Other People's Memories that Suck #1

There's a pretty decent German flick (with English subtitles) posted illegally online somewhere called 'Woman in Berlin.' It's about the fall of Berlin to the Red Army in 1945. Touchy stuff. I think it was extremely well done. It was all based on the diary of a young frau who survived the ordeal. The photography is excellent. The colour is there, but it has a slightly faded look. I don't know if this was deliberate, but it works. Naturally, it was all filmed on location. I was never once turned on sexually by the rape scenes. They were done most tastefully. (Please, I'm not trying to be funny.) Rape is serious business, and this film is one of the few works I've ever seen to deal with it squarely. By all accounts, the first wave of Russian troops to enter the city were professional soldiers and acted very decently towards their conquered. It was the second wave, the guys in the back, that did all the rapin and plunderin. (Those armies are all the same.) While the Russians come off looking like pigs in the context of this story, it is important to remember what the Germans had already done to them and to their families. There's a powerful line in the movie, spoken by a Russian soldier, that goes, 'We are not Germans; we don't shoot women...' I look upon the lead character as a kind of hero. She survived quite nobly under the circumstances. Then when she tried to publish her diary, she was vilified by other rape victims for not carrying on in a more socially acceptable state of denial. Poor dear.
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