Dresden (2006)

Purely Joyful Movie!

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

"Dresden" is a German film from 2006, so it has its 10th anniversary this year. The director is Roland Suso Richter and if you know the name, you also know what to expect: He is a trademark director for opulent historically-themed movies for the small screen. And this is exactly what this is. It consists of two 90-minute episodes and deals with life in the city of Dresden at the end of World War II. People with an interest in history will immediately make the connection that Dresden is possibly the one city in Germany that was destroyed the most by the allied attacks. And a part of this movie is exactly about this. Another reviewer wrote about the historical importance of the film, but I cannot agree with this at all. While the war (action) scenes are probably still one of the better aspects of the film, it never makes an impact from a documentary perspective and it basically just sets a forgettable background for the bland stories of the main characters.The biggest character is portrayed by Felicitas Woll. I personally see her as a charismatic actress that is really beautiful (which saved the film a bit) but has no range. But you can't really blame her either for the generic way the character was written. Male main characters are played by John Light, Benjamin Sadler and Heiner Lauterbach and these last two are the perfect example of actors that shine through recognition value instead of range. I cannot say anything about Light as I have not seen him in other works. Sadly, Jürgen Heinrich, who I liked, has not a lot of screen time at all. Marie Bäumer also fits the description I gave earlier. Charismatic. recognition value. But not particularly talented.The story is the film's biggest problem. In the end, nothing stays memorable about this film at all, not from a historic perspective and certainly not about the characters. There are several cringeworthy scenes though when it comes to drama like Lauterbach's character's farewell (suddenly a good guy out of nowhere???) or Sadler's shooting scene at the very end almost that could have been so much better (again, Sadler is not to blame, but the blatancy of the filmmakers in their unsuccessful attempt to create something relevant). The worst part of the film is probably the romance though. Again, it is not the actors' fault, but it already starts in the way Woll's and Light's characters meet when he saves a boy from committing suicide after Sadler's character was very cold towards the grieving boy before. These are the scenes where the film is nothing more than a schmaltzy romantic drama and even if the filmmakers' intention to turn this into something more is visibly throughout the entire film, it is really almost never successful. Another painful moment was the ending when they went for a semi-happy ending (the birth, but the death) and tried to convince the audience that a non-gooey ending is something that prevents the film from being forgettable romantic schmaltz. It does not. I don't recommend the watch as it offers very little of quality and instead drags on so many occasions because of characters that were written in an uninspired fashion and without shades.

I saw this movie just by chance, but i was very glad at the end that i had this luck...I have nothing against the fact that the film included Anna and Robert's love story, even though some may say it was a mere cliché and a pretext for the unfolding of the war background... I liked the idea that two persons can get to fall in love so profoundly and faithfully, and all of a sudden...What i have to reproach, though, is the fact that the characters were somehow just the pretext for the movie's target, that was to show a realistic picture of the war and the bombings... The characters and their relationships (the relationship between Anna and Robert,for example) lacked complexity, there was not a substantial personal and inner experience to mingle with and mould itself to the experience of war and make the characters pass through a dramatic process of their life. The plot involving the love story was kind of simplistic... Of course, the film showed the pure reality, which was good- an example of common people's lives as they were, simple, and of course the trauma that marked each and every one of them, even if not in a highly personal way as i would have liked... My opinion may not be totally correct, but this is what i felt... Where I found some substantial complexity, though, was in Anna's father experience, for he did learn at the end, when he died, how vain all his intentions were in the context of all the suffering around him, he understood that his efforts to dodge the war were vain if everything- family and peace- was being destroyed by the war just under his eyes...But, on the whole the movie really marked me, and i learned how such an experience as war somehow takes the charm of love and anything else that we hold so dear and that our soul really needs to be alive and content… war makes all these in those horrible moments seem petty...less valuable, appealing to us than they were before… maybe that was why the movie centered especially on the collective suffering... and not on a highly personal experience... because presenting the particular experience of Anna and Robert was just in order to perceive the war through their eyes (that is from a realistic, authentic and not an objective perspective, an effect that a documentary would not have had), but not through their soul too, that is from a personal inner view and experience… Despite this or maybe because of this, i think the movie does deserve acclaim!

As an English man living in Germany, it was interesting to see a German made production on the historical events surrounding the bombing of Dresden. One needs to understand, this is not a documentary, it is for the masses, so one should treat it as such. As an Englishman in Germany, I always hear one side, the Brits were war criminals, it, the bombing should never have been allowed. I mention this to my British relatives and friends and they have completely the opposite view. To give credit, the film provides both sides of the argument. It shows Bomber Harris giving his opinions as well as the reservations of some of his subordinates. It shows the horror of the bombings on the civilians. It shows the persecution of many persons including Jews and the extreme depravity of the Nazi regime. Combined with a rather hard to believe love story (Robert appearing at Anna's engagement party, dressed as a Nazi), it was fun entertainment backed by some significant history. Remember, as a love story with some history, it reached a much larger target audience than a pure documentary would have done. And it was entertaining and a tear jerker, at least for my wife. So lay off, it's good decent entertainment, whilst bringing over some of the historical background.

Just like Kleiner_Fuchs after watching this movie and other recent Teamworxx productions like "Sturmflut" I thought that, had Cameron not made "Titanic", these people would probably not rely so heavily on the ever repeated formula of a fictional doomed love with a hazardous historical background (though this is by no means a new concept). Contrary to my predecessor I think that in "Titanic" this worked out fine. But this may be mainly because a ship is a so much smaller microcosm than a city and the actual historical figures,though playing minor parts in the story pop up every few minutes.It might have worked in "Dresden" as well, had not been the focus so strictly on the English pilot and the Mauth family (plus a few scenes with Annas co-worker and her Jewish partner). From what I have read and seen on TV and listened to I have learned that there are so many interesting and heartbreaking actual stories. I think the makers of the movie should have worked more of them in for it was obvious in the movie that the parts that were the most shocking were the ones that were based on real events - just sad, that they were so few of them.Also, since the movie was so very focused on a love story that obviously not many people cared about, the structure of this mini-series was somehow awkward. Why make a two-parter about the bombing of Dresden if the bombers don't actually leave the ground until the last scene of part one and only reach the city halfway into part two? Had this been cut down by an hour and shown as one 2-hour TV-movie I believe it might have had a greater impact.Still I give this movie 6 stars, because the final 45 minutes actually do work. Of course, the focus is mainly an Anna and the two men running around in the city with her but there are many touching and horrifying scenes in which we as viewers get a little insight into how terrible and traumatizing it must have been to be at this place in this night. Sure, the actual events were still much worse and to tell survivors after viewing this one understands what it was like in Dresden is insulting, but it is mostly in small scenes like the one where a group of people asks a young soldier to shoot them because nobody will survive this anyhow, that I felt a big lump in my throat and got a better understanding of the horror than in the (arguably well done for a TV production) scenes of the inferno.Tha final scene in which the rebuilt Frauenkirche is re-inaugurated worked for me. I think I understood a lot better now, after watching this movie, how important the building was for the people of Dresden, and why for many of the survivors it was a symbol of their wounds slowly healing and coming to terms with these traumatizing events.But as a whole, this movie is not about "Dresden", thus it should not have this title. It is just about a bunch of uninteresting poorly written, cliché-based cardboard characters that are, though being mostly played by very competent actors, so completely unappealing, that they ruin the movie.