Surprisingly incoherent and boring

A Masterpiece!

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

In response to the review stating the Germans and Russians hatred of this book. I have an original English pressing under the title 'A woman in Berlin' -Anonymous. Printed via Secker & Warburg (1955).I think it was closer to an ambivalent position, which would seem shameful but in Great Britain which hadn't gone through horrors of war comparable to mainland Europe there was still rationing the country was dealing with its declining empire,this I believe may have lead to a general sense of wishing to look ahead( together with a largely ambivalent feeling towards Germans sufferings).The general response from Russians I think would be obvious.I think it seems likely that the book with for obvious reasons difficulties including not having the author available ,tragically slipped through the cracks,as have many works in the past for different reasons .In regard to the film I think overall they did quite a good job ,It being a subject which can be handled badly and result in exploitation .or sometimes understate the reality and have an anaemic product,which looks insensitive and uncaring to the victims.There is also no eventual 'day in court'or cathartic victory or 'closure '.An alternative to this 'populist' approach may be something like Salo:120 days in Sodom which is revered by many critics but failed to reach the 'General public '.

Being of German blood and having a mother who actually lived through the experience of living in Berlin as the Russian armies marched in, I was looking forward to a film that mirrored the experiences that she lived through. She joined to watch and disappeared about half an hour into the movie. Germans at the time thought of Russians as brutal subhumans and that was part of the justification for conquering & enslaving them so that the more deserving master race could take over their lands. Looks like some still have that attitude. My mother does not, nor do most of her friends who also experienced the war from various parts of Berlin and Germany. Sure rapes did happen, but not to the extent that this movie portrays where every day consisted endless Russian abuses. My mother was not raped once, nor any of her friends. The Russian soldiers were human - some good, some bad - no different than any other human beings. She tells the story of an extremely drunk Russian soldier invading the basement they were hiding in as their first contact. Yes he did drag a woman off into the corner, no doubt a terrifying experience. But then before he could do any damage he fell asleep & started snoring.

I enjoyed the movie but it was soft on the atrocities committed by both sides. To make a movie marketable I'm sure you can't get too raw with content so I forgive the filmmakers a bit. This said I think they did as well as they could to at least put this story in front of the masses. It's a great anti-war testament and a scary look at what people are capable of. Throughout the movie I kept thinking to myself how terrible and cruel war is to even put people into this frame of thinking! If only they would have taped the feelings of both sides more to help explain the situations and incredible difficulty of the moral choices made. It's frightening how easy these situations could come to be. Yes, it's hard to believe the extent of evil in people unleashed in war but this movie helps us not forget about the total casualties it can bring.

A Woman in Berlin (2008)Imagine the horrors of women caught in a large city during the chaos of war, with occupying troops storming your apartment building day after day. Well, think again. It isn't imaginable. I think even people who live through such things (and we are talking Berlin, 1945 for this movie) the truth is something that is pushed away. Because even watching a movie--a movie!--of these events is unbearable.Not that the movie is unwatchable. Just the opposite. It's beautifully made, seeming to parallel that other recent German movie about the last days of the Nazi reign, "Downfall," 2004. But unlike that movie, this isn't about political history, or the history of war, or even the dramatization of historical figures as real people. This is a personal story, centering around one woman played by Nina Hoss, and about the repeated rape and abuse of women by the Russian troops for days and weeks on end. There was no escape, no power to complain to, no justice anywhere, anywhere, not German or Russian or even American (assuming they were any better) a mile or two away.The movie is based on a book, "Anonyma," by a woman whose identity is not revealed, if it is even known (this was her protection even after death). The movie suffers now and then from a sameness, a steady pounding, beginning to end. The parade of horrors is continuous even as relationships develop and the first wave of anarchistic occupiers shifts to more entrenched troops and some general partying. You do cling to some semblance of progression, or of events to stand out from the others, but it's mostly about horribleness. But maybe that's the way it should be. It was an endless nightmare on every level, even if you (they, these women) survive. In some ways, the end of the war is more believably insane here than in "Downfall" even though they are in many ways comparable movies, comparable moments. Such an array or gritty, believable acting and sets you won't find often. And thankfully, even the sentimental aspects are handled without swelling music and other cinematic tricks found too often this side of the Atlantic.One last point, whatever you think of the Germans and WWII, here is yet another kind of national acknowledgment and, for many, soul-searching. This is a German film. The Russians don't come off great, for sure, but the Germans are clearly at fault, and are shown that way, and shown as responsible for even greater crimes. There's no glossing over any of it. Watch this movie. It won't be fun, but it'll be stirring and important.