For the location of the island, click here
Set against the stark beauty of the windswept German island of Amrum in the final days of World War II, "Amrum" is a haunting and lyrical coming-of-age story that examines the collapse of the Third Reich through the eyes of a boy caught between innocence and ideology.
It is nearing the end of World War II and Nazi Germany’s quest to rule the world. Hitler is dead but these residents don’t really get the actual truth of what happened, and at this point it doesn’t matter as much as simply trying to survive with need for bread, food and other necessities. The main industry is growing potatoes and fishing, two things young Nanning, the star of this movie, helps with at the neighboring farm.
He learns how to skin a rabbit and lure an unsuspecting seal to his death among other unsavoury duties. He runs errands to try and get his mother, a Hitler apologist, bread, butter, sugar and other necessities all the while still wearing his Hitler Youth uniform, but not really engaged in the political aspects. We never see him project hate or toe the Nazi line. It is just something young boys were expected to wear.
The film’s focus is on these people who live far from the action, basically clueless to the Holocaust and other atrocities by Germany during the war that will now cast shame on the country. The war may have been very ugly, but Amrum is a beautiful place to grow up, seemingly a million miles away as life goes on, the future unsure, its inhabitants searching for some sort of happiness, and Nanning on the cusp of adolescence.
I heard about this movie from an internet-friend in my old hometown Braunschweig who thought it was "berührend", and so I started looking for its DVD on ebay.de. However, as much as I would like to see the scene of that symbolic burning of Hitler's portrait on the kitchen stove, an extra €16.99, or $27.70, for postage from Germany to Australia is far from "berührend" and makes me hesitate to place the order.
Maybe a friendly YouTuber in Germany will upload the full-length movie.
