Winter In Wartime Movie Review

Martin Koolhoven's exquisite "Winter In Wartime," is based a popular children's book. Artfully bridges a boy's adventure story, with the harsh truths of World War II. The terror, anxiety, hunger and hardships of a war torn country in 1945—and an impressionable kid's normal search for fun and mischief in a dark time—it all seems insurmountable, even to a boy whose father is the mayor of a rural village. Watching his neighbors dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and herded off to work camps, surrounded by the marching thud of jack-booted German soldiers.

Michiel (Martijn Lakemeie), son of the mayor of a small town near Zwolle, spies an RAF plane going down in flames. Michiel and his friend Theo (Jesse Van Driel) search the wreckage, recovering a stopped watch. Spotted by a Nazi patrol, they try to evade capture, Michiel is caught and taken to the Town Hall. When Michiel and his father Johan (Raymond Thiry), are called before the local Nazi Commander Auer (Dan van Husen). From that point on, the threat posed by German occupiers is ever-present, even though the German soldiers in this film are not the fanatical, ranting Nazis of so many movies. They are polite, even helpful, to the Dutch around them—until they’re ordered to arrest or shoot someone. This dichotomy communicates the sense of terror the people of the occupied village live with every day.

Michiel's uncle Ben (Yorick van Wageningen) arrives full of heroic talk and grandiose gestures, but he is evasive and disquieting when pushed to take any action against the Germans. When Michiel finds Jack (Jamie Campbell Bower) the surviving airman, he is forced to bring his sister Erica (Melody Klaver) to help bandage his wounds. Trying to get Jack out of the village turns out to more far harder than Michiel could ever imagine. When the body of a German soldier is found in the woods, the Germans round up several towns people, and the Germans are determined to execute a few people in retaliation. Michiel, who knows who actually was responsible, tries in vain to stop the executions. The twist at the end of the film, lands more of Michiel's family in danger and it is the coming-of-age moment in Michiel's life.

Winter in Wartime keeps the war largely in the immediate background to focus on Michiel, who dominates the picture. Director Martin Koolhoven sustains the young protagonist's point of view throughout the film. We see nothing that he does not see or experience, yet we feel the director is showing us absolutely everything we need to see. The bleakness of the wintry setting is beautifully caught by cinematographer Guido van Gennep. Some of the suspense scenes, like the opening plane crash or when Michiel falls beneath the ice and, to his dismay, is rescued by a German soldier, are breathtaking. But there also are tender, intimate scenes including one in which Michiel's father teaches him how to shave.

I give Winter In Wartime 3 stars ★★★. Aesthetically, Winter In Wartime is very solid, set in a beautiful landscape draped in snow that lends itself well to the desperation of the protagonist’s mission. The Film is an adaptation of the 1975 novel by Jan Terlow and is intensely dramatic and at times astounding. One such moment, shot in slow motion, is the culmination of visuals and absolute silence that culminates in a devastating outcome for Michiel and his family. On the face of it, this isn’t the type of film that you would expect to successfully combine genuine sentimentality and thrills in its final moments, yet it manages to do just that with seemingly minimal effort.

Winter In Wartime is rated R for Some Language

Running time is 1 hour 43 minutes

Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics,