Europa Europa

1991 "A True Story"
7.6| 1h52m| R| en
Details

A Jewish boy separated from his family in the early days of WWII poses as a German orphan and is taken into the heart of the Nazi world as a 'war hero' and eventually becomes a Hitler Youth.

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Also starring Solomon Perel

Also starring René Hofschneider

Reviews

Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
Protraph Lack of good storyline.
ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.
Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
Kirpianuscus a touching story about survive. or about the courage to ignore the history. sad and amusing, cruel and touching. with the same tension who defines each film about WWII. with a charismatic lead actor. and a story who could be judged, interpreted, analyzed in many manners. it is not The Pianist or Schindler List. it is not really a film about Shoah but a film about the fight to be alive in a dark world, in hard circumstances. this is all. and the motif to see Europa Europa as more than a story about the life of a Jew in the middle of war. seductive - this is the basic virtue of this film. sure, the word seems be not inspired for the genre, but in this case it is the best. because it is only a honest eulogy to the life. and this is an useful thing.
ironhorse_iv Europa Europa AKA Hitlerjunge Salomon, i.e. "Hitler Youth Salomon" is a very interesting movie. The film should not be confused with the 1991 Lars von Trier film Europa, which was initially released as Zentropa in the United States to avoid such a confusion. If you do find yourself as a viewer, be glad that you don't live in a world like this, anymore. Directed by Agnieszka Holland, the movie is loosely based on the 1989 autobiography of Solomon Perel. He's play in the film by Marco Hofschneider. Solomon Perel is a German Jewish boy who is trying to escape the Holocaust by masquerading not only as a non-Jew, but as an elite "Aryan" German in Nazi Germany's Poland and a 'communist' student in Soviet Union's Poland. Without spoiling too much, there is a lot of disturbing things in this film that might make this movie hard to watch. This film does indeed take massive liberties on this remarkable man's life and who probably is a man of great integrity. I didn't like how much Solomon in the film has such negative characteristic throughout the film. Unfortunately this film bio-pic loses its own integrity by using far too much artistic license. The symbolism in this movie are really interesting. The title, Europa, Europa stands for the duo of Europe's political beliefs at the time and trying to fit in. Olivier, Olivier, Holland's next film deals with a similar plot. For the most part in this film, Solomon's circumcised penis functions as the film's chief dramatic device in which the plot is driven. Since he was circumcised at a young age, Solomon is going through a degrees of anxiety that is common with young men: feeling of loss of control over one's life. It is the one thing he can't change about himself. No matter how hard he tries to change his identity, his circumcision is the one thing that can expose "Jupp" as a Jew. For example, a romance with a German girl, Leni (Julie Delpy), who wants to conceive a child for the Fuhrer, proves dismal; because he can't consummate the relationship due to that fact. You see him, break down due to this. This adaptability is conveyed effectively by Marco Hofschneider in a strong example of a great performance from him. Still, I felt the true psychological depths of the character were nearly unexplored. Nudity plays a big part of this movie as he always cannot let anyone see him bathing. You would think, you wouldn't see nude as much due to this reason, but the movie has way too many nude scenes with him. While, the graphic nudity didn't hurt the movie, too much. It was indeed, distracting, as there were tons of scenes that he didn't need to nude in. None of them were use as sex appeal, but one scene was bit disturbing. Due warning, Solek has a scene where string and rubber bands in various painful ways to simulate a foreskin. It's really hard to watch. The violence was also bit graphic, but it really show you, how brutal, it was to live at that time. Add to it, was the graphic stock footage of the war. The stock footage was bit overused in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, there were some lighter side of this mostly gloomy movie. Much of the humor in the film, come with the fact that the Nazis officers have no clue that he is a Jew. It becomes really funny, when one of them quote that 'Jupp' looks like a young Adolf Hitler. Another funny moment is when a Nazi "expert" in "racial science' came to the school to teach how to detect Jews and use 'Jup' as a demonstration on how pure Aryan stock, he was. After all, where else would you see a feuding Joseph Stalin and a Jewish Hitler dancing together? I do find the movie use Deus ex machine plot line way too much in this film. The movies has a lot of great scenes. The whole painted-over windows of trolley crossing the off-limits Lodz Ghetto was just so surreal. I wish the movie focus a little more on life in Soviet Union, how hard was it for Solomon to lecture young Communists about the non-existence of God, when he was practicing Jew. The movie moves in a really too quick pace. The music adds to the dramatic tension, but is somewhat forgotten. Since the film was made from Europeans. It's hard to find a movie copy has English subtitles. While, the movie is now in DVD, you wouldn't find a lot of English dubbing version. In my opinion, it's better off to find the English subtitles, because you would miss the fact that the actor that plays Solomon speaks both great Russian, English and German in this. Overall: Europa, Europa is a gripping tale of one man survivable during World War 2 and the Holocaust. It might seek a bit lacking verisimilitude at times, but it's still watchable.
Armand And Shoah, limits, courage and fear. A travel without end. A fight and a testimony. Sparkls of love and pieces of a world. And the life as essential gift. It is story of a Jew. And lesson about small things who must be the essence. But the view is more large. Like a book with illustrations - bones of words. The reality of young Salomon is present in any age. The masks and the shadows, the good people and the territories in same color. So, more than a description of a miracle with many faces, the film is praise of sense, in gloomy time, of every day. It is not The Pianist or Schindler List. Only exercise of feelings and searches, of terror and hope, it is way of a silhouette to his real identity.
Michael Neumann The incredible story of Solomon Perel, an Eastern European Jewish teen who escaped the Holocaust by posing as a Nazi, might be difficult to swallow if it wasn't entirely true. Separated from his family and captured by German troops, Solomon escaped execution by claiming to be a 'pure bred' German orphan, apparently with enough conviction to be welcomed warmly into the ranks of his captors. The film explains the success of his desperate charade by presenting him as a passive victim of chance and circumstance. In constant jeopardy of being discovered, he is inevitably saved by one miracle of fate after another: in the Wermacht, in a Hitler Youth School, and finally as a prisoner of the Russians, awaiting the firing squad. The fact that the Germans embraced him as a model Aryan only reinforces the total blindness of their 'Master Race' conceit. With a rich sense of irony and Old World ambiguity (helping to explain the double title) veteran writer director Agnieszka Holland shows the German people to be simultaneously capable of uncomplicated affection and irrational hatred.