From Hilde, With Love Review: Love and Defiance Intertwined

Esteemed German director Andreas Dresen, known for his empathetic character studies, brings his contemplative style to a lesser-known story of resistance in From Hilde, With Love. This WWII drama takes us back to 1940s Berlin, zeroing in on the real-life Red Orchestra group who dared to stand up to the Nazi regime.

At the helm is a soulful Liv Lisa Fries as Hilde Coppi, a shy young woman who finds purpose and romance within this underground circle of activists, before landing in prison for her treasonous activities. Johannes Hegemann plays her husband Hans, the dashing Luftwaffe officer who sweeps Hilde off her feet. Supporting characters like the sinister prison guard Frau Kuner (Lisa Wagner) round out the cast.

Though tales of resistance aren’t exactly rare in German cinema, Dresen distinguishes his film through its gentle humanism and textured performances. Fries, in particular, commands the screen with her subtle but affecting work. From Hilde may not reinvent the WWII genre, but it promises an intimate look at the ordinary heroes who risked everything for their convictions.

A Fateful Summer of Resistance

We’re transported to Berlin in 1942 as the film opens on the arrest of a young secretary named Hilde Coppi. Though the charges of treason don’t become clear right away, we soon learn Hilde was part of an underground anti-Nazi circle known as the Red Orchestra. Through flashbacks interwoven with her time in prison, we witness the idealistic Hilde’s journey from shy wallflower to daring resister.

It all begins when Hilde meets the dashing Hans, a Luftwaffe officer who sweeps her off her feet intellectually and romantically. As their summer affair blossoms, he introduces the reserved Hilde to his circle of friends who defy the Reich through small acts of subversion – distributing leaflets, sending coded messages to German POWs in Russia, that sort of thing.

Though initially hesitant, Hilde finds purpose in their tight-knit group, using her talents for typing and transcription to aid their efforts. But simply listening to foreign radio broadcasts is considered treason. So when the Gestapo closes in that fall, they’re utterly trapped.

The film then settles into the grim realities of prison life as a very pregnant Hilde awaits her fate behind bars. Giving birth under horrifying conditions, she’s allowed temporary custody of her son, a tiny sliver of hope amid the anguish. But any illusions of clemency are shattered as Hans goes before the firing squad, followed by the rest of their decimated circle. Even pleading her case directly to Hitler does nothing. As the birth of her child gives way to the shadow of execution, Hilde reckons with the bitter legacy of their thwarted resistance.

Finding Meaning in Defiance

At its heart, From Hilde is a tale of everyday moral courage in the face of towering evil. Through Hilde’s journey from wallflower secretary to convicted traitor, the film explores what motivates “ordinary” people to risk everything for their beliefs.

Much of that inspiration stems from human bonds. We watch the shy Hilde gradually blossom through her connection to Hans and his circle of friends. Though their acts of resistance seem small – passing out leaflets, sending coded messages to POWs – they carry outsized meaning for Hilde. In fighting oppression through furtive gestures of defiance, she discovers purpose and self-worth she’d never known before. Even in the darkest days awaiting trial, human ties like her sympathy for a grieving prison guard reveal glimmers of light amid the shadows.

Beyond personal relationships, Dresen suggests that standing up to injustice is an ethical imperative in its own right. His restrained storytelling focuses less on overt heroic sacrifice and more on the gradual awakening of conscience that transforms regular citizens into champions of truth. Though the regime depicts people like Hilde as treasonous villains, the film gently reframes her as an ordinary woman of quiet conviction. When she pleads for mercy from the Fuhrer himself, it’s not for her own sake but for the son she worries will grow up motherless in troubled times.

Ultimately, what endures from the film is not the futility of the group’s efforts or the tragedy of Hilde’s execution. It’s the flicker of hope embodied by people like her – so-called “good Germans” who dared to follow their moral compass, even when the course seemed hopeless. For in even the darkest chapters of history, it only takes a spark of defiant conscience to light the way toward a just future.

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Observant Storytelling In Trying Times

Cinematographer Judith Kaufmann wonderfully captures the film’s dual worlds – the inviting, sun-dappled forests of Hilde’s past and the cold brutality of the prison where she awaits execution. Stark contrasts between light and shadow visually reinforce themes of hope and despair. Meanwhile, Dresen’s grounded approach eschews stylistic flourishes in favor of quiet observation. His use of long static takes, in particular, puts us right alongside Hilde as she endures the grinding parade of days blending numbingly together.

The editing also reflects Dresen’s emphasis on emotional realism over manipulation. Rather than presenting a straightforward timeline, editor Jörg Hauschild jumps back and forth between Hilde’s time with the resistance and her imprisonment. This nonlinear approach immerses us in her psychological state as she clings to cherished memories amid the harsh realities of confinement.

Flashbacks grow increasingly frequent as the film progresses, suggesting her deep need for nostalgic escape. Yet Dresen allows extended sequences on both ends of the timeline, detailing small gestures of humanity that point to moral awakening – or atrophy. Far from feeling disjointed, this meditation across time feels fluid and revealing.

