Review: Europa Europa

Original German Title: Hitlerjunge Salomon

Genre: Drama / War / History

Year: 1990, Germany/France/Poland

Runtime: 109 min.

Director: Agnieszka Holland

Starring: Marco Hofschneider

Julie Delpy

René Hofschneider

Summary: Salomon, a Jewish boy, lives with his family in Germany. In the early days of WWII he gets separeted from his family. When he flees to Russian occupied Poland, he is placed in a Soviet orphanage. When Hitler invades Russia he is captured by the German army. Salomon convices the German soldieres that he is an ethnic German. They believe him and he starts to work for the Army as an interpreter, because of his good Russian skills. He quickly becomes a war hero and eventually becomes a Hitler Youth.
But he always lives in fear to get exposed.

It's a real story and is based on the autobiography by Salomon Perel.

Trailer:







Positive: The concept of the movie. It's an interesting point of view. Movies about jews in the Second World War usually show the situation in concentration camps or in ghettos. This one is different. Salomon is jewish but he act like an aryan.
The movie is also quite thrilling. Sometimes I nearly stopped breathing, because someone nearly discovered, that Salomon is a Jew.


Negative: In the first half of the movie they speak a lot of Russian (or is it Polish?), which is a bit hard to watch, because you don't understand a word if you don't speak Russian and you have to read subtitles for about 10 minutes straight.
There were also two scenes which I found confusing. One of these scenes was definitely a dream, maybe both of them were. I don't know. It was strange and for a while I didn't know what was going on.

 

Sexual content: There is quite a lot of kissing and touching going on in this movie. Salomon has a crush on three different girls (not at the same time!). The third girl, Leni, wants to have sex with him, but he doesn't want it, because he doesn't want her to see that he is a jew. 

He also has sex with a SS woman on the train (this was one of the strangest scenes of the whole movie).

You can also see Salomon's genitales once.

I think that's it.

Sounds a lot and I think it is a bit too much. But all these scene are short and if you watch the trailer you've already seen most of these scenes. Have you ever noticed that? They always put the kissing and sex scenes into the trailer.

Violence: War violence. A couple of people get shot.

Music: Nothing special. There was one theme repeating, which was a bit boring.

Actors: Nothing special.

My Opinion: On the one hand I think it is a good movie, because of the nearly unbelievable story. A Jewish boy being a hero of the German Army during WWII! On the other hand there are some strange scenes and some unnecessary sexual content and there are definitely better movies about the Second World War out there. But if you want to see one from a completely new perspective - go watch it! It isn't a bad movie, just a bit odd ;)

Rating: 3 stars