Monday Movie

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There used to be a French school called  L’Institut Jeanne d’Arc in Frederiksburg just west of Copenhagen.

On March 21st 1945 the British carried out a bombing raid on the Gestapo headquarters in the commandeered Shell building in Copenhagen, at the request of the Danish resistance. This in spite of the fact that Danish prisoners were held on the top floor as a human shield. One of the planes in the first wave hit a telegraph pole and two 500lb bombs carried by the aircraft were torn off and exploded, killing twelve civilians. It crashed into a garage near the French catholic school in Frederiksburg. The other airplanes in that wave successfully unloaded six bombs into the Shell building, killing 6 of the prisoners. Unfortunately the second and third waves were confused by the smoke and flames resulting from the crashed Mosquito airplane, and thought that was where their target must be. Apart from 3 aircraft, all the Mosquitos dropped their bombs on the French School.

In the school were 529 people. 482 children, 34 catholic nuns, 8 civil teachers and 5 parents or workers. 86 of the children and 16 adults, mostly nuns, were killed, and 67 children and 35 adults were wounded.

The Danish movie currently showing on Netflix, The Bombardment, is about this event. I’ve seen a lot of movies I’ve really enjoyed since I stopped reviewing, but until now had not been moved to recommend any. This one is absolutely worth your time. It isn’t about the pilots, who get about 10 mins of screen time if that, but about some of the civilians we meet prior to the event, who we see coping during it and the aftermath. And mostly, it’s about the kids. Wonderful acting from all involved. Hard not to fall in love with little Eva played by Ella Josphine Lund Nilsson or laugh with Rigmore played by Ester Birch, and feel compassion for Henry (Bertram Bisgaard Enevoldsen) who becomes mute after seeing a distressing event prior to the bombing. The adults are not too shabby either, with a sterling cast showing us distinctive characters that have an emotional impact as you follow their lives.

Of course it’s impossible to ignore the parallels to what’s happening to Ukraine, nothing really changes in our human endeavours to kill each other and the planet we live on.

If you have a lily on your liver or your heart is inclined to faint this is probably not the movie for you and Netflix still have several cheesy romcoms for your amusement, none of which I’ve seen. But for those of you made of stern stuff this is a must-see. Also FYI the version on Netflix is not dubbed, there are subtitles, but the trailer on Youtube is dubbed.

😉

29 thoughts on “Monday Movie”

      1. It costs a lot of money to do dubbing right. Plus, when the voice actors obviously haven’t watched the movie and their tones are all over the place, it doesn’t make for a great experience.

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  6. Excellent review. I haven’t watched a movie with subtitles in ages. Hubby won’t sit through anything with those but I may find the time to give it a try. Sounds highly emotional but also a film with an large impact.

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  8. Sounds like a good movie, so it is on our list. I have watched movies dubbed in English and turned on subtitles as it is sometimes hard to understand – it can be pretty funny sometimes as the content (dubbed) and subtitles absolutely do not match!

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  11. It sounds like a good film. I was listening to something about dubbing on my run this morning and it’s an interesting subject if most of the films you see are not in your language. You miss some of the action if you’re reading subtitles, but you don’t get the actors’ full performances if you don’t hear their voices. I prefer subtitles, but it would be hard work if you had subtitles on lots of things you watched on TV. When I was living in Berlin for 6 months there were American or British things on TV most nights and reading subtitles that often would be offputting.

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    1. We have subtitles on most of the time, as we watch a fair few foreign language movies and Phil has hearing loss so it helps him. I didn’t like them at first for the reasons you state, but after a while I found I can watch the performance and be aware of what the subtitles are saying without really concentrating on them.

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      1. Yes. My goal is to be the first Peruvian to marry the fictional anime character Miku Hatsune ^w^ Just kidding : ) I have Amazon Prime, I know Netflix produces movies besides their anime adaptations, but I have already so much to watch on Amazon, adding another service would feel to me like an Everest of content.

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