Oorlogswinter (2008) Reviews

• Definition of Heroism

  gradyharp2011-09-28

  WINTER IN WARTIME (Oorlogswinter) is a stunning and intensely involving film that explores the damages war inflicts on all those involved. It is based on the life of Dutch author Jan Terlouw whose novel by the same name reflects the fact that the author spent five harrowing years under Nazi occupation of Holland in WW II: it has been sensitively and successfully adapted for the screen by Mieke de Jong, Paul Jan Nelissen and writer/director Martin Koolhoven. The title of the film commands every aspect of the story - the colors of a nearly black and white cinematography, the cold atmosphere that intensifies the desperation of war and of coming of age and the bleak aftermath of a war torn country. The time is January 1945. Michiel Van Beusekom (and impressive debut by Martijn Lakemeier) is 13 years old, facing the usual stresses of coming of age accentuated by the fact that his village is occupied by Nazi soldiers. Michiel's father Johan (Raymond Thiry) is the town's Bürgermeister (mayor) and attempts to pacify the Nazis whenever possible to protect his town - a fact that Michiel finds disgusting, as though his father was a Nazi sympathizer. Despite this disparity in viewing the atmosphere in the town, Michiel and Johan have a tender relationship as well. There is a crash of a British RAF plane just outside the town and Michiel and his friends inspect the plane, taking souvenirs, and then finding that the pilot Jack (Jamie Campbell Bower - now King Arthur in the television series Camelot) survived but is wounded. Michiel and Jack become friends and Michiel brings his sister Erica (Melody Klaver) who is a nurse to tend to the leg wound Jack incurred as he parachuted to safety. Erica and Jack form a relationship beyond nurse/patient status and Jack gives Michiel a package that is to be sent to England. In the midst of the action Michiel's favorite uncle Ben (Yorick van Wageningen) arrives and moves in with the family: he is apparently hiding from the Nazis and becomes Michiel's confidant in his care of the British pilot. Michiel thus becomes a part of the resistance movement and when the Nazis discover a dead comrade (a Nazi killed by Jack when he crashed landed) they intensify their search for traitors. Michiel works to help Jack escape, but someone must pay for the death of a Nazi soldier and it is the revelation of the family's surprising response that brings the film to a nail-biting close. The secrets of who is honest and who is a traitor become apparent. Michiel has become the hero of the story but at a very high price - the price of human conflict that war demands and receives. The cast is thoroughly solid and it is refreshing to note that the humanistic sides of both the Dutch villagers and the Nazi occupiers are made evident instead of the usual bad guy/good guy stereotypes. This is another fine movie about WW II and the effects of that heinous time on the youth who survived it. Highly recommended. In Dutch and German and English with English subtitles. Grady Harp

• A boy growing up in WW2

  rick-2202008-12-29

  Tense, yet restrained movie about a boy who discovers that war is more than just an exciting adventure. When he finds the escaped pilot from a crashed British fighter plane, lead character Michiel's first emotion is one of excitement. Disappointed in his father's - the town mayor - seemingly lacking resistance towards the German occupation forces he guards his find like a coveted treasure. It's his way to not only be part of the resistance but also to rebel against his father who does not want Michiel to get into any kind of trouble. Michiel wants to be like his live-in uncle Ben, who as a smuggler is more like his concept of a resistance hero. The story obviously centers on Michiel's attempts to get the British pilot safely back to Britain, and this is presented in an exciting way with plenty of thrills and narrow escapes. At the same time the underlying theme of Michiel's growing up in extraordinary circumstances is just as interesting. The changes in his character, his motivations and his perception of the world around him are shown in a subtle and convincing way. Good directing and generally fine acting help move the story along nicely, with both exciting action scenes and a realistic portrayal of 'normal' rural life during war time. Director Martin Koolhoven successfully manages to balance all story elements and underlying themes in a movie that is both accessible as a straightforward adventure movie but offers some character driven themes as well. Only minor criticisms are the dialogue which at times is difficult to understand (a common problem in Dutch movies) and the sometimes excessive use of hand-held cameras.

