Flammen & Citronen (2008)

RATING:	80%
FORMAT:	DVD

(http://goodfellamovies.blogspot.co.uk)

[Flame & Citron; Flame and the Lemon]

Just for a change, we have here a tale of extraordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, rather than just ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. These characters would stick out in any crowd and the background of the war merely emphasizes their extraordinariness.

This is a world where everyone lives at the limits of human experience because they could not live any other way: Such people need a war to feel anything human at all. This creates a drama that basically asks: Who is right and who is wrong? The answer is, in a way, obvious since there is no such thing as a good Nazi. However, to defeat them one must adopt many of their methods and bring to light aspects of ones own personality that one would probably deny possessing. Without a war, the heroes here would have undoubtedly been common criminals.

It can be difficult to keep ones ethical bearings when one embarks on a killing spree - no matter how justified serial murder often is. Personal relationships become problematic when you may have to kill the one you are involved with, since betrayal and loss of trust - at some point - is more than likely. The two lead characters here are quite different from one another and this effectively demonstrates the differing effects of conflict - emotionalism and emotional repression. In this world of paranoia, informers and ulterior motives, killing is more often to advance personal interests than political or military ones. As is required of such profound thematic content, the performances are excellent throughout.

A psychologically-insightful movie, this one tells how various resistance groups came to fight each other as the Second World War neared its end. It also tells how some became so inured to warfare that, for them, there was no “afterwards” - they had to seek other wars to fight. A clever look at war, as such, in its refusal to conform to the moral certainties of black and white because war itself is not that simple.

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