Divided We Fall (on DVD)

World War II has provided endless fodder for filmmakers around the world. It is still by far the largest human tragedy in scale. 2000’s Divided We Fall from the Czech Republic is another on-screen exploration of human relationship during that tumultuous period. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at 2001 Oscar and lost to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Divided We Fall tells a story of a childless couple trying to hide the son of their former Jewish employer near the end of World War II. The movie treads in the gray area between good people and bad people and doesn’t have any one-note characters. Husband and wife Josef and Marie are kind but also scared of the Nazi occupiers. Their heroic act is motivated both by their sympathy for their Jewish friend, David and later their fear that if David is found by the Nazis, they could have traced him back to their house and thus puts them in danger. Josef’s ex-colleague/friend, Horst, is a Nazi collaborator. He has some piggish behaviors while at the same time exhibits unusual bravery at critical times. The leader of the underground resistance, on the other hand, tries to have the Nazis arrest David when he comes for help.

Many critics have said the movie skirts between comedy and tragedy. Granted director Jan Hrebejk does try to put some light music and humorous touch to many situations in the movie, but I did not find any of them funny. Certain things, after knowing the horrific facts about them, simply cannot make people laugh. Roberto Benigni’s disastrous Life is Beautiful proves that. I think Josef in the movie sums up the situation best for Divided We Fall: “abnormal circumstance does strange things to normal people.”

I love the prologue of the movie. Hrebejk quickly introduces the background in a few short scenes that are titled 1937, 1939, 1941, and then we settle into 1943. When David shows up again on screen, his ghostly appearance in contrast to his earlier looks is still shocking even for an audience who is used to watching all the holocaust footages.

One missing part for the movie, maybe it can be made into a separate movie, is the strong anti-Semitic sentiment that existed in East Europe long before Nazi occupation. Hrebejk and his fellow scriptwriter Petr Jarchovsky do not address the ugly racial resentment among their countrymen that helped Nazi to purge the Jews.

Divided We Fall is not one of the greatest World War II movies ever made, but it offers a sober experience on how horrible war is and how strong the human spirit can be.