Alone In Berlin (dir. Vincent Perez)

Handsomely mounted and efficiently directed, Vincent Perez’s entertaining World War Two espionage thriller harks back to a bygone era of storytelling: where narratives aren’t facilitated by big-screen thrills, and character developments can be inferred through a momentary glance and a fating look.

Adapted from Hans Fallada’s fictional novel, Every Man Dies Alone, it’s 1940 Nazi Germany and the streets of Berlin are littered with it’s joyful inhabitants exalting their triumphant victory over the French. But for working class laborer Otto (Brendan Gleeson) and disgruntled Nazi Woman's League worker Anna (Emma Thompson), the celebratory mob are the last things on their minds. As the recently bereaved parents of German soldier Hans (Louis Hofmann), who was shot to death in an early scene whilst on patrol in the french jungle, they're at a loss for what to do next. Anna’s immediate reaction is to fall to the ground in disbelief, coupled with a shrieking denouncement of their governments leader. While her husband on the other hand takes his time to process the loss (their only son) before channeling his grief in the form of anti-nazi propaganda.

Scribing away at his desk with postcards he acquired form the local shop, Otto doesn’t know how to understand his son’s untimely demise and instantly passes the blame on to Hitler - adorning card memos with opposing party rhetoric (albeit poetic in tone), with the express intention of spreading the word to the masses. In the midst of this, Anna isn’t interested any longer in the hypocritical misgivings of her job as Nazi Women League worker and conveniently over-steps the boundaries of her job in order to find more time to aid her husband’s mutiny.

Painting the screen with a snuff-colored aesthetic is cinematographer Christian Beaucarne, who sets the screen with an oily and smokey mis en scene to accompany the harshness of the subject matter. Alexandre Desplat’s score also is of note, subjugating delightfully meaningful piano soliloquies and violin solo’s to bolster the moments of reconnaissance with a heightened sense of dread.

But the film, surprisingly devoid of urgency though not enough to create a real pacing issue, is made more entertaining by the arrival of inspector Escherich (Daniel Brühl) who has been ordered by the SS to track down and muzzle the culprit behind the cards, which have seemingly been handed into the hands of the Nazis by those who stumble upon them. With a mustache so clean and neatly-trimmed it could pierce a balloon, Brühls appearance is not only delightfully mischievous but jump starts the cat-and-mouse exchange between Escherich and Quangel, and his no-nonsense approach to his job is half party allegiance and part egotistical compulsion.

It’s doubtful Vincent Perez’s taut and unassuming war drama will move mountains, and whether or not it’s mini revolution is as galvanizing a movement as perhaps other war films in the past have presented is for you to decide. Comparisons will no doubt be made with Brian Percival’s THE BOOK THIEF - which also found profundity and resonance through the horrors of World War Two from the point of view from German nationals wholly against the nations new-found sovereignty.

But here, there’s likable leads in Gleeson and Thompson, who find pathos and nuance in roles which don’t ask them to push their dramatic range too far. Though theres more of the same English-speaking Germans at the forefront of the drama, no doubt to sustain a viable marketing standpoint against those who don’t enjoy reading subtitles. The films underlying message of hope in the milieu is paramount to the films success, when many just followed in line by turning a blind eye to the ongoing radical nationalism, there were those who attempted to spread their counter doctrine to the population and these are the stories which resonate farther in the mind of this critic.