Another DVD movie that a friend suggested I watch, it is a movie that I would buy for its message. What is disappointing about a movie that I would otherwise rate nearer 10 for the acting, intrigue and drama is that this is yet another movie 'from Hollywood' that really twists the truth to sell a movie.
One need only look up the history of one real character, Fritz Vincken. Vincken is portrayed as a young German boy who witnesses a surreal event that is sponsored by his German mother on Christmas Eve, 1944. Persuading American soldiers to make her temporary home a place of neutral refuge on Christmas Eve, she risks execution for treason. The truth is that a German patrol then arrives at the same isolated cabin, agrees to a night of no guns, and actually sups with and helps a wounded American soldier. Both factions then go off in opposite directions to resume the fighting while leaving the boy and mother to survive an incredibly stupid war.
The 'based on facts' portrayal in this movie immediately falls apart IF we understand that neither the mother nor the boy understood English. One American soldier spoke French. The German mother also did. This helped in the real situation in the end. Frantic arm waving changed into some words of understanding.
Knowing this base fact and the fact that the 'Hollywood' version goes to great extravagance to dramatize the situation may diminish the value of this movie as a record of history. Its value is in the dialogue and emotion. Once again, we have another movie that portrays why our world stumbles along in vast international murder because we have lost all common sense to what our moral duty to each other is.
This movie is good in that it does not sell 'Jesus Christ' and Christmas as 'the reason for the season'. It simply illustrates what the bravery of one lady, without a gun, can do to end the senseless killing we seem bent on repeating despite these lessons from our human history.
That small fact makes this not-so-fact-based movie still worth watching. I am not so certain that the surviving German son's 1997 interview (by a Honolulu high school student) as to what really happened would make a 'block buster movie'. Still, I will buy this DVD in the end for the compelling messages in the movie.
We need to start to heed messages from movies like this to make this world a better place for generations to come.
One need only look up the history of one real character, Fritz Vincken. Vincken is portrayed as a young German boy who witnesses a surreal event that is sponsored by his German mother on Christmas Eve, 1944. Persuading American soldiers to make her temporary home a place of neutral refuge on Christmas Eve, she risks execution for treason. The truth is that a German patrol then arrives at the same isolated cabin, agrees to a night of no guns, and actually sups with and helps a wounded American soldier. Both factions then go off in opposite directions to resume the fighting while leaving the boy and mother to survive an incredibly stupid war.
The 'based on facts' portrayal in this movie immediately falls apart IF we understand that neither the mother nor the boy understood English. One American soldier spoke French. The German mother also did. This helped in the real situation in the end. Frantic arm waving changed into some words of understanding.
Knowing this base fact and the fact that the 'Hollywood' version goes to great extravagance to dramatize the situation may diminish the value of this movie as a record of history. Its value is in the dialogue and emotion. Once again, we have another movie that portrays why our world stumbles along in vast international murder because we have lost all common sense to what our moral duty to each other is.
This movie is good in that it does not sell 'Jesus Christ' and Christmas as 'the reason for the season'. It simply illustrates what the bravery of one lady, without a gun, can do to end the senseless killing we seem bent on repeating despite these lessons from our human history.
That small fact makes this not-so-fact-based movie still worth watching. I am not so certain that the surviving German son's 1997 interview (by a Honolulu high school student) as to what really happened would make a 'block buster movie'. Still, I will buy this DVD in the end for the compelling messages in the movie.
We need to start to heed messages from movies like this to make this world a better place for generations to come.