Tag Archives: Women in War Movies

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Rape and Love among Ruins: Anonyma – The Downfall of Berlin aka Anonyma – Eine Frau in Berlin (2008)

I was not sure if it was in good taste to use the title I gave this post but somehow it sums  up the film in a very few words. It is as if I had wanted to find two ways to speak about this movie: With brevity first and later at great length.
The Downfall of  Berlin has two contrasting parts taking place  shortly before and after the war ends. The beginning shows the taking over of Berlin by the Russian Army and the  mass rape that was soon every woman’s daily reality. The second half is dedicated to the love story with a Russian Major and the home-coming of Anonyma’s husband. All this takes place among ruins which accentuates the subliminal theme of the fragility of the depicted relationships.
The movie starts in 1945,  at the end of the war when the  Red Army troops enter the city of Berlin. What the German women had to endure from the moment the Russian Army set foot on the Ground of the city is an unparalleled horror.  Mass rape, brutalities and cruelty are the order of the day. One of these women, Anonyma,  kept a diary in which she carefully noted all the shocking events for her husband who had been sent to the Eastern front.
As the horrors go on she decides to look for a protector who might shield her from being constantly raped and abused by other men.

I have seen a few movies dealing with the German civilian population at the end of the war. There is a common moment in many of those movies. The inhabitants of a village or town hear troops approach and one of them is sent to find out who is coming. When the messenger returns there is this crucial moment when everybody just wonders whether he has spotted  Russian or American troops. Should it be the Soviet Army, the civilians flee in terror, whenever they hear it´s the Americans they are overjoyed.

A lot of the discussions whether this is a good movie circle around the comparison with the book and the liberties that have been taken to turn it into a movie.
First published in English in 1955 it has not been reissued until 2003, after the author’s death,  and this time under the pseudonym Anonyma. The reception of the book in Germany in 1959 was very harsh and aggressive and shocked the author a great deal. Germany was not ready for the  content of this  book.
The author of the diary was a  journalist and well-travelled woman. In  noting the horrible events and describing in great details the daily terrors of the women facing the Red Army she has left us an invaluable first-hand account.
The movie shows that hardly any woman, young or old,  escaped being raped.
There is a brief part in the movie when Anonyma meets a friend that she hasn’t seen in a long time and asks her “How many?” And they both know without any further clarification what they are referring to. Some 2´000´000 German women were raped in this time.  Payback for the massive loss of Russian lives.
It was criticised that the movie was not able to  transmit the whole extent of the horror that the book  shows. And of course the invention of the love affair which does not take place in the book was criticised as well. I  liked this doomed love story a great deal even though I normally do not like it when grim facts are sugar-coated by romance. But as a matter of fact this is a very realistic love story. Not very sugary at all and even though not in the book I think it manages to add another dimension.

Anonyma is a very fine movie, especially since it is in large parts bilingual German/Russian. The Russian cast is absolutely great. I especially liked Yevgeni Sidhikin in the role of Major Andreij Rybkin who becomes Anonyma´s protector and lover. Apparently already well-known in Russia we might see some more of him in the future. I was not too thrilled by the German actors. Apart from Nina Hoss who plays her role with an almost severe dignity, they are a bit too dramatic and wooden at times.

The shocking story of mass rape  is told in a very convincing manner. Evident but not voyeuristic. Without being shown  too explicitly we know what is going on.

I consider this to be an important movie as it shows how much the Germans suffered as well.
From reading German reviews on this movie I see that to this day the feeling of guilt runs so deep in Germany that they still feel uneasy to mourn these events.

And nowhere have I ever seen this called a war crime. Why not? Because the war was almost over? That would be a little bit cynical. Or because the aggressor has no right to complain?

Maybe it is just because no matter how it is called, no one really wants to speak about it. Rape like torture are hard to deal with. For both. Those who commit it and those who endure it.

I would really like to read comments, thoughts and whatever not about this movie from others.

amazon.com  Anonyma – The Movie

amazon.com Anonyma – The Book

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Women in War Movies

War movies are a genre in which women will rarely if ever play major roles.

However there are a few that come to mind immediately.

Nurses

Mothers

Wives

Girl friends

Resistance fighters

Soldiers

Officers

Victims

The nurse is by far the most common role. In many movies they are very prominent. Especially in the sub genre of the war romance they get more than just small roles. (Yes, Pearl Harbor (2001) comes to mind, but…)

Some fine examples of nurses can be found in The Lighthorsemen (1987), In Love and War (1996), The English Patient (1996).

Mothers, wives, fiancées are often found at the very beginning of a movie, when the soldiers leave their homes like in Dark Blue World aka Tmavomodry svet (2001). We often see them again, reading a letter arriving from the field as in The Thin Red Line (1998).  They serve as a sort of counterpoint to make the contrast between those who fight and those who stayed home even bigger. Then, you may find them once more at the very end, when the soldiers return home. One of the most poignant and touching wives is Madeleine Stowe in We Were Soldiers (2002). The story moves back and forth between the battle field and the home front depicting the agony the soldier´s wives went through when the telegrams arrived telling them one of their husbands had been killed.

Nurses become very often soldiers’ girl-friends which makes the two roles blend into each other. But many of the classic girl friends in movies depicting the second WW are the girls the men encounter in the countries they are shipped to. The American soldiers in The Pacific for example have Australian girl friends.

The role of the resistance fighter is quite a noble one. Not very frequent but appealing. Cate Blanchett as Charlotte Gray (2001) comes to mind. Or the women in Uprising (2001). And definitely Sophie Scholl (2005). The latest example of this kind is Carice van Houten as the jewish woman Rachel Stein who joins the Dutch resistance after having survived a massacre in the brilliant Black Book aka Zwartboek (2006).

Female soldiers that are even involved in combat are not very frequent. The most remarkable one I remember is the Vietnamese sniper in Full Metal Jacket (1987). A further female soldier  is played by Demi Moore in G.I. Jane (1997) where she is said to be the first woman  to have  been granted access to the navy SEALS.

Women as officers is by far more common. Again Demi Moore played a role in the excellent legal drama A Few Good Men (1992). And then there is Meg Ryan as medevac chopper pilot Capt. Karen Walden in Courage under Fire (1996).

Unfortunately some of the above mentioned portraits of women in war movies are quite questionable and have been criticised repeatedly (especially G.I. Jane).

I almost forgot the victims. Inexcusable. There are as innumerable female victims in real wars as there are high numbers in movies. One of the saddest are the victims in Vietnam war movies. I think of  Platoon (1986) and Casualties of War (1989). They are not the only ones. Of course not.

My favourite heroines are Cate Blanchett as Charlotte Gray, the wonderful Juliette Binoche as nurse  in The English Patient and, another nurse, Sandra Bullock in In Love and War, and the outstanding Julia Jentsch as Sophie Scholl. The first two are based on novels, the other two on historical facts. Sandra Bullock plays the nurse Ernest Hemingway fell in love with when he fought in Italy during WWI.