Amrum reteams director Fatih Akin and star Diane Kruger in a period drama set on the North Frisian Island of Amrum (the German North Sea coast) in the final days of World War II.
Grade: B (*** out of *****)
The film is based on the childhood memories of German director and writer Hark Bohm,wh was initially set to make this film.
The protagonist is an empathetic child named Nanning (Jasper Billerbeck) whose mother has just given birth. As she recovers, she keeps dreams of bread and honey, which Nanning sets about acquiring at all costs[ agter all, it’s a time when such supplies are in scant supply.
Akin’s elegantly spare drama centers on this young member, age 12, of the Hitler youth, tasked with dubious duties, which are only partially under his grasp, which makes him an ambivalent figure to some, while sympathetic to others.
Amrum aims, but does not always succeeds, at being a soul-stirring, poetic tale, sort of a companion piece to De Sica’s neorealist classics, Shoehine and Bicycle Thieves.
Though groumded in a particular socio-political milieu, Amrum’s message is universal, suggesting that had the boy been brought up under different circumstances, he would have been an ordinary child, doing good instead of brewing hateful thoughts.
Like the nonjudgmental approach that defines his other observant films, Akin tries to locate and understand the human roots of any evil (Nazi-bred included), based on his belief that the only way to disable it is knowing amd understanding the contexts in which it originated.
The German-Turkish filmmaker went on to win the best screenplay honor for The Edge of Heaven at the 2007 Cannes Film Fest.
As for Diane Kruger, an international star better known in Europe than in the U.S., she too earned her share of kudos, including best actress for In the Hole in the 2017 Cannes Film Fest.
