There are a myriad ways any art form may approach a given topic, like the impact of violence to humans and societies, and go from the local to the universal. This movie succeeds even if not perhaps brilliantly. I wonder, how many movies we've seen on the Vietnam, the II WW or the Gulf War from the perspective of US? And yet, a new one may draw our interest because it will depend on its angle and approach and the narrative or symbolic means to convey fear, horror, pain, humiliation, shame, rage, despair, etc. Sometimes I've heard young people from Germany, France, Netherlands, Spain complain about the amount of films or novels on themes of our traumatic recent pasts. For me, instead, any new film on the Spanish Civil War or the dictatorship is welcome, though there is such a thing as the impact of collective conciousness, so it will and can never be the same. I cannot keep an emotional distance. I remember now having watched Hanna Arendt a year ago and being also impacted on the new concept of the banalization of evil and the old concept of collaboration to save your own skin. Again, probably not a great movie from a critic's perspective. I have seen this story on Lithuania's past under Soviet oppression with great interest. I have only seen a Estonian one so far, and I have Ikitie on my waiting list. I have also seen several films on Eastern Germany. All I can say is, more. I want to know more. Traumatic histories deserve to be told and no film critic should belittle them under the appearance of objectivity.
Review of Ashes in the Snow
