Troll RomCom

L has been remarking how lacking her World War II knowledge is. She says that her colleague at work watches all 26 episodes of the World at War at least every other year, which is perhaps a bit excessive but we start looking for a copy. I pop into Argos who have the box set for £15. This will change the dynamic of Friday night’s somewhat. L promises to try to stay awake. 

The brief for Saturday is to Parkrun somewhere exotic. Unfortunately Warsaw is going to be a bit hard to beat and we go to Sherwood Pines. The Lad and I come 21^st in a time of 22:16. Not bad but I feel he’s disappointed with me.

On Saturday afternoon there’s a match and then in the evening we are at Broadway.

Border is the story of Tina (Eva Melander), a customs officer on the Finland-Sweden border. She suffers from deformities which she refers to as a ‘chromosome flaw’ but she has the ability to smell guilt which comes in extremely useful in her job. When she smells something amiss the suspect is pulled over and searched. Tina is always right. When she intercepts a man carrying child pornography, she is invited to join the police task force investigating a paedophile ring which has implications later in the film.

She lives with her boyfriend Roland (Jörgen Thorsson) who she is unable to have sex with because it hurts her too much but, anyway, Roland seems to care more about his pet dogs than he does her. Every so often, she visits her elderly father (Sten Ljunggren) who is in an old people’s home. It appears her father is hiding something about Tina’s past.

One day at the border, Tina encounters a character who looks a lot like herself. His name is Vore (Eero Milonoff) and he travels with a bag of maggots in his hand luggage. As you do. Unlike Tina, Vore is confident and charismatic. When Tina can’t quite decide what she smells amiss about him, he arrogantly volunteers to be searched anyway. During which her male colleague discovers that Vore doesn't have the body of a man. He also has a large scar on his back, just like she has.

She finds him intriguing and exciting, so inevitably they are drawn together. She lets him stay in her house, much to Roland's annoyance. Vore tells her that it’s perfectly ok to eat insects if she wants to because she is a troll just like him. Then they have the most bizarre sex you’ll ever see.

So it’s a Troll RomCom with a happy ending? Not quite. The next day Tina finds a baby inside Vore’s fridge. As you do. No, not a baby he protests. It’s a Hiisit, an unfertilized troll embryo, that he is going to swap with a real human baby. Of course…

Which brings us back to the paedophile ring, with whom Vore has been dealing and which brings us to the film’s very morally susceptible ending. 

It was looking to me as if the film was trying to portray Tina and Vore as more humane than the humans, through the use of the paedophile ring subplot, but now I’m not so sure.

The film is based on a story by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who wrote the almost as weird ‘Let the Right One In’. You have been warned but I liked it a lot.

(Saturday 9th March)

Descending Freestyle

L has made plans to spend lunch with a friend in Ashbourne today. So the boys and I offer her a lift and then head into the Peak District for a walk. We yomp up Thorpe Cloud and then along Dovedale for a few miles. Thorpe Cloud is more difficult than it might have been as the conditions are incredibly slippery after all the recent rain. Going up is hard but coming down is terrifying particularly when you’re attached to a dog. MD refuses to go off lead and bites my feet when I try, which is the last thing you need when descending Thorpe Cloud freestyle. Doggo meanwhile skips ahead, miles in front, making a mockery of his twelve years.

In the evening we go to Broadway and take in The Railway Man

 

Eric Lomax (Colin Firth) was a signaller in the British army that surrendered to the Japanese when Singapore fell during World War II. Lomax's captivity as a Prisoner Of War was spent working on the construction of the Burma Railway. He was lucky to survive it. After being found with a homemade map and a radio he was tortured to within an inch of his life. Thirty plus years on (the film is set circa 1980) the scars of this dreadful experience have failed to heal.

We meet Lomax, surprisingly still a railway buff, and the film’s love interest Patti (Nicole Kidman) rather appropriately on a train. They immediately marry (or so it appears) but the baggage that he carries with him causes him severe moods swings and nightmares but he won't share the reasons for these with his new wife. 

She has to go visit his friend and fellow POW Finlay (Stellan Skarsgård) to find out why. Then when a photo appears in a Japanese newspaper of the translator Takashi Nagase who was Lomax's tormentor in chief and was now working as a tour guide on the railway, Lomax takes the opportunity to head over to exact revenge.

The key question posed by the film is what would you do if you came face to face with the man who tortured you? Unfortunately the film fails to give a convincing answer.