Through his observational style, Dresen quietly builds an emotional tapestry woven from courage and cruelty, innocence and bitterness, resistance and resignation. His greatest triumph may be portraying villains and heroes less as archetypes than complex people trying to walk the line between conscience and complicity. It makes for a layered, humane portrait of everyday morality in times when goodness faced unthinkable tests.

The Beating Heart of Humanism

At the film’s resilient core stands Liv Lisa Fries, delivering a beautifully modulated turn as the titular Hilde. With captivating subtlety, she exposes unexpected wells of courage and sensuality beneath Hilde’s shy exterior. We can see glimmers of the awkward secretary she once was, now warily navigating an unfamiliar world of fugitive activists.

But Fries also reveals the tender idealist who emerges through newfound love and purpose, making Hilde’s defiance feel hard-won rather than inevitable. Even facing execution, her disciplined performance grounds tragic elements in intimate humanity.

While less developed, the supporting players also help steer clear of well-worn Nazi archetypes. Johannes Hegemann brings earnest charm to Hans’ patrician playboy, a layered man who proves more steadfast than his carefree persona first suggests. Meanwhile, Lisa Wagner makes a remarkable transformation as Hilde’s prison guard Anneliese Kühn.

Initially the picture of teutonic authority, her iciness gives way to something more conflicted – hints of sympathy curdling into bitterness over witnessing too much anguish. Rather than simplistic villains, these characters remind us that conscience comes in many forms – or fails to, for reasons as complex as human nature itself.

But ultimately, this is Fries’ movie. She takes a story often told in sweeping brushstrokes – defiant heroes facing fascist horrors – and makes it feel achingly personal without ever straining for effect. Through her, we gain something rarely found in WWII dramas: intimacy amid inhumanity, a young woman’s journey toward moral awakening, moment by hushed moment.

The Struggle Within

Rather than lionizing the Red Orchestra as uncomplicated heroes, Dresen takes a more rounded view. We see both their daring and naiveté, passion and pettiness, as they smoke and debate ideas between furtive activist schemes hatched more out of boredom than strategy. Their messages to Russian POWs were less military masterstrokes than symbolic gestures of solidarity, revealing who they were as much as what they did. Dresen suggests that imperfect people can still summon imperfect courage – and that this humanity makes their struggle all the more resonant.

The film also recalibrates typical notions of heroism away from dramatic sacrifice towards incremental acts of conscience. Though the Orchestra’s efforts didn’t amount to much quantitatively, Dresen finds meaning in the mere decision to resist when acquiescence was the norm. Every small risk – harboring a pamphlet, listening to a banned broadcast – speaks to awakening moral conviction, not as an absolute state but an ongoing process.

Most strikingly, Hilde herself remains an ambivalent protagonist rather than an easy icon. She betrays her friends under interrogation and pleads for the life of her child, not the resistance. Such quiet human frailty makes her ultimate sacrifice more chilling and meaningful than any statuesque martyr could. Her parting words give voice to the film’s memorializing intent: paying tribute not just to what people do but who they dare to be.

In celebrating those who stood for truth during Germany’s darkest days, From Hilde delivers a timeless message about defiance in the face of oppression. Though regimes and technologies evolve, human nature does not – nor do the private struggles between conscience and complicity faced by people like Hilde. Now as then, the choice to resist may appear futile, danger unjustified. Yet the flickering candle lit by people like the Red Orchestra still lights the way toward justice today – if only we have the courage to carry the flame.

Signposts of the Heart

At its best, cinema can serve as an emotional bridge between the past and present, those flickering shadows linking our struggles to those who came before. From Hilde excels as precisely this kind of conduit, channeling the lives – and deaths – of long-forgotten resisters into a testament of courage echoing down the decades.

We may never fully grasp the inner lives that led people like Hilde to risk execution for their convictions. But in Drewes’ thoughtful staging and Fries’ stirring performance, we catch glimpses of the humanity and hope that guide the way even in history’s darkest passages.

The film’s march toward tragedy is leavened by its ultimate faith in moral awakening. Hilde and her compatriots died largely unknown, their gestures of defiance barely remembered much less appreciated. Yet the example of their sacrifice, so modest yet utterly profound, cannot help but stir our own crisis of conscience.

However beyond our reach martyrdom may seem, their struggles mirror our own in times when oppression wears familiar guises and resistance feels no less demanding. By honoring those who took first steps down freedom’s dangerous road, this haunting elegy reminds us to stand up – and light candles of our own.

If you feel daunted by the enormity of today’s injustices, I urge you to walk alongside Hilde for a few short hours. There amid the shadows, you may glimpse flickers of light kindled long ago, pointing the way for dreamers and vagabonds, patriots and lost children. With its eyes trained on that thin horizon between defeat and hope, From Hilde makes for necessary viewing – a testament to everyday heroism in times that tested human limits, and found humanity wanting little.

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