Twin Sisters

Films/DVD Asylum

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2002 Dutch film about twin sisters who are orphaned at when they are about six or seven years old. One, Lotte, who is sick, is taken to Holland, into the home of an affluent family. There she lives the cultured life, is educated, surrounded by witty people, some of whom are Jewish. She eventually falls in love with a Jewish man, and they become engaged. Her new family despises Hitler, not the least reason because they have Jewish friends, and Germany was becoming a place a little too hot for Jews.
The other twin, Anna, is moved to a farm in Germany, is not educated, works feeding the animals and in the field, and is regularly beaten by her uncle. As she gets into her late teens, Hitler rises to power. One other farm boy believes that Hitler will make their lot better, and leaves to join the brownshirts. When her uncle learns that she has associated with the young Nazi, beats her unconscious, at which time a Priest removes her from the house, places her into a boarding school, after which she begins her life as a domestic. Shortly thereafter, she becomes engaged to the now SS soldier.
The two sisters write to each other, but their respective families will not send the letter. Shortly after Hitler takes power, he takes over Holland, and Jews there are sent to concentration camps, initially to work, then to extermination. The family believes that Hitler's Jewish solution will be short lived, the rest of the world will come a callin', theories we have seen before.
I found the film absolutely absorbing. The sisters meet in a spa in modern day, and Lotte still harbors hatred toward Anna for marrying an SS officer, or an "SS whore" as she calls her. While Anna is chasing Lotte around the country (these two women are about 80 years old, so there is no real chasing involved) to explain herself, the story is mostly told in flashback, quickly alternating between their two stories. While this sounds tedious, in practice, because the story is so riveting, it was not tedious. It is the perfect method to relate the story so that the viewer can view the lives of these two sisters are almost the same time. Further, because there are not many characters, it is not difficult to follow the story.
It was also interesting to see the arc of their lives converge. Lotte begins in a cultured society, but as the war drags on, their cultured lives become desperate. After the war, Lotte marries her loves brother, but she is clearly scarred from the experience. Anna, who began in squalor, sees her lot improve during the war, being married to a Nazi soldier, and leaves the life of a domestic behind. When they first meet following the war, it was almost as though the other at the end of the war as the other before the war. Interesting.
I highly recommend the film, particularly for those viewers who are intrigued by WWII and Nazi Germany. This is more of a human drama than a war film, where Nazi Germany supplies the backdrop. The film could just as easily have been about the Civil War, growing up in the South, Vietnam, what have you. Highly recommended.

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Topic - Twin Sisters - jamesgarvin 10:15:36 05/09/06 (0)

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