Generation War Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Generation War Blu-ray Movie Review

Sometimes history is rewritten by the losers.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 6, 2014

In a way, it’s a good thing that several German historians have already taken Generation War to task, for it relieves me of a duty for which I may have prejudices. Early on in this supposedly “revisionist” take on how Germany sees its own actions during the Hitler era, a gaggle of childhood friends reunite as young adults in the winter of 1941 in Berlin. This quintet includes Nazi soldiers as well as a Jew, and it struck me as instantly unbelievable that at so late a date as 1941, even those who may have had established relationships as kids would continue to meet as adults, when some of them were part of Hitler’s army and one of them—well, wasn’t. It gets even worse a few moments later when the five call up their own Aryan version of “next year in Jerusalem” by saying they’ll see each other “next Christmas”, a promise that the Jewish character himself repeats. This may seem like a minor issue, but most Jews clinging to their identity and/or their very survival in Hitler’s Germany would probably not be Christmas celebrators. The ironic thing about Generation War is that it was supposed to spark a reexamination of Germany’s role in World War II, but this German miniseries continues to promote at least a few stereotypes and, according to some of its detractors, anyway, misconceptions. The fact that Nazis and Jews would commingle in 1941 or that a Jew would mention Christmas might actually turn out to be rather low on the overall scale of items that Generation War tends to skew for its own dramatic license.

Many native Germans will admit, and anyone who has ever visited Germany will probably attest to having discovered, that the country has a somewhat ambivalent view toward its sullied past. For example, tourists asking for directions to any of the memorials built on the former sites of concentration camps will often find that nearby residents are calculatedly unhelpful in providing advice, sometimes going as far as to say that they don’t know what the tourist is talking about (I make this statement from personal experience). Even those who have a more clearheaded view of Germany’s past peccadilloes sometimes provide at least a modicum of rationalization, and that tendency crops up in Generation War at several key moments. Here, the German population as a whole is seen as largely valiant and honorable, unaware of what those “nasty” Nazis were up to, a thesis that is at the very least questionable and perhaps even downright refutable. The series oddly focuses only on a gaggle of twenty-somethings, which is fine to indicate a loss of innocence, but Generation War might have been more compelling had it featured more than one generation. This is especially true given the fact that the original German title of the miniseries translates as Our Mothers, Our Fathers, something that intrinsically implies a trans-generational approach, something that is not addressed in the show much, if at all.

Despite these (and other) missteps, parts of Generation War work surprisingly well, if often on a melodramatic or even soap operatic level. The five main characters are brothers Wilhelm (Volker Bruch) and Friedhelm (Tom Schilling) Winter, both of whom are about to see battle for the first time. Wilhelm narrates the story and indeed the film starts with a riveting sequence featuring the siblings in battle, before flashing back to pick up the putative beginning of the tale. Greta (Katharine Schüttler) is an ambitious singer who is involved in a dangerous affair with culturally Jewish dress designer Viktor (Ludwig Treple). Rounding out the quintet is Charlotte (Miriam Stein), who pines for Wilhelm but sublimates her desires by working as a nurse on the front.

This three part German miniseries charts the lives of this group of five from roughly 1941 through the end of the war, detailing various dramas that afflict each of them. Greta gets involved with an SS officer ostensibly in order to protect Viktor, but perhaps just as much because it furthers her dreams of a show business career. Charlotte is stunned to find out the bloody reality of a medical unit in the midst of battle. Wilhelm and Friedhelm have a sibling rivalry that is as much political as it is genetic. Wilhelm begins the story as a gung ho lieutenant, trying to come to terms with the fact that his brother (also under his command) doesn’t seem all that “into” the war. Viktor meanwhile does not escape the wrath of the Nazis, but is able to escape and join the resistance, in yet another of this series’ fanciful constructs which avoid the statistical realities of what happened to virtually all Jewish people caught on a train to a camp.

These arcs all play out in a fairly expected manner, but despite some of the inherent absurdities in the various plotlines, little moments tend to work surprisingly well quite a bit of the time in Generation War. Greta’s combination of haughtiness and vulnerability is nicely essayed a couple of these smallish moments, where two characters can reveal a host of competing motivations in the relative stillness between battles. There are a couple of really maddening coincidences that show up in the miniseries, including a set of traded “saves” that keep two characters alive to fight another day. Generation War may have pretensions to recreating the modern German notion of that nation’s complicity in a host of horrors, but when the writing team relies on hoary clichés like long lost friends who recognize each other in the heat of battle and give each other a pass, the prevailing sentiment may be, “The more things change, the more they stay the same”.

Generation War Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Generation War is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Music Box Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is an exceptionally sharp and well detailed looking presentation that offers some outstanding fine detail in any number of midrange shots and close-ups (take a look at screenshot 1 for just one example). Colors are very boldly saturated at times and overall very accurate looking. Some of the CGI elements in the battle scenes are decidedly softer looking than the bulk of the presentation, but the miniseries tends to focus more on the intimate stories of the characters rather than the larger fracas of World War II, and the image is remarkably clear and stable in these sequences. Occasional archival footage is utilized, which is understandably pretty ragged looking at times.

Generation War Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Likewise, Generation War's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track (in the original German, with optional English subtitles) is a nicely involving affair, and not necessarily only in the battle sequences. While the fighting scenes do provide the requisite bursts of LFE and excellently directional gunfire, even non-battle moments have great panning effects, including a whole host of establishing shots where things like cars or even horse drawn carriages move through the frame. Dialogue and music are both very cleanly and clearly presented with excellent fidelity.

Generation War Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Master Class Panel (1080p; 20:01) is a very interesting piece from September 2013 that has various people associated with the production sitting down for a discussion of what the show means for Germany and German history.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:21)


• International Trailer (1080p; 3:25)

Generation War Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If Generation War had really decided to go for broke, they would have included a Jewish character who actually ended up in the camps, maybe with a former "friend" as his new jail keeper. That would have been truer to the historical record than much of what passes for history in this fanciful but occasionally affecting miniseries. There's still the whiff of denial running through this piece, though it's ironically colored by some pretty graphic depictions of German atrocities. Others may not have some of the personal baggage I bring to presentations like this, and will therefore find its uneasy mix of melodrama and pseudo-history more to their liking. One way or the other Generation War boasts extremely strong technical merits.