Love Amidst the Holocaust
By Skip Sheffield
“Closed Season” is set in Germany during
World War II, but it is not about the Holocaust. It has a German couple, a
young Jewish man and a Nazi officer as main characters, but it is still not
about the Holocaust. “Closed Season’ is a very unusual love story; a triangle
if you will.
The movie, directed by Franziska
Schlotterer, begins in Israel in 1970. A young man (Pepe Trebs) has travelled
from Germany to meet the man he thinks might be his biological father.
Albert (Christian Friedel) ignores the
young man. Finally the young man’s persistence pays off, and he tells Albert
his story as he understands it.
It began in a remote farm in the Black
Forest of Germany in 1942. Emma (Brigitte Hobmeier0 and Fritz (Hans-Jochen
Wagner) barely subsist. Nevertheless when Albert (Christian Friedel) flees the
Nazis and hides out in the woods, they take him in. Fritz could use some help
on the farm, he reasons.
Albert is by nature a more sensitive,
caring person than Fritz. When Fritz forgets his wife’s birthday, Albert gives
him a handmade piece of jewelry to give her to save face.
Emma and Fritz have been married ten years,
but they remain childless. Evidently it is Fritz who is infertile. Using his
practical German logic, Fritz suggests that Albert have sex with Emma in hopes
of making her pregnant and bearing a child.
Neither Emma nor Albert likes the idea, but
reluctantly they agree to the scheme.
As you can imagine there are complications.
There is no such thing as sex without consequences. The script, by Gwendolyn
Bellman and the director, delicately handles the moral issues without passing
judgment. There is a Nazi in the story; a young officer named Walter (Thomas
Loibl), but he is not a villain. As a matter of fact he knows Emma and Fritz
are harboring a Jew, and he turns a blind eye.
Ultimately any story set in Germany during
World War II is about the Holocaust. Inevitably the blind hate and treachery of
Nazi Germany intrudes into what is essentially a romance of a most different
sort. That is what makes “Closed Season’ so fascinating.
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