newcomer Jasper Billerbeck), who works in the potato fields of local farmer Tessa (Diane Kruger, in a small but key role). At home, he has a pregnant mother, Hille (Laura Tonke), aunt Ena (Lisa Hagmeister) and two younger siblings, but not the high-ranking Nazi officer patriarch who relocated them from bombed-out Hamburg to an ancestral house on this tiny, beachy outpost. Pejoratively dubbed a mainlander by even the friendliest neighbors and generally viewed with suspicion for his family\u2019s Nazi ties, Nanning is assured by his ideology-soaked mom that their roots, their \u201cbloodline,\u201d make them real Amlumers.<\/p>\n The boy\u2019s first real lesson in the shifting sands comes when, at dinner, he remarks that the war will soon be over, intending it as good news \u2014 Dad could come home. Yet his mother reacts as if he\u2019d sided with the enemy by wishing defeat. Later, with the news of Hitler\u2019s demise, she sinks into a depression, refusing food unless it\u2019s white bread, butter and honey, all in scarce supply. So Nanning sets out to secure her the necessary ingredients, as if the fabric of his world depends on it.<\/p>\n What follows is a tightly told fable-like journey built around the war-battered realities of survival when everyone\u2019s tired, hungry and irritated. There are brutal truths in store for Nanning about what his family represents. It\u2019s an evolving boyhood, framed with unshowy elegance by cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub against the island\u2019s flat, grassy, weather-rich horizons. \u201cAmrum\u201d avoids the sentimentality baked into so many childhood-during-wartime stories. Akin, as if inspired by the unfussy youthfulness that marked Italian neorealism and the New Waves in both France and Iran (there are shout-outs to \u201cBicycle Thieves\u201d and \u201cThe 400 Blows\u201d), zeroes in on the steady accumulation of detail rather than the trappings of cuteness or melodrama.<\/p>\n That measured approach, exemplified in star Billerbeck\u2019s arresting simplicity and the many fine supporting turns around him, allows us to clock Nanning\u2019s growing awareness of what matters to others, what\u2019s impossible to ignore and how to interpret an unjust world that\u2019s still full of beauty and kindness if you know where to look. Which, of course, includes inside himself.<\/p>\n Near the end, \u201cAmrum\u201d serves up a wonderfully understated moment: Nanning is invited to celebrate the war\u2019s end with a small group of dancing, drinking islanders. He hangs back, though, as if not quite ready to choose their joyous relief over obediently tending to his broken family. But you can see this dutiful son\u2019s wish to be one of them. For all of us wondering when an ugly time will fade, the moment will resonate like a cautious, dawning hope.<\/p>\n ‘Amrum’<\/p>\n In German, with subtitles<\/p>\n Not rated<\/p>\n Running time:<\/b> 1 hour, 33 minutes<\/p>\n Playing: <\/b>Opens Friday, April 24 at Laemmle Royal and Laemmle Town Center, Encino<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The best coming-of-age stories derive their power from being endings as much as beginnings. There\u2019s often a clarifying,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":916427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5310],"tags":[257077,257076,257079,16314,257078,28609,2000,299,390,1824,21356,257082,257081,257080,6080,257075,771],"class_list":["post-916426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-12-year-old-boy","tag-amrum","tag-bohm","tag-child","tag-director-fatih-akin","tag-end","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-family","tag-germany","tag-good-news","tag-melodrama","tag-mentee-akin","tag-pregnant-mother","tag-review","tag-sensitive-nanning","tag-war"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116462345588862816","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=916426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/916427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=916426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=916426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=916426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}