LORE

We’ve waited a while for this one. Back in 2004, Australian writer-director Cate Shortland garnered serious international attention with her multi award-winning debut ‘Somersault’, an exquisite tone poem of a film for which Shortland and her two stars, Abbie Cornish and Sam Worthington, were recognised both here and overseas. Eight years later, and we finally have Shortland’s follow-up, ‘Lore’, an unusual and unexpected film, in that it is set in a foreign country in a foreign language with a foreign cast and crew, but very much a companion piece to her stunning debut.

Set during the final days of the Third Reich, the film follows Lore (Saskia Rosendhalh), a German teenager from a respectable Nazi family. When Hitler is defeated, her parents abandon her, and she is left to protect her four siblings. Trekking across the wild German countryside, she leads her family with an iron will towards Hamburg and their grandmother, but with the country collapsing and the truth about the crimes of the Third Reich hitting the people like a sledgehammer, Lore finds help in the most uncomfortable of companions - a young Jewish man named Thomas (Kai Malina).

While the Nazi Regime might appear to be well-trodden ground, ‘Lore’ explores an unusual perspective of this moment in history, and without sentiment or apology. Lore is our eyes through which to view the revelations brought about by the end of the war, and eyes that don’t know anything other than a Germany under the National Socialists. Truths open up before her without mercy - what her country, her leader and her parents are been responsible for, the lies she and her country have been living. However, before the overwhelming guilt comes the anger and denial, and in Thomas she sees everything detestable, a Jew, her enemy, a man she ideologically rejects but finds herself sexually intrigued by. It feels like so long since a film discussed the intricacies of the Nazi Regime as intelligently as Shortland has done here, adapting Rachel Seiffert’s novel ‘The Dark Room’ along with screenwriter Robin Mukherjee. Shortland’s striking visual poetry is also intact here, giving a photographic perspective of a European country we aren’t used to at all. Like the best Australian directors, Shortland is a master at placing human beings within a natural landscape and making that landscape as much a character as those walking through it. There is such a breathtaking attention to the details of the German woods and fields, especially through the beautiful handheld photography of cinematographer Adam Arkapaw. The film moves at the same considered pace of ‘Somersault’, but with an added air of unease and menace, the pervading undercurrent of a world thrown into unimaginable chaos, a country and a people in a state of shock, building to a disturbing and intelligent final image. Everything about the filmmaking in ‘Lore’ is impressive, and makes you even more glad to be back in Shortland’s capable hands.