Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson give committed, insightful performances in Vincent Pérez’s (Once Upon an Angel) adaptation of Hans Fallada’s 1947 novel, based on the true story of a husband and wife who became part of the German Resistance during WWII.
Thompson and Gleeson are Anna and Otto Quangel, living in 1940s Berlin when they suffer a tragedy due to the war. In their grief and despair they become unlikely agitators, denouncing Hitler in a series of subversive postcards strewn across the city. Hotly pursued by Gestapo detective Escherich (Daniel Brühl) and under threat from anyone who sees them, their story becomes a bleak and terrifying thriller.
Fallada’s chilling, appallingly immediate masterpiece was one of the first anti-Nazi novels published by a German after the war, and shows how ordinary Germans subsumed the reign of the Third Reich – with its intimate terror, violence, treachery and censorship – into their everyday consciousness, affecting them both individually and as a wider society.
Only translated into English in 2009, it became a bestseller and caused a minor publishing sensation – a fact which is sure to generate significant audiences for Pérez’s handsome, beautifully acted adaptation.