GRETA UNSERE MUTTER UNSERE VATER PLUS
Not just a gripping, moving (weepy) drama about friendship and family and what war can do to them, plus a rare (for us) look at it from a German perspective. That's what Generation War is about, and why it's so powerful. She turns in the woman – a Jewish doctor – who has not just helped her, but been a friend as well. Some way back from the front, at the hospital, Charly, too, is encountering the horrible reality of war and death. As does the one made between the five friends, about staying friends, and about Christmas in Berlin. But Wilhelm's promise to their mother is looking less and less likely to be kept. There is one more moment of brotherliness for them, a play fight in the snow, a brief reminder of happier days (and more tears here, obviously). "I was right," he tells his elder brother, "this war would only bring out the worst in us." But then later it's Friedhelm's idea to get the prisoners to walk ahead to detonate mines. Wilhelm is the commanding officer now, not the protective elder brother. Friedhelm is seen as a coward and a traitor by the company. Well, Lieutenant Wilhelm does he executes a Russian prisoner – he has to. The two soldier brothers, pushing into Stalin's Russia, don't just witness atrocities, they take part in them. A barbaric regime and a terrible war tear them apart, strip them of their innocence and their optimism, harden and dehumanise them. Nothing will ever come between them …Įxcept it does, of course. They'll see each other again soon, Christmas in Berlin, pick up where they left off. The five have a farewell evening together, with booze and jazz, love and laughter. Charly, too, is heading that way, to volunteer at a field hospital, do her bit and help people. Wilhelm promises his mother that he'll bring his bookish younger brother back when they set off for the Eastern Front. Greta, Viktor, brothers Wilhelm and Friedhelm, and Charly are five twentysomethings, friends since kindergarten who – perhaps strangely, given what's going on around them – feel optimistic about life, immortal, as if the future belongs to them. Whatever, it will be very hard for Greta and Viktor to see each other ever again. He's going away, to America he hopes, she hopes, we hope. But Greta is also saving Viktor, bravely and selflessly, because she loves him the Nazi officer could be Viktor's ticket out of there, a chance of survival. (Betrayal crops up a lot in Philipp Kadelbach's epic three-part German mini-series). He leaves it on the bed because she's not there: she's off with the Nazi officer, betraying Viktor. The dress is from Viktor the tailor who has been making it for ages for his girlfriend, Greta. Like the girl in the red coat in Schindler's List. It's often the little things, a moment of loveliness when everything else is getting so very unlovely, a reminder of beauty, tenderness, humanity. I think it's the red dress that does it for me, starts me off in Generation War: Our Mothers, Our Fathers (BBC2, Saturday).
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