SKYGGEN I MIT ØJE / THE SHADOW IN MY EYE (2021)

An award-winner in Scandinavia & elsewhere in Europe, Danish writer/director Ole Borndal has left little footprint Stateside.  A situation this film might change, but probably won’t with NetFlix slapping the generic title BOMBARDMENT on this exceptional end-of-the-line WWII story.  Based on a real 1945 incident (with speculative characters) where misdirected British bombers are led like moths to a flame from their actual target (Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen) to an inner-city Catholic grammar school after an attacking plane crashes and lights up the wrong location.  Suspenseful without ‘milking’ it, and boasting well-handled period detail & special effects.  But what allows this to rise well above expectations comes from strong characterizations (affected teachers, students, nuns, defecting collaborators, confused RAF pilots, downbeat soldiers, nerve-shattered parents); from its clarity of action; and in how it consistently locates the tone & attitudes of its era.  A rare find in even the best of recent WWII historicals.  It’s not just clothes & behavior, but in the physical response of Danes, Germans, collaborators to what has suddenly become a waiting game on the inevitable Nazi defeat.  With physical posture paradoxically poised and off-balance, uncomfortably held someplace between subjugation and liberation.*  Only the children yet to pick up on this endgame mindset.  The mood of a nation perfectly personified in the exceptional work of young Bertram Bisgaard Enevoldsen playing a traumatized teen who finds his way back thru crisis.    

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *It’s Sweden rather than Denmark, but Hollywood got some of this across in THE COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR/’62.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/counterfeit-traitor-1962.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: This film earns another MAKSQUIBS ‘Family Friendly’ label that’s for teens, but not for kiddies.  SmartPhone users can scroll down and click onto the Main Site for an explanation of all our labels.  Also SEE them since they don’t display in SmartPhone blog mode.