Winter in Wartime (2008)

Great Film overall

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Sloppy story; German troops intent on finding a downed Brit pilot and are unsuccessful day after day in the forest where the pilot's been hiding.But the bro and his sister make multiple unobserved daylight trips. (And the moron Germans fail to connect bicycle tracks to a hideaway.) Several times Michiel and/or Erica just drive along the road and find Jack. Screenwriter never heard of hypothermia? Twice people fall into frigid water without any apparent physical harm being done. But then again, there was never any weather cold enough to cause peoples breaths to fog up when they spoke. Plenty of electricity in hero house as well as heat....during wartime yet. Martijn Lakemeier (Michiel) not a bad actor but limited: After seeing his father murdered, hours and days later, he seems unaffected by the memory. Where's the trauma? Jack the pilot way, way too young for the part. My goodness, he's supposed to be a fighter pilot. The botched ferry ambush. Young Jack just knows that something's not right. Where does that instinct come from? And what about the 10 or 12 German riflemen who couldn't hit anything from the far bank? Speaking of the ferry ambush, if the Germans had been tipped off why wasn't there a squad or too on the side of the river where the ferry was tethered? Later on, the horse and buggy can't be overtaken by several German army vehicles. Plus more poor marksmanship including a machine gun shooting from about 100' away. Then the single most absurd thing in the movie: Jack suddenly becomes a championship rodeo performer and while the Germans are driving with their brakes on their vehicles, he jumps onto the horse and pulls Michiel after him. Later, the pursuers not that far away, Caesar is euthanized and the barely muffled shot fails to bring the soldiers to their quarry. Uncle Ben has kept his German sympathies a secret from his brother the mayor. And is stupid enough to keep incriminating evidence in the cheap suitcase? Jack is in the house only for a few hours, is being sought and yet takes the time to have sex with the sister, Erica. Folks, is that a reasonable priority? (No locks on her bedroom door either.) Jack's extremely nasty leg wound seems to heal overnight and there's no sign of a limp or any weakness in the leg. (Able to scale the bottom of a steel bridge like a trapeze artist under the very nose of yet another group of dim Germans.) My final comment is that this movie trivializes some very nasty things that happened in the Netherlands. TV Movie of the Week? Not really since occasionally some of them were not bad.

A fine World War II film made by the Dutch. As the winter of 1944-1945 rages, and the population in the German occupied Netherlands suffers famine, a teenage boy in a small farm town, son of the politically ambivalent mayor, risks his life by helping a downed British pilot who is hiding in the nearby forest. Adapted from a well regarded novel, the film is nothing extraordinary, and is far less flashy than the similarly themed Black Book but is enjoyable nonetheless. The storytelling is conventional and a bit slow at times but is solid and so is the acting. The wonderful bluish photography and the winterly landscape full of snowy fields and forests helps the movie (the film was shot in the Netherlands and in Lithuania). One may take issue with a few parts here and there (for instance, why the boy decides to continue helping the pilot even after he is unwittingly responsible for his father execution) but these objections seem minor in the face of a well made movie.

This has always been a movie I expected to like but never one I expected to love. I don't know, the movie always seemed a bit too low-budget and narrow with its story, characters and settings and overdone with its drama and action. Dutch movies tend to be told a but clumsily at times, especially when its also involving some action. Most Dutch film-makers really don't know how to handle action but luckily Martin Koolhoven isn't a director who suffers from this and he also really got almost all of the other stuff right as well.It's really one great and slick looking movie. It has got a great visual style, that it manages to maintain throughout its entire running time. Looking at this movie you really wouldn't think that it only cost a few millions to make, which really isn't a lot of money in the movie business, not even for a Dutch movie of this size and caliber. They really did an excellent job with its budget and besides its visual look, it also convincingly takes you back to 1945 wartime- and winter struck Holland. Director Martin Koolhoven even subtly managed to put in his love for spaghetti westerns in this movie (which is probably also the reason why it stars Dan van Husen in it) with some of the sequences and camera-work, without it being obvious or distracting for the casual viewer.And the movie does really feature some great camera-work by Guido van Gennep, that doesn't only just capture the mood and atmosphere of the movie well but also makes the movie more dynamic with its movements and set-up. Same can be said for the nimble editing by Job ter Burg, which doesn't prevent the movie from having some pacing issues in it though.But guess you could really 'blame' the fact that this movie is based on a novel for that. The story doesn't always flow well or moves along fast enough and it has some characters that more or less get neglected, as the movie moves along. This is all because it's based on a popular and well known novel by Jan Terlouw, which is 164 pages long and of course features way too much stuff to all effectively put into one movie. This is something basically all movies based off on novels suffer from, so you can't really blame the film-makers, though I still wished they would had treated some of its characters better and more interestingly. Such as for instance the Schafter and Auer characters, that had far more potential in them and could had really added something more to the story, its themes and the depth of it all.But that are about the only things that could had potentially made this movie an even better one, fore it does basically everything else right.It's not just a typical Dutch movie that is involving WW II. It's more one that is somewhere between a serious and heavy drama as well as a tense and engrossing one, in a more thriller kind of way. What the movie also does well is appealing to both a younger and older crowd. This isn't specifically just a movie kids or adults, it's one for all ages.But the movie still could not had worked out as well as it did, if it weren't for its cast. For this movie it was very important that they had a good young main lead in it and with Martijn Lakemeier they really succeeded with this. But basically everyone's performance in this movie is real good. It also features some big and well known names in it, most notably Yorick van Wageningen. Though it needs to be said that he has been working and living in the United States for so long now, that he has actually grown a thick accent when speaking Dutch. Luckily it doesn't ever get that bad or too distracting and people who don't speak or understand Dutch will not be bothered by this at all of course. This (almost Oscar nominated) movie surpassed my expectations really!8/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

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.