• Outstanding coming of age film from Holland

  Red-1252011-07-18

  The Dutch film "Oorlogswinter" was shown in the United States with the title "Winter in Wartime" (2008). It was co-written and directed by Martin Koolhoven. The movie stars Martijn Lakemeier as Michiel, a teenager whose father is the mayor of the town in which the family lives. World War II is coming to an end, but the Germans are still firmly in control of the area. Martin's father is not truly a collaborator with the Germans, but he has established cordial relations with them in order to spare the town and its inhabitants from destruction. Michiel's uncle, Oom Ben, is in the Dutch resistance. The plot moves forward rapidly after Michiel discovers a wounded British airman, Jack (Jamie Campbell Bower). Michiel is caught up in a swirl of hazardous, terrifying incidents. "Oorlogswinter" is a coming-of-age film, but it's also much more. Director Koolhoven has captured the bleakness of the Dutch winter landscape, and the attempt by Michiel's family to maintain a semblance of normality in the face of ever-present danger. The German soldiers aren't presented as unremittingly evil, nor are the Dutch citizens presented as noble in every respect. Nonetheless, good and evil clearly exist in the world and in this film. Who chooses good, and who chooses evil, is at the heart of the movie. "Winter in Wartime" is an outstanding film. I believe it is underrated with an IMDb rating of 7.1. I suggest you seek it out and watch it. If it's not commercially released in your area, it will work well on DVD.

• A Distinctively Dutch War Movie

  JackCerf2011-04-21

  The Dutch had an ambivalent World War II experience, and movies like this one, Black Book, and Soldier of Orange reflect it. The Germans considered them junior Aryans and behaved "correctly" for the most part. There were a fair number of Dutch collaborators. The bureaucracy cooperated, and a much higher percentage of Jews got rounded up in Holland than in Belgium or France. If you weren't a Jew, weren't drafted to work in Germany, and kept your mouth shut, life went on pretty much normally until the Hunger Winter of 44-45, when food and fuel supplies dried up and things got very hard. The Dutch resistance movement was a fiasco; German military intelligence infiltrated, captured and doubled the agents the British parachuted in, and sent a steady stream of false messages to London. Because Holland was off the main Allied route into Germany, most of it wasn't liberated until weeks or days before the end of the war. Their movies tend to present the Dutch experience as mostly civilized middle class people trying to get by, making moral compromises, and not being very good at anything more belligerent or heroic. The center of Winter in Wartime is Mikiel, a 13 year old in rural Overijssel province. His village is a backwater where the German checkpoint at the ferry marches off for a tea break at 3 p.m. every day, allowing people without papers to sneak across. The garrison commander is a fat, overage Captain, and his troops are boys barely out of high school. Mikiel's family are well to do, and his father is the mayor. One of their neighbors is apparently member of the NSB, the Dutch Nazi party. Mikiel is a typical boy of his age: active, curious, and just at the point where his interest is beginning to shift from model airplanes to girls. He zips around on his bike, dodges chores, teases his older sister the nurse, loves the family's riding horse, is fascinated by anything to do with the war and loathes the Germans. With all the moral certainty of a 13 year old, he detests his father, who must deal with them every day. He idolizes his cool bachelor Uncle Ben, who has a beard, a twinkle in his eye, no apparent occupation and something to do with the resistance. We meet Mikiel when he gets into some minor trouble; he's caught when he and his friend try to loot souvenirs from a newly crashed British bomber in the woods, and the German garrison commander releases him to his father. Because he's a boy and the mayor's son, he moves around untouched and unsuspected, so his best friend's older brother, who is involved in the resistance, gives him a message to carry. When the brother is captured and the intended recipient is killed resisting arrest, Mikiel opens the letter, follows it, and finds a British airman from the bomber being hidden in a dugout in the woods with a wounded leg. Jack, the airman, needs to get to a town where he's been told he'll find an escape contact. Mikiel decides that he's going to take care of this all by himself; he'll bring two bikes and some civilian clothes, and when Jack is ready to travel in a few days they'll cross the ferry during the guards' tea break. In the meantime, he'll bring Jack food, hang out, do a little hero worshiping, enjoy his adventure, and feel like he's helping to win the war. But what can go wrong does. The wound gets infected, Jack is too feverish to travel, and Mikiel has to bring his sister out to the woods and let her in on the secret. Within a few days, he finds himself in a very different movie than the one playing in his head -- he's now the Kid Brother in the picture about the Gallant British Pilot and the Pretty Dutch Nurse. He doesn't fully grasp what's going on, but he knows he's got a rival for Jack's attention, and he doesn't like it one bit. So he redoubles his efforts to make himself indispensable. Then things go even more wrong. There's a dead German out in the woods -- Jack had to shoot him to escape capture. The Germans find the body and take civilian hostages to shoot in retaliation for what they think is resistance activity. Mikiel finally realizes he's in over is head and calls in Uncle Ben. There are plenty of exciting narrow scrapes and close calls, not all of which end well. Without giving anything away, I can say that Mikiel's father, his uncle, the pro-Nazi neighbor and the boy himself all turn out to have various qualities that he hasn't imagined. He loses a great deal, including his boyhood illusions, and when the day of liberation arrives he knows a lot more about life but doesn't feel much like celebrating. The peculiarly Dutch irony is that none of it was necessary. The war was almost over, Jack would have been a POW under the Geneva Convention, the liberators would get there sooner or later, and there was no reason for anyone to have stuck their neck out. Every scene is from Mikiel's viewpoint. We see and hear only what he does, although we know a great deal more, both from historical hindsight and from adulthood. Unlike the similarly constructed Boy In Striped Pajamas, though, the script doesn't bludgeon us over the head. It sticks (with a few glitches) to the probable, and it trusts the audience to fill in what Mikiel is thinking and feeling from our own knowledge of life and of history. An American audience unfamiliar with the Dutch World War II experience will miss a good deal, and I'm sure I don't even know what fine points I might have missed. Definitely worth the two hours, though.

