Calm at Sea

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October 1941. Eighteen months into France’s occupation by German troops, young Communist members of the Resistance shoot dead an officer of the German Army. In retaliation, Hitler demands the deaths of 150 Frenchmen, as ‘retribution’. The targets are to be mostly young men believed to share the assassins’ political convictions. Most of these men are taken from an internment camp for opponents of the occupation; a 35-year-old French rural administrator is ordered to select the victims. Although the parish priest appeals to their conscience and moral sensibilities, both the German military and their French helpers slavishly follow their orders.

Volker Schlöndorff’s meticulous reconstruction of events is based on a secret military report written by poet Ernst Jünger, who was an officer in the German Army at the time, as well as the farewell letters of the 150 men. Events are told through the eyes of seventeen-year-old Communist Guy Môquet – who was one of the victims of this act of retribution and was posthumously celebrated in France – as well as the eyes of a German soldier of almost the same age who was a member of the firing squad. –Berlinale

Volker Schlöndorff

Volker Schlöndorff (born 31 March 1939 in Wiesbaden, Germany) is a Berlin-based German filmmaker.

He won an Oscar as well as the Palme d’or at the Cannes Film Festival for The Tin Drum (1979), the film version of the novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass.

Schlöndorff has adapted many literary works for his movies, including some critically well-received US productions, but he is also engaged in post-war German politics. He served as the chief executive for the UFA studio in Babelsberg. Volker Schlöndorff also teaches film and literature at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he conducts an Intensive Summer Seminar.

He was married to fellow film director Margarethe von Trotta from 1971 to 1991. —Wikipedia

Carlos Filipe Freitas

25Apr13

Shows the same characteristic attributes that made him known in the past, although without presenting anything really new, in this war movie with political and psychological substance. Review and Rating: http://alwayswatchgoodmovies.blogspot.com/2013/04/calm-at-sea-2011.html

Rman

1Feb13

Pretty boring ! It needs something more than shouting at strange shots ! I expected more than this from Volker Schlöndorff.

Spoiler

24Oct12

Eis o retrato da ideologia de um jovem fuzilado e suas ultimas palavras que ecoam em cada frame. A representação da vida no campo, os prisioneiros, a rebeldia. A raiva contida. O abate. Um retrato duro. Teatral. Às vezes piegas, nessa releitura histórica que os franceses nunca visitaram com as devidas críticas.