Even though we’re many years beyond the Holocaust and its endless horrors, we can still detect tremors of its seismic impact today. This thought must have, at one point or another, crossed the mind of German filmmaker Georg Maas, who borrows liberally from a previously unpublished text written by author Hannelore Hippe in Two Lives; there may not be such a thing as “too many Holocaust stories”, and we may never learn everything that tragedy has to teach us.
With Two Lives, Maas goes back to the well of his 2003 debut, New Found Land; he’s still exploring the aftermath of the Berlin Wall’s collapse, treating the event like a cascade of falling dominoes. This time, however, he uses the Wall as a means of revealing echoing truths about a Norwegian family living comfortably together, totally unaware of what the past has kept secret from them for years. When the Wall comes down, our protagonist, Katrine (Juliane Kohler), immediately leaps into damage control mode; whatever lies buried in Eastern Germany, she wants it to stay there, and so she begins her frenzied campaign to suppress the truth.
What those aforementioned truths are, of course, presents Two Lives with its central mystery. We know from the onset of the film that Katrine has something she wants to hide from her loving husband, Bjarte (Sven Nordin), her mother, Ase (Norwegian screen icon Liv Ullmann), and her daughter, Anne (Julia Bache-Wiig); we just don’t know what, or why. We do know that Katrine is the product of the Lebensborn program, a Nazi-sponsored plot that coupled German officers with Norwegian women in the hopes of breeding super Aryans, but if she prefers not to talk about that sore subject, she also doesn’t keep it to herself.
So there’s more to Two Lives than meets the eye, though the title does all the legwork necessary to hint at subterfuge and deception. Many critics have drawn a connection between Maas’ and Hippe’s material and the work of John Le Carre, and it’s a fair enough distinction; Two Lives exists in the twists and turns taken to obfuscate reality from its viewing audiences, and enjoys a deliberate sense of pacing that keeps the story moving forward at a fast clip after a somewhat rocky opening act.
Though the running time occasionally maunders in stretches and goes a little overly sentimental at times, Maas nonetheless succeeds with his central appeal: delving into character relationships. Two Lives cares far more about Katrine than it does tinkers, tailors, soldiers, or spies, and focuses foremost on how atrocities committed decades ago can unravel people living beyond their reach in the present day. (It should be re-emphasized that “present day” here means 1990.) At one point, idealist young lawyer Sven (Ken Duken), the well-meaning man responsible for dredging up Katrine’s past in the court of law, tells Anne that he likes her whole family; in one line of dialogue, he articulates our own sentiment as observers.
We don’t want whatever ill-fated outcomes that await Katrine to come to fruition. Maas, above all else, fosters compassion for this woman, such that when she’s left to struggle with the weight of her actions, we’re the only people she has to lean on. Two Lives may fit into the mode of a message film or political thriller, but the director’s real interest here is in human drama, and he excels in this department. It’s an indirect World War 2 movie that invests the bulk of its emotional currency in the fracturing of a family.
It’s also slickly made and finely acted. Maas’ use of the camera makes Two Lives feel big, which perhaps is inappropriate at first blush but makes perfect sense when Katrine’s micro troubles are contextualized within the overarching woe of the film’s core turmoil. It’s an intimate story set within a narrative of much grander scope. Of the picture’s many wonderful performances (particularly Ullmann, who brings a flinty sort of vulnerability to her role), it’s Kohler who commands the spotlight; she instills Katrine with serious pathos and creates a portrait of a woman who’s stoic and yet quietly fragile at the same time.
If the film suffers from anything, it’s the absence of background; Maas concedes a history lesson to those unfamiliar with the Nazi occupation of Norway or the Lebensborn initiative, but he only deigns to do so about halfway through the movie. In other words, a basic knowledge of history is needed to wring maximum enjoyment out of Two Lives, though the acting is so good and the craftsmanship so on-point that retroactive understanding is easily achieved. This isn’t a film that bothers to hand-hold; it’s too busy bubbling with deep-rooted anger at the callousness it examines.
