Alone in Berlin

Berlin, 1940. Otto and Anna Quangel are told their son has been killed at the front. Otto is a foreman at a factory with no organisation and no political past. The only thing he does is write postcards: a few sentences against the regime, by hand, left in stairwells and entrance halls. Most of the people who find them hand them to the police unread. The Gestapo inspector Escherich takes the case and pins the location of every recovered card to a map of Berlin. The film is not interested in resistance working but in doing it even when it does not. Over two years more than two hundred cards are left and almost none pass from hand to hand. Knowing that does not stop the Quangels. Vincent Perez directed. Brendan Gleeson plays Otto, Emma Thompson plays Anna and Daniel Bruhl plays Escherich. The source is Hans Fallada's novel of 1947, itself drawn from a real case file: the Berlin working-class couple Otto and Elise Hampel, who did the same thing and were executed in 1943. The most criticised thing about the film is its language: a story set in Berlin is played in English with imitated German accents. Who it is for: anyone who likes wartime resistance stories and quiet, hard drama. Who it is not for: anyone expecting suspense. The pace is very slow, playing it in English creates distance, and the German characters other than Escherich stay thin.