Lore,
(Saskia Rosendahl) is a teenager and the oldest of her siblings
including her  sister Liesel (Nele Trebs)  and 3 brothers, twins Jurgen
(Mika Seidel) and Gunther (Andre Frid) and still breast feeding baby
Peter (Nick Leander Holaschke). It is Lore’s job, after their father,
Vati, (Hans-Jochen Wagner) a Nazi officer, is arrested and their mother
Mutti (Ursina Lardi), an admirer  of Hitler, voluntarily goes into an
internment camp, to take the children to their grandmother’s home 500
miles away crossing mountains, forests, rivers and passing through
American and Russian barriers. The mother gives Lore anything she feels
her daughter could trade for safety and food from the house silverware
to her wedding ring knowing that she will never see her children or
husband again..

As
Rodgers and Hammerstein so eloquently put it in a song many years ago,
“You’ve Got To Be Taught” and Lore, along with her siblings, have been
taught to hate all Jews and blame them for everything. As they travel
they hear stories about Americans shooting prisoners and throwing them
in graves and then producing pictures saying that they are Jews who were
killed by Germans along with other atrocious tales that spins the truth
on its head.

Along
their journey the children cross paths with Thomas (Kai Malina), a few
years older than Lore, who carries papers identifying him as Jewish
though he looks nothing like the man in the photograph. We know very
little about Thomas nor will we find out anything except that he goes
out of his way to help the 5 children and, more than once, putting his
own life on the line. The screenplay by Robin Mukherjee and Cate
Shortland, the latter also directing, hit a false note trying to make
more out of Lore and Thomas than really makes sense. The moment that
Lore lashes out at Thomas with anti-semitic barbs does ring true.

The
war has just ended, Hitler is dead and all that Lore has been taught to
believe may not be true as she takes this journey across a land that
shows little destruction as they go through outlying areas and
forests.This is a film that comes from a different point of view and
shows how innocent children become a part of the world they knew nothing
about or dealt with because adults choose to go to war..

Saskia
Rosendahl does an excellent job as Lore, a child that is hard to like
yet is on her way to becoming an adult in a world that may tear her
apart.  Kai Malina is as stoic as an actor can be but still shows in
small ways how war affects all. The rest of the cast all exist in a
world that at the moment hasn’t any answers but are afraid of what the
answers may bring.

The
direction by Cate Shortland is almost a study in nature, both the good
and bad, that surrounds humans but moves a little too slowly. “Lore”
holds back too much information regarding Thomas and the grandmother
that the children are looking forward to for their salvation hindering
the story.