• An involving story, well acted, and confidently directed

  howard.schumann2011-04-17

  Based on the autobiographical novel by Dutch author Jan Terlouw who spent five grim years under Nazi occupation and was arrested several times, Martin Koolhoven's Winter in Wartime is the coming-of-age story of a teenager who becomes involved with the Resistance when he helps a wounded RAF soldier hiding from the Germans. Written by Paul Jan Nelissen and Mieke de Jong and set in January 1945 in a small town in Holland (but filmed in Lithuania), the film is seen from the perspective of 13-year-old Michiel who, in addition to dealing with the normal problems of a teenager, must handle his complex feelings towards his father, the town's mayor, euphemistically called a "neutral" or, more directly, a Nazi collaborator. Michiel is played by Martijn Lakemeier who, despite having acted for only two months prior to the film, does a highly creditable job playing the bright but naïve teen. Though his father, Raymond Thiry (Johan Van Beusekom) has the wounded look of someone just caught stealing, he loves his son and the scene where he teaches him how to shave is genuine and quite touching, though Michiel has little respect for his dad's cozy relationship with the German occupiers. The story becomes more involved when Michiel's Uncle Ben (Yorick van Wageningen) shows up and assumes the role of a mentor to the boy, a status abdicated by his father. Though Ben is protective of Michiel and tries to keep him from getting involved, the boy inadvertently becomes part of the resistance when he finds a British soldier, Jack (Jamie Campbell Bower), hiding in an underground bunker deep in the forest and brings him food and together plan his escape. To add more tension, Michiel recruits his sister Erica (Melody Klaver), a nurse, to care for the wounded flier, a meeting that develops into a personal relationship. As the film moves to an unpredictable climax, it becomes challenging for Michiel to fully grasp where people's loyalties really lie, and this lesson is learned the hard way as part of his maturing process. Winter in Wartime avoids the usual Nazi stereotypes and presents the Germans as human beings, though Koolhoven's even-handedness becomes hard to swallow when "friendly" German soldiers stop to help Michiel and Jack repair the broken wheel of a horse-drawn carriage, not asking who they are or where they are going. Though the film is set in occupied territory in the middle of a war, it lacks a gritty look and feel. Koolhoven makes choices that constantly undermine the film's realism such as Michiel running in slow motion towards a firing squad to try and prevent an execution and a lush musical background of soaring violins that does not seem appropriate to the circumstances. In spite of its flaws, Winter in Wartime is an involving story, well acted, and confidently directed. Though they will learn little about the full extent of Nazi brutality, the film should appeal to students seeking to better understand historical events they have only read about in history texts.