Fantastic!

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Europa Europa AKA Hitlerjunge Salomon, i.e. "Hitler Youth Salomon" is a very interesting movie. The film should not be confused with the 1991 Lars von Trier film Europa, which was initially released as Zentropa in the United States to avoid such a confusion. If you do find yourself as a viewer, be glad that you don't live in a world like this, anymore. Directed by Agnieszka Holland, the movie is loosely based on the 1989 autobiography of Solomon Perel. He's play in the film by Marco Hofschneider. Solomon Perel is a German Jewish boy who is trying to escape the Holocaust by masquerading not only as a non-Jew, but as an elite "Aryan" German in Nazi Germany's Poland and a 'communist' student in Soviet Union's Poland. Without spoiling too much, there is a lot of disturbing things in this film that might make this movie hard to watch. This film does indeed take massive liberties on this remarkable man's life and who probably is a man of great integrity. I didn't like how much Solomon in the film has such negative characteristic throughout the film. Unfortunately this film bio-pic loses its own integrity by using far too much artistic license. The symbolism in this movie are really interesting. The title, Europa, Europa stands for the duo of Europe's political beliefs at the time and trying to fit in. Olivier, Olivier, Holland's next film deals with a similar plot. For the most part in this film, Solomon's circumcised penis functions as the film's chief dramatic device in which the plot is driven. Since he was circumcised at a young age, Solomon is going through a degrees of anxiety that is common with young men: feeling of loss of control over one's life. It is the one thing he can't change about himself. No matter how hard he tries to change his identity, his circumcision is the one thing that can expose "Jupp" as a Jew. For example, a romance with a German girl, Leni (Julie Delpy), who wants to conceive a child for the Fuhrer, proves dismal; because he can't consummate the relationship due to that fact. You see him, break down due to this. This adaptability is conveyed effectively by Marco Hofschneider in a strong example of a great performance from him. Still, I felt the true psychological depths of the character were nearly unexplored. Nudity plays a big part of this movie as he always cannot let anyone see him bathing. You would think, you wouldn't see nude as much due to this reason, but the movie has way too many nude scenes with him. While, the graphic nudity didn't hurt the movie, too much. It was indeed, distracting, as there were tons of scenes that he didn't need to nude in. None of them were use as sex appeal, but one scene was bit disturbing. Due warning, Solek has a scene where string and rubber bands in various painful ways to simulate a foreskin. It's really hard to watch. The violence was also bit graphic, but it really show you, how brutal, it was to live at that time. Add to it, was the graphic stock footage of the war. The stock footage was bit overused in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, there were some lighter side of this mostly gloomy movie. Much of the humor in the film, come with the fact that the Nazis officers have no clue that he is a Jew. It becomes really funny, when one of them quote that 'Jupp' looks like a young Adolf Hitler. Another funny moment is when a Nazi "expert" in "racial science' came to the school to teach how to detect Jews and use 'Jup' as a demonstration on how pure Aryan stock, he was. After all, where else would you see a feuding Joseph Stalin and a Jewish Hitler dancing together? I do find the movie use Deus ex machine plot line way too much in this film. The movies has a lot of great scenes. The whole painted-over windows of trolley crossing the off-limits Lodz Ghetto was just so surreal. I wish the movie focus a little more on life in Soviet Union, how hard was it for Solomon to lecture young Communists about the non-existence of God, when he was practicing Jew. The movie moves in a really too quick pace. The music adds to the dramatic tension, but is somewhat forgotten. Since the film was made from Europeans. It's hard to find a movie copy has English subtitles. While, the movie is now in DVD, you wouldn't find a lot of English dubbing version. In my opinion, it's better off to find the English subtitles, because you would miss the fact that the actor that plays Solomon speaks both great Russian, English and German in this. Overall: Europa, Europa is a gripping tale of one man survivable during World War 2 and the Holocaust. It might seek a bit lacking verisimilitude at times, but it's still watchable.

