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Dresden
Koch Vision // Unrated // February 5, 2008
List Price: $29.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
"Dresden" is the sweeping wartime romance "Pearl Harbor" could have been. Like that film - as well as "Titanic," "From Here to Eternity," and a dozen other similar-minded titles - "Dresden" features a love story set against the backdrop of tragic violence, and its makers show a delicate touch in balancing the intimate personal story with the broader scope of the final days of the Second World War.The miniseries shows a deep, apologetic sadness for Germany's dark history, but it also reveals an anger toward Allied actions that could at best be considered questionable. As with other projects involving wartime enemy nations that have since evolved into peacetime allies, the producers of "Dresden" strain themselves in their carefulness toward presenting a balanced portrait of the war, with the obligatory cliché of British officers showing doubt over the bombings (similar to scenes of Japanese officials expressing remorse over Pearl Harbor in Michael Bay's film), tempered by scenes of Nazis acting their worst. Writer Stefan Kolditz and director Roland Suso Richter are constantly walking a thin line, focusing on how the horrors of war effect the common citizen, whichever side they may find themselves.
For doomed romance, the screenplay pairs English bomber pilot Robert (John Light) with German nurse Anna (Felicitas Woll, in a captivating performance). He's shot down over enemy territory and makes his way to the hospital; she discovers him hiding in the basement and begins to care for him. It's not long before they fall in love despite the obvious obstacles, but the national divide is only one of their problems. She's engaged to marry a well-to-do doctor (Benjamin Sadler); her father (Heiner Lauterbach), a respected member of society, is caught up in some mysterious black market dealings involving missing morphine; her sister (Susanne Bormann) is a proud patriot with ties to the Nazi party.
But the heart wants what it wants, and if Anna wound up marrying the boring doctor, what kind of love story would that be? The filmmakers know exactly what kind of tale they're telling, and they pile on the melodrama, and thick. But they do it so well: the dialogue is sappy but never embarrassingly so, and the sillier moments of passion (Anna and Robert make love in a hospital bed, and again later in a closet during a busy party) always come across with a bit of dramatic honesty. It's a great, big frothy soap opera, and Richter knows how to lay on the suds without drowning the viewer.
Peppered throughout are cutaway scenes of the Royal Air Force making their plans to raid Dresden. Part One of the miniseries offers increasing teases of this mission in the making, and Part Two shows in greater detail the events of the bombing itself. "Dresden" finds the right balance between the intimate and the broad, cutting between both storylines to work up a crescendo of emotion.
Produced at a whopping cost of ten million Euros, the miniseries stands as the most expensive project ever crafted for German TV, and every cent shows up on screen. The bombing sequence, which fills up most of the second half of Part Two, is impressive spectacle - there's not a frame of film that will have you questioning the recreation, and shots such as the reveal of a completely demolished city rank as some of the most realistic brought to screen. And yet Richter is very careful never to allow these scenes to become too thrilling; the notion of death and despair is never far away. The script may play out some formulaic moments (of course Robert will injure his leg during escape and beg Anna to go on without him; of course more villainous characters will find their comeuppance; etc.), but Richter holds these clichés at bay, preferring instead to ponder the more somber aspects of the assault.
And while "Dresden" may go through all the motions of a typical historical romance, it does so with style and earnestness. This is a rousing epic, the sort of thing for which larger-than-life TV miniseries were designed.
The DVDKoch Vision presents "Dresden" on two single-sided discs, housed in a single-wide keepcase with a hinged tray for the second disc. Part One and all bonus material appear on the first disc; Part Two fills the second. Both episodes run about 95 minutes.
Video & Audio
"Dresden" is one gray, brown, dingy film, and the anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1) transfer does justice to the somber look of the piece. If it's possible for drab to look lovely, then that's what we get here; there's a bit of grain, but it's passable, and the muted color scheme comes across very well. The film includes cutaways to stock archival footage, which is understandably less impressive.
The German and English soundtrack sounds richer than its Dolby 2.0 listing would suggest. Removable English subtitles are provided, although deaf viewers should note that the subs are not used over the English dialogue, and there is no closed captioning. Also, due to a strange glitch, there are a few seconds during the epilogue where the subtitles drop out completely, leaving a key final voiceover a bit of a mystery to non-German speakers.
Extras
A behind-the-scenes featurette (28:27) opens with some quick history on the bombings, ends with a remembrance of the tragedy, and in between fits a detailed account of the miniseries' production, using the usual interviews from cast and crew. Non-removable English subtitles are included.
Two vintage United News newsreels offer a time capsule experience of the war as seen from the American perspective. "Dresden Blasted" (3:07) includes aerial footage taken during the attack; "Allies Drive Into Rhineland" (3:27) follows Allied troops plowing across a ruined Germany.
Final Thoughts
"Dresden" offers up doomed romance and wartime thrills in one complete old fashioned soap opera package, and it's Highly Recommended to anyone who enjoys historical melodrama of this sort.
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