Twin Sisters (2002)

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

After a long time writing a review, actually a short one. I thought I have watched almost all great heart wrenching drama about the people around the devastating destruction of WWII. But I guess I was wrong.''De Tweeling'' aka ''Twin Sisters'' is an absolute tear jerker. Story of two orphan twin sisters who were separated at childhood, one lived in Holland living a posh life and other had to live in Germany in a severe abusive atmosphere. WWII came, altered their lives in a most possible devastating way one can imagine. This is a story of love, heartbreak, tragedy and war in an epic proportion. As you can see its based on a worldwide best-seller, its almost impossible to portray and bring up the story in big screen by its level and proportion, they did a very fine job. And perhaps this is the best Dutch production I have seen so far.Don't want to give any spoiler, so I shouldn't go any further I guess. But the actresses performed the twin sisters in different stages of life did excellent job. One of them will remind u the prime period of 'Audre Hepburn' and wouldn't that be extra something !Story evolves from different point of view. It will make you asking the question again and again whether the normal people of Germany really knew what was really going on ? Why did they march under someone as crazy as Hitler ?? Did they really have any other choice ?? I will leave them out for the audience.The choices we make shapes our life and defines who we really are . But under different circumstances, would we make the same kind choices ?? Is it really up to us or we are the victim of our surroundings ?

I almost didn't watch this when I realized it would likely be a WWII Jewish victim movie. Don't get me wrong....I am 60 and have watched these things all my life but I am simply tired of them-- I have OD'd on them. There is never a bad Jewish character in them and the Germans are made out as bad as possible in a cartoon fashion.The most effective anti Nazi movies I have watched are in fact their own propaganda movies you can see through them easily. There is a good one on the Warsaw Ghetto and Vichy France.I am gay I might have been gassed too. Yes I believe the Holocaust happened for your information. (I was asked that when I told someone my view on these movies).This movie about 2 twin sisters separated early in life Lotte and Anna is actually a very moving movie. Unfortunately it has too much of the PC stuff I am talking about to be a really breakout film. Disheven German officers shooting baby animals and so forth. But unbelievably it had a very sympathetic German couple in it. In fact the German Actors playing Anna and her Husband were far better actors (and better looking) than the Dutch ones playing Lotte and David--just a fact.It would get about a 7 if the PC filters were not needed as they are it gets a 5. Put some PC filters on and and give it time it is slow moving in the beginning. It will make you cry. It is estimated that 72 million civilians and troops were killed during WWII it is useful to remember them so their suffering was not in vain.RECOMMEND

Outline of Story:Two twin sisters Lotte and Anna, born in pre-war Germany (1920) are separated at the age of six when there last parent and father dies. Because the Dutch and German relatives "themselves are already at war", both the children grow up in a totally different environment, different language, -parents, -family and -friends. Lotte, although quite ill, is the luckier of the two, as she is taken in by distant family in the Netherlands, where she is lovingly nursed back to health. Anna, on the other hand, finds herself claimed by a harsh uncle and aunt to live and work on their farm, where punishing treatment makes her existence miserable.For many years the girls try to contact each other but both families are able to intercept their letters and to make them believe that the other sister is dead.We follow the two sisters as they mature, including the long-awaited first reunion, which is a happy moment, in Anna's elegant Countess's surroundings. But when Lotte observes German dinner guests criticizing a cursing the Jews she flees as her soon to be Husband is Jewish. The two sisters find it difficult to separate the losses of their husbands: Lotte blames Anna's siding with the Nazis as a cause of David's death. Anna defends Martin's role as one of idealism that had nothing to do with the genocide of the Jews. They part, seemingly to never meet again.But as old women bedraggled Anna seeks out the elegant Lotte and the two come to understand their opposite opinions of what the war did to destroy their happiness. The movie ends in the two elderly Lotte and Anna spending a night in the Bush lands. Sadly Anna dies in Lotte's arms.

I read the book to this film about 6 years ago, back when I was in high school and was so impressed by it that I bought the book for my bookcase three years ago or something. I haven't read the book since and I'm not some kind of purist, heck I don't even remember the specifics of the book. At best that makes me as biased as someone who didn't read the book at all...or at worst it means that I'm not a 'purist'.Translating a book into film, the visible medium, there are so many stages at which it can go wrong. Luckily it didn't with this one. The casting is perfect. I especially liked how Lotte and Anna spoke believably broken German and Dutch. Not as it sometimes happens in American productions, when they for instance speak Dutch and say it is German. This was very well done indeed and added to the films worth. What touches me most about De Tweeling though is the fact at heart, that you get shaped partly by your environment. It is worked out very well in this film and my favorite part is that the film distances itself (as does the book) from pointing out one of the two sisters as 'the bad guy'. The film just shows the horror, the desperation and the pain on the common man from both sides; the aggressor and the wrongfully invaded. It is a truly great theme and it is one of the few films I guess in which you actually get to feel sympathy for the Germans (or at least some of them). Maybe that is understandable. Maybe it is logic that most films portray the Germans as gruesome and despicable as quite a lot of them maybe were. But every once in a while a film comes along that shows us that they are human too, that they suffered losses; that German lives lost shatter German families as they shatter American, Dutch, Polish, Jewish, English and so on. This is one of those films. It strays from the cliché, which is what I liked about it as I did like Stalingrad (1993) and Die Brücke (1959).8 out of 10