The Last Train (2006)

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Movie
Original title The last train
Country of production Germany , Czech Republic
original language German
Publishing year 2006
length 123 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 14
Rod
Director Joseph Vilsmaier ,
Dana Vávrová
script Artur Brauner ,
Stephen Glantz
production Artur Brauner
camera Helmfried Kober
Joseph Vilsmaier
cut Uli Schön
occupation

The Last Train is a German feature film from 2006, which was created and produced by Artur Brauner based on an original script (under a pseudonym) . Directed by Joseph Vilsmaier and Dana Vávrová .

action

The film describes the fate of some of the last Berlin Jews who were sent to Auschwitz by train from platform 17 of the Berlin-Grunewald train station in April 1943 . The cynical occasion is Hitler's birthday , to whom one would like to present a “ Jewish-pure Berlin” as a gift . The journey will take six days, water and food are in short supply, and the situation on the train is unbearable. Some of the people crammed into cattle wagons try to break out of the wagon. Among them are the Neumann couple and a young woman, Ruth Zilbermann. The Neumanns' twelve-month-old son dies due to the rigors of the transport. In the course of the film, several other characters who were brought closer to the viewer die in a dramatically staged manner. In the end, only Ruth Zilbermann manages to escape Auschwitz together with the Neumann's daughter at the last train station. Henry Neumann and his wife are separated from each other while they are being unloaded from the wagon in Auschwitz. Jakob Noschik is shot immediately. The last scene shows the Neumanns' escaped daughter praying with a view of the sky.

background

The production costs of the film amounted to 2.7 million euros and the film was shot largely in the Czech Republic . Vilsmaier had taken over the direction after several changes in the film staff. He suffered an injury while filming near Prague . The filming had to be interrupted for two weeks and after that Vilsmaier was only partially operational. His wife, actress Dana Vávrová, therefore took on a large part of the directing work. The film had its German premiere on November 9, 2006.

The distributor called the film a "Holocaust Drama". This relatively new concept of art is intended to describe the dramatization of the fate of fictional people against the real background of the German extermination and concentration camps from before 1945.

Reviews

The initial reviews rated the film differently.

For Die Welt, the film seems out of date, and in its defiant refusal to historicize it, it should come as a shock for many younger viewers who have already become accustomed to Holocaust light.” For Brauner, the film came full circle as the producer returned to the location of his first 1947 film Morituri . The only ones who managed to escape are taken in by Polish partisans. Brauner also found refuge with the Polish partisans during the war.

In the opinion of the reviewer of the Frankfurter Rundschau , it is a " B-movie of the obscure kind, which only stands in the way of the inability of its makers to fully absorb its effects."

Der Spiegel, on the other hand, judges the film as “not naive, but brave, not romantic, but realistic. Jewish Germans who, like Henry and Lea Neumann (Burkhard and Yavas), fight for the survival of their children; who like Albert Rosen (Roman Roth) want to free their fellow prisoners or like the cabaret artist Jakob Noschik (Silbermann) comfort their companions - they must have existed just like that. […] [Brauner's] dramaturgy does not appease, but is agitatory with the means of fiction. "

In the taz , the film is criticized for its “decorative format” : “[It is cynical] to make something like the endless television series by train across the Andes, into wild Kurdistan, to Baghdad or with the deportation of Berlin Jews the last train to San Fernando. "

The Lexicon of International Films states: “The attempt to make what has not yet shown visible fails because the staging does not implement the rigorous design. Instead of concentrating on the misery inside a wagon, the film repeatedly gives viewers a breather through unmotivated flashbacks and escapes into the arts and crafts. "

Awards

FBW seal (PBW) .jpg

2007: Bavarian Film Prize - Special Jury Prize for Joseph Vilsmaier and Dana Vávrová

The Wiesbaden film evaluation agency awarded the film the title “particularly valuable”.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Release certificate for The Last Train . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , September 2006 (PDF; test number: 107 508 K).
  2. Age rating for The Last Train . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ^ Hanns-Georg Rodek : Artur Brauner back in the partisan forest. In: Die Welt , November 7, 2006
  4. ^ Wrong switches , Frankfurter Rundschau , November 8, 2006
  5. ^ Daniel Haas: Telling Against Forgetting , Spiegel Online , November 7, 2006.
  6. ^ Dietrich Kuhlbrodt : In the nostalgia train. In: Die Tageszeitung , November 9, 2006.
  7. The last train. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 6, 2016 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  8. FBW film review - The Last Train. In: fbw-filmbeval.com. German film and media rating , accessed on October 6, 2016 .