"Es war einmal in Deutschland..." (which means literally "Once Upon a Time in Germany") or "Bye Bye Germany" is the newest work by writer and director Sam Garbarski and this is not the first time he worked with lead actor Moritz Bleibtreu here. But first thing first: It runs for a bit over 1.5 hours and Garbarski worked on the script too, together with Michel Bergmann, who also wrote the original material this film is based on and you probably wouldn't expect that his most known work so far is an Otto Waalkes film. The subject here is entirely different already. Maybe you can already read from the title that this is another German film dealing with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. But there is one crucial difference here, namely that this film played after the war and focuses on the lives of those Jews who stayed in Germany. Compared to the hundreds if not thousands of movies playing during the war, this makes for a nice difference. But they made nothing of this premise sadly, it became a really disappointing watch. Bleibtreu is frequently a much better actor than here and he makes the already pretty bad script look worse. The film never really decides if it wants to tell one individual story or deliver from the historic perspective. As a consequence, it does a bit in both fields and comes really short twice.
There are more glaring weaknesses here like the same as above as it wants to tell an impactful story about the days past World War II or be relevant in retrospective focusing on the protagonist's ways of survival during the war. The interrogation scenes are the worst. It's basically all the same: Traue acting like yes we know you are a Jew and were a victim, but you also did bad things with Bleibtreu's permanent response were sarcastic remarks that depict him as the victim. They basically included in 30 minutes what could have been told in five. And when we see the two in bed together near the end, really all is lost as if the private conversation before wasn't bad enough already. Also apparently they thought the audiences to be complete idiots, but guys let me assure you that the place were Nazi criminals were held captive was Nuremberg and if you make this fact and look like something nobody knows about in the scene where she sends the witness back, then it is ridiculous because those who actually don't know would ever think of watching this film. Yeah well and the final words depicted on the screen before the ending credits added more randomness and showed a desperate attempt in making this film relevant from a historic perspective. It was along the lines of "X (insert number here) Jews stayed in Germnany after World War II. Not one of them could tell their kids why." Did the filmmakers ask them all? Did they all have children? Sorry but how cringeworthy was that. It's stuff that your teacher marks red if you write it in a history exam for lack of proof. Pretentious, it is. Not a good film from start to finish. A shame what they turned this decent idea into.
There are more glaring weaknesses here like the same as above as it wants to tell an impactful story about the days past World War II or be relevant in retrospective focusing on the protagonist's ways of survival during the war. The interrogation scenes are the worst. It's basically all the same: Traue acting like yes we know you are a Jew and were a victim, but you also did bad things with Bleibtreu's permanent response were sarcastic remarks that depict him as the victim. They basically included in 30 minutes what could have been told in five. And when we see the two in bed together near the end, really all is lost as if the private conversation before wasn't bad enough already. Also apparently they thought the audiences to be complete idiots, but guys let me assure you that the place were Nazi criminals were held captive was Nuremberg and if you make this fact and look like something nobody knows about in the scene where she sends the witness back, then it is ridiculous because those who actually don't know would ever think of watching this film. Yeah well and the final words depicted on the screen before the ending credits added more randomness and showed a desperate attempt in making this film relevant from a historic perspective. It was along the lines of "X (insert number here) Jews stayed in Germnany after World War II. Not one of them could tell their kids why." Did the filmmakers ask them all? Did they all have children? Sorry but how cringeworthy was that. It's stuff that your teacher marks red if you write it in a history exam for lack of proof. Pretentious, it is. Not a good film from start to finish. A shame what they turned this decent idea into.