THE PLOT THUS FAR
As the Berlin Wall crumbles, Katrine, the daughter of a Norwegian woman and a German occupation soldier, finds her idyllic life disrupted as she refuses to testify a trial against the Norwegian state on behalf of her fellow “war children.”
WHAT WE THOUGHT
“Two Lives” examines what happened after the Berlin Wall fell and its impact on Europe throughout 1990. Children of occupation forces during World War II get to come face to face with the system that created them. Some realize that they were bred to be perfect Aryans, while others find out that they were failures of an imperfect system. The film goes so far as to look at what the Nazi plan did to the people of Germany and the woman that were raped and used in Norway. No one got away clean and it is a fictionalized account of evils that took place far too often.
The idea of war children seems a little foreign to most Americans. It’s a fortune that time hasn’t spared most of the world from, so America should be willing to open up and understand how it could happen to so many others. Liv Ullmann leads a hell of a cast that examines how one act decades ago can continue to hurt others moving forward. Plus, there’s the impact on one’s identity and how an individual views themselves when this is brought to light. To say it’s traumatic is an understatement, but what sort of value can you hang on this? As can be expected, this will not be a film for a wide audience.
The DVD comes with a trailer as the special feature. The A/V Quality is typical for standard definition. The transfer is flat with little punch-up. But, the Dolby 5.1 track kicks up where needed. In the end, I’d recommend a rental or streaming it.
RELEASE DATE: 06/24/2014