“Two Lives” (“Zwei Leben”, 2012), directed by Georg Maas and
Judith Kaufmann, is interesting first because it is based on a novel
unpublished at the time of filming. That
is a manuscript by Hannelore Hippe, eventually published as “Ice Ages”, based
loosely on real history, inspired by the discovery of a corpse in Bergen,
Norway in 1990. So, if you’re novel is unpublished or “just”
self-published, there’s hope.
The main part of the drama is set right after the fall of
the Berlin Wall in 1989. Katrine Evensen
Myrdal, age around 50 (Julianne Kohler) lives an ordinary family life in Norway,
married with daughter and grand-daughter, and elderly mother (Liv
Ulhmann). A lawyer approaches her about
her past, as one of the Lebensborn, or war children, conceived by occupying
German soldiers during WWII with “Aryan” women intending to give the Fatherland
more “superior” children. Many of these
children were brought to what became East Germany. After WWII, the East German Statsi tried to
use some if the kids as Communist spies.
Katrine, however, had secretly escaped through Denmark, as shown in some
flashbacks. The attorney involves here
with litigation against the Norwegian government (parallel to “Woman in Gold”)
that will lead to catastrophe for her family.
The film has a couple of critical scenes involving auto
crashes that are quite well done.
In 1999, when visiting a gay bar called the “Connection
Disco” in Berlin, I met a graduate student from England who said he had been
born in East Germany but had “escaped”.
The official site is here. The DVD is available from Netflix.
Wikipedia attribution link for Bergen, Norway picture, by
Aqwis, by Creative Commons 3.0 share-alike license.
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