Resisting Nazis in 'Winter in Wartime'
Martijn Lakemeier as Michiel in " Winter in Wartime�" (2011) . Credit: Sony Pictures Classics/Sony Pictures Classics
Stolid, straightforward and a bit lacking in imagination or dramatic revelation, Martin Koolhoven's "Winter in Wartime" belongs to a subgenre of European imports, the coming-of-age-under-Nazis movie. Set in Occupied Holland of January 1945, it involves a wounded English paratrooper, strudel-devouring Germans and a plucky Dutch kid named Michiel (Martijn Lakemeier), who courageously cares for a wounded English soldier (Jamie Campbell Bower) hiding outside of town.
That he does this under the nose of the increasingly desperate Germans, who are ratcheting up their retaliation against the Resistance, provides moments that are suspenseful, and even heartening. But the various calamities of the story occur with such convenient timing you wonder whether the filmmakers had a bus to catch.
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Stolid, straightforward and a bit lacking in imagination or dramatic revelation, Martin Koolhoven's "Winter in Wartime" belongs to a subgenre of European imports, the coming-of-age-under-Nazis movie. Set in Occupied Holland of January 1945, it involves a wounded English paratrooper, strudel-devouring Germans and a plucky Dutch kid named Michiel (Martijn Lakemeier), who courageously cares for a wounded English soldier (Jamie Campbell Bower) hiding outside of town.
That he does this under the nose of the increasingly desperate Germans, who are ratcheting up their retaliation against the Resistance, provides moments that are suspenseful, and even heartening. But the various calamities of the story occur with such convenient timing you wonder whether the filmmakers had a bus to catch.
What's engaging about "Winter in Wartime" is Michiel's increasing disorientation regarding who's good and who's bad among his fellow villagers, and who he can really rely on among his immediate family. He enlists his troublesome sister, Erica (Melody Klaver), to help care for the wounded Jack, with whom she quickly falls in love; he's encouraged that his Resistance-fighter uncle, Ben (Yorick van Wageningen), has returned to the village.
But the world around him is in tumult, and in a kind of academic manner this reflects the confusions of Michiel's adolescence -- something that should, and does, take secondary status to the fact that there are Nazis in town. But it also punctuates in its way that "Winter in Wartime" is much more a character-driven drama than a war movie, a portrait of self-realization under duress and a film that feels a bit comfortable, predictable and far too happy to conform to the dramatic expectations of the foreign-language-import market.