After her successful feature debut with Somersault, Australian director Cate Shortland has focused her talents on adapting Rachel Seiffert’s “The Dark Room,” an introspective novel set in post WW II Germany.
Sensual, layered in its complexity and often bleak, Lore follows the lives of five German siblings at the onset of the Third Reich’s collapse. Lore (Saskia Rosendahl) watches as her S.S. Nazi father (Hans-Jochen Wagner) and Hitler idolizing mother (Ursina Lardi) are taken into custody by Allied forces. After begging neighbors for scraps of food, 14-year old Lore decides to take her younger charges through Germany’s war-torn countryside to seek out their grandmother in Hamburg.
The 500-mile journey is both grueling and eye-opening as Lore trudges from abandoned home to empty bomb factory in search of shelter and food. Keeping track of young sister Liesel (Nele Trebs), twin boys Jurgen (Mika Seidel) and Gunther (Andre Frid), and caring for baby Peter makes her trek increasingly arduous.
When she encounters a young Jewish refugee Thomas (Kai Malina), Lore comes to grips with the prejudice instilled by her parents and upbringing. She initially rejects him, but discovers that she needs him to survive. In a stark scene of guilt and awakening, she approaches a wall covered with graphic Holocaust photographs. A growing maturity forces her to place in balance what is plainly before her eyes and a lifetime of propaganda ingrained by parents, neighbors and Hitler’s media and schooling.
Shot in tactile and lingering close-ups, Lore takes its time to convey subtle messages of where we are at any given moment. Whether it’s a German in a chair with a self-inflicted gunshot through the eye or Lore’s sexual experimentation at the hands of Thomas, the film’s direction is richly nuanced. To its credit, Lore never goes too far in either direction, letting the audience interpret and judge.
Alex A. Kecskes is a published author of "Healer a Novel" and "The Search for Dr. Noble"—both now available on Amazon. He has written hundreds of film reviews and celebrity interviews for a wide variety of online and print outlets. He has covered red carpet premieres and Comic-Con events for major films and independent releases.