 

Probably because too much has been changed from Lomax’s original story. The real Lomax didn’t turn up unannounced and he wasn’t the only one who had been wrestling with his demons. Nagase had been too and had attempted to atone for his sins. The real Lomax knew this because the two wrote to each other for two years before they decided to meet. So the film’s scenario didn’t happen and this is probably why it feels so false.

The film bounces back and forth from the Second World War to the 1980s. From young Eric's (the excellent Jeremy Irving) physical torture to old Eric’s emotional torture as the film overlays a snapshot of life constructing the Burma railway and in the POW camp with a rather thin love story.

That didn’t work either. The fact that the real Eric returned from war, married his pre-war sweetheart, had two kids and then met Patti (also with kids) whilst he was still married and romanced her for two years prior to marrying her was a better back story than the one we got because we didn’t get one at all. The film just feels made up because most of it was and that’s a shame.

It’s not an awful film but it is unremarkable and far too ‘nice’ when it should have been harrowing and eye opening but it simply isn’t. The scenes in the camp are not pleasant yet overall the film seems desperate not to offend. The only time I felt any emotion was when they put photos of the real people up at the end. 

Afterwards we head to the Falcon and then the Hand & Heart for a final night cap.

(Saturday 11^th January)

A Decent Showing

The last of my three indoor winter dog shows is today and it’s just as cold as it’s been at the previous two, only this time without the snow on the ground.

At least we put in a decent showing. There are two fifth places for Doggo, one of which he gets a rosette for. Then a ‘nearly’ clear with MD, we missed a contact on the second last obstacle because I was rushing him but there’s no point being slow and only tenth... It was a good run though. Then we do go clear on a too fast course for a rosette for 12^th, then a second scrappy clear where we’re unplaced, then a bit of a disaster. So a bit of everything today from MD.

In the evening, we head down to Broadway for the usual meal and film deal. L hasn’t finished the book of target film 'Cloud Atlas’ yet, so it’s time to bring on a substitute. I pick something that I hope will be dark and depressing.

‘Lore’ is based on one of three stories in Rachel Seiffert's novel ‘The Dark Room’. It is set in Germany at the very end of World War II.

The father of fifteen-year-old Hannelore or Lore (Saskia Rosendahl), an SS officer, is abandoning the family home. Destroying evidence and shooting the family dog as he goes, before heading off to the front, where he’ll probably meet his death.

Then Lore's mother prepares to leave too. After hearing a radio announcement confirming Adolf Hitler’s death, she surrenders to the Americans. Now her children are left to fend for themselves and Lore, as the eldest, is in charge. Her mother tells her to find a way to their grandmother's in Hamburg, a mere 500km away.

Finding out that the trains are not running, they start their journey across Germany on foot. This is a new Germany, a defeated Germany that lies in ruins, people are starving and sick. They find that some people are willing to help them whilst others most definitely are not and in fact are a danger to them.

This is journey that is viewed mainly through Lore’s eyes and from her perspective. A journey which is as mental as it is physical, as she attempts to comprehend how her country, the supposedly superior one, is now occupied and divided into Russian, American, British and French zones.

Across the failed Third Reich many people mourn their dead leader and condemn the lies the Allies are spreading about him. The Americans post up photographs from the liberation of the concentration camps which many Germans decide are mere propaganda but Lore knows otherwise. We see her tearing away a piece of one of the photos, one that contains the image of her father .

With that Lore realises just how much her father, and probably her mother, were involved in the atrocities. Then she meets Thomas (Kia-Peter Malina), a Jew who was supposedly liberated from one of these camps.

Although Thomas may not be all he appears. It is revealed that the identification papers he carries are not his own. He tells one of the other children that he is not Jewish, but carries the papers because the Americans like Jews. Again though Lore knows otherwise, that is if she realises what the numbers tattooed on Thomas’s wrist mean. They may not be his papers but clearly Thomas has survived the camps and perhaps suspected that the other children would not accept his help if they thought he was Jewish.

An uneasy relationship builds between Thomas and Lore, there is some attraction but mainly it’s out of a necessity to survive as Thomas helps them cross out of the American zone.

When they finally reach Hamburg, Lore finds it hard to settle in at her grandmothers. She has much on her mind. Forced to abruptly grow up, to question her engrained beliefs and to rethink her entire ‘National Socialist’ outlook on life. Then there’s the guilt she feels for how they betrayed Thomas.

‘Lore’ is not an easy film to follow but it’s a good one, although it could have perhaps done with a spot of narration. It’s a film that grows after you’ve left the cinema and it shows a part of history that is rarely shown. Well worth a look. 

Dark and depressing... Bingo. Now for a debrief in Brewdog.

(Saturday 23^rd February)