Lore movie review & film summary (2013)
The focus shifts from the mother, doomed to face Allied justice for her and her husband's apparent connection to a concentration camp, to Lore (Saskia Rosendahl), the daughter whose coming of age happens alongside her awakening to the truth: Hitler, her Santa Claus, her Jesus, presided over genocide.
Shortland is a sensualist, using constantly shifting handheld cameras shooting tight and close to make each step of Lore's education a palpable event. When she leads her siblings through the forest on a quest to grandmother's house, it ain't fairytale stuff. We see poorly shod feet set down in mud puddles, skin scratched and bruised by jutting branches, the air crowded with insects, smoke, mist, rain. Shortland seems determined to represent every kind of sensation and yearning in image and sound.
Which is why it doesn't raise eyebrows much when this film starts to become as obsessed with Lore's sexual awakening as it does her political one. Shortland's way into a scene is holistic: Lore's physical and emotional response to events merit equal scrutiny; each draws current from the other. When the kids meet up with Thomas (Kai Malina), an apparent concentration camp escapee who also happens to be a volatile and daring young man, his courage attracts her; his possibly being a “dirty Jew” repulses her. He circles the family discreetly but relentlessly, following them through the countryside like both a predator and a protector. But whenever they're in trouble, he steps in and takes charge. There are moments where we're unsure if Lore and Thomas will tear each other's clothes off or eyes out or both.
There's a style of filmmaking widely known as “Shaky-Cam” which increasingly threatens to cause an audience revolt as the new century rolls on. Shaky-Cam movies deploy handheld cameras to record the events of a screen story in pseudo-documentary style. When done sloppily and incoherently (usually in action films) it earns scholar Matthias Stork's designation, “Chaos Cinema. When done with inspiration and control, you get the realist classics of the Dardenne brothers and Ken Loach, the earthy lyricism of new classics like “Beasts of the Southern Wild" (2012) and the Andrea Arnold “Wuthering Heights” (2012).
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