Here is a handsomely produced and solidly acted period drama set in Nazi Germany, based on the postwar novel by Hans Fallada and based on a true-life case.
Brendan Gleeson and Emma Thompson play Otto and Anna Quangel, a middle-aged couple in Berlin in 1940. Hating the Nazis and galvanised by grief and rage at the loss of their son in battle, they embark on tiny but very dangerous acts of resistance: leaving anonymous anti-Hitler postcards in stairwells and public places – a capital crime. Daniel Brühl plays the police inspector on their trail, using flags on a city map showing the whereabouts of cards handed in to the authorities to calculate where the culprit might live.
Part of the story’s potency lies in the fact that this is a kind of resistance that anyone can imagine carrying out, however timid, however lonely, however secretly convinced that its effects are likely to be minimal – but also that it requires the weird tenacity and organisation of a serial killer. More than once, Alone in Berlin reminded me of Fritz Lang’s M.
Gleeson, Thompson and Brühl give strong performances and this is a well-carpentered film.
