Divided We Fall (film)
| Divided We Fall | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Directed by | Jan Hřebejk |
| Produced by | Pavel Borovan Ondřej Trojan |
| Written by | Jan Hřebejk Petr Jarchovský |
| Starring |
Bolek Polívka Anna Šišková Csongor Kassai |
| Music by | Ales Brezina |
| Cinematography | Jan Malír |
| Edited by | Vladimír Barák |
|
Release date
|
Czech Republic: 16 March 2000 United States: 8 June 2001 United Kingdom: 31 May 2002 |
|
Running time
|
123 min. |
| Country | Czech Republic |
| Language |
Czech German |
| Box office | $1,830,938 (worldwide) |
Divided We Fall (Czech: Musíme si pomáhat literally translated as We Must Help Each Other) is a 2000 Czech film directed by Jan Hřebejk. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Anna Šišková won a Lion award for best actress.
The film opens in 1939 Czechoslovakia. Horst, a Czech-German Nazi collaborator married to a German woman and co-worker of Josef, brings food to the invalid Josef and his wife Marie, who are Czechs. Josef hates the Nazis. When Josef finds David, who had escaped a concentration camp in occupied Poland after first being sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in northern Bohemia, Josef and Marie decide to hide him in their apartment. Horst makes an unannounced visit, bringing presents as usual. Marie is ambivalent about their secret: On one hand she never misses an opportunity to blame her husband for bringing in the Jew, but on the other she is merciful and sympathetic with the poor kid locked in the closet day and night. She suggests that Josef accepts Horst's job offer evicting Czech Jews from their homes, so as to get more protection and deflect possible suspicions. Josef accepts and is considered a collaborator by the neighbor Franta (who had tried to give David over to the Nazi authorities, when he first escaped from a concentration camp). Marie spends the days learning French from David and getting more and more tender toward him. Horst's visits become more frequent, and one afternoon, he attempts to rape Marie.
Josef gets his fertility tested to confirm a long-time rumor: He can't have children. Humiliated by his earlier antics, Horst takes revenge on Marie by forcing them to provide lodging for his supervisor, a committed Nazi bureaucrat, who had suffered a stroke after Nazis kill his son for deserting the army. Marie refuses to accept him on the grounds that she is pregnant. Unfortunately, the community is well-aware that Josef and Marie are infertile, and Josef proposes that David get Marie pregnant in order to stage a "miracle" and avoid further investigation. After much resistance from Marie, she and David have sex. Marie becomes pregnant, and Horst eventually apologizes for his previous behavior. As the Germans lose ground in World War II, Horst's behavior begins to change. Based on his previous suspicions that someone else is living with Josef and Marie, he redirects German authorities when the latter search the street house by house. Finally, the Germans are defeated and the Czech people take brutal revenge on them. As the Germans are being driven out, Marie goes into labor. Josef frantically searches for a doctor, but the streets of the city are in chaos and the Nazi-affiliated doctor has already been captured.
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