Germany Year Zero

Audience Reviews

View More

Luca D @JoeCamel7 Jan 14, 2025 Besides having a very tragic story that is truly emotional, a great soundtrack, and an unbeatable backdrop of real post war Berlin, the acting holds the movie back a little bit and the characters lack the development they need to be relatable due to the short runtime and poor acting. I would recommend to history buffs and would maybe watch again. See more Lanfranco C @Lanfrancobz Mar 16, 2024 From the well described "horror" of year zero, Germany went back in track in less than ten years. Incredible. See more Christopher B @Ikari777 Aug 22, 2022 While many argue that "Germany Year Zero" is just misery stacked upon misery with nothing else, sometimes that's life and is reality for people. This is the third and final film in Rossellini's War Trilogy and is by far the shortest and to the point, running at 73 minutes while the others are closer to 120 minutes. In no way does the run time hinder the message of the film, rather it makes the message clear and hard. The film's protagonist is a twelve year old boy named Edmund Koehler who along with his brother and sister must care for their weak and dying father. Edmund's older brother was in the German army and thus is in hiding due to the allied forces being in power at the end of WWII. This means that there are four people trying to surviving on three rations, leading them all to struggle day to day. Edmund helps in any way he can, often making mistakes and being taken advantage of in many ways but It's clear his intentions are heroic and noble. After helping an old teacher sell items and make a little money, Edmund begins to get brain washed by the teacher who constantly speaks of being brave and letting the weak die and the strong live. It's due to this that Edmund proceeds down a rough and ultimately fatal downwards spiral. The film itself is a lonely and dark coming of age film in wore torn Germany and is almost a horror film for the neo-realist genre. See more Isaiah Y @zayman2 Jan 25, 2021 One of Roberto Rossellini's greatest films See more s r @ScottR Jan 5, 2021 Simple, but tragic. Showing the hardships in Germany post WW2. Saw on HBO. See more Adam H @Adm-supermarket Oct 5, 2020 I came to this thinking about fascism -- this striking moment when fascism is militarily defeated, but not yet replaced as a structure of feeling. When I was starting to watch movies about Nazi history, I watched the Nazi film Hitlerjunge Quex, which is also centered on a young boy of around this age -- it was hard not to think about them as a pair of movies about boys coming of age bookending the experience / ideology of Nazism. Of course, it also pairs with Rome, Open City, which I watched a couple of years ago. Here, the devastation is bleak, the situation is bleak, and one catches the feeling of these impossible moments. I kept thinking, as I was watching, about the fact that Germany was actually rebuilt after such devastation... Most countries so destroyed have languished for decades. I wanted to know the next chapter of what would happen to these characters, how they would develop, how they would end up ideologically and economically. Who would be sidelined, who would transform themselves? Yet, I would say that somehow, it wasn't as gripping as Rome, Open City. This movie takes a snapshot of history, and it chose a moment which is fascinating in and of itself but from which it is hard to draw any conclusions. See more Read all reviews

Germany Year Zero

My Rating

Read More Read Less WRITE A REVIEW EDIT REVIEW POST RATING