This French/German is one that I found in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I remembered the title but not the concept, but I was definitely up for it when I read more detail, from director Agnieszka Holland (The Secret Garden). Based on a true story, young Jewish boy Salomon 'Solly' 'Salek' Perel (Marco Hofschneider) and his family, Father (Klaus Abramowsky), Mother (Michèle Gleizer) and brothers Isaak (René Hofschneider) and David (Piotr Kozlowski), move to Lodz, Poland following the death of his sister Bertha (Marta Sandrowicz) who was killed in coordinated attack by the Nazis called Kristallnacht, which occurred on the day of his Bar Mitzvah. After Poland is attacked by the Germans, Solly and Isaak are sent away by their father to safety, they are separated, Solly is rescued by Soviet soldiers, sent to an orphanage in Grondo, and he becomes part of the Soviet Communist Union of Youth, and then the Germans attack the orphanage forcing him and the other orphans to flee. He is captured by the Germans, but because of his fluent German language he convinces them he is a German himself named Josef 'Jupp' Peters, being put with the German army he does everything he can not to be detected, only gay German soldier Robert Kellerman (André Wilms) sees his circumcised penis, but he promises not to reveal his secret. In a battle against the Soviets, where Robert and two others were killed, Solly tries to surrender himself, but they surrender and he is praised as a hero by the Germans, who decide to send him to Hitler Youth School, he and Hitler coincidentally share the same birthday, he shares a room with Gerd (Ashley Wanninger) who becomes his best friend. He also meets and falls in love with German girl Leni (Before Sunrise's Julie Delpy), but they cannot have sex as it would expose his true identity, there is a class to test a true German as opposed to a Jew, his measurements match what they would require as he is assumed to be Aryan, there is also medical exam which requires him being naked, so he fakes a toothache to get out of it. Leni and Solly have an argument about Jewish people, he slaps her and she leaves him, after some months he visits Leni's Mother (Halina Labonarska), she tells him that Leni is pregnant with Gerd's baby, he breaks down in devastation and reveals that he is a Jew, the mother promises to keep his secret. His identity comes into question at school when he is called to the police station and asked for his papers and Certificate of Purity, he says they are in Grondo and he feels he is doomed when they say they will as for them to brought, but then a bomb hits, also killing Gerd, the Hitler Youth students are told to fight for and to defend Berlin. In the battle Solly surrenders himself to the Soviet army and tells that he is Jewish, they do not believe him and say if it was true he would be dead or in a concentration camp, but then Isaak, who was rescued from a concentration camp, recognises and identifies him, therefore they are both let go to Palestine, which later becomes Israel. Also starring Solomon Perel as Himself aka Old Solomon Perel, Nathalie Schmidt as Basia - Cinema cashier and Delphine Forest as Inna Moyseyevna. The performance of Hofschneider is absolutely crucial to this film, he is absolutely fantastic as the young forced to hide amongst the Nazis to save his own life, you have to keep in mind that this was a real story, it really is convincing with it's moments of tension, and of course the chilling war sequences full of explosions and gunfire, a most worthwhile Second World War biographical drama. Good!

And Shoah, limits, courage and fear. A travel without end. A fight and a testimony. Sparkls of love and pieces of a world. And the life as essential gift. It is story of a Jew. And lesson about small things who must be the essence. But the view is more large. Like a book with illustrations - bones of words. The reality of young Salomon is present in any age. The masks and the shadows, the good people and the territories in same color. So, more than a description of a miracle with many faces, the film is praise of sense, in gloomy time, of every day. It is not The Pianist or Schindler List. Only exercise of feelings and searches, of terror and hope, it is way of a silhouette to his real identity.

The incredible story of Solomon Perel, an Eastern European Jewish teen who escaped the Holocaust by posing as a Nazi, might be difficult to swallow if it wasn't entirely true. Separated from his family and captured by German troops, Solomon escaped execution by claiming to be a 'pure bred' German orphan, apparently with enough conviction to be welcomed warmly into the ranks of his captors. The film explains the success of his desperate charade by presenting him as a passive victim of chance and circumstance. In constant jeopardy of being discovered, he is inevitably saved by one miracle of fate after another: in the Wermacht, in a Hitler Youth School, and finally as a prisoner of the Russians, awaiting the firing squad. The fact that the Germans embraced him as a model Aryan only reinforces the total blindness of their 'Master Race' conceit. With a rich sense of irony and Old World ambiguity (helping to explain the double title) veteran writer director Agnieszka Holland shows the German people to be simultaneously capable of uncomplicated affection and irrational hatred.