The Gut-Wrenching Anti-War Danish Human Drama “Liberation” by Anders Walter

Anders Walter’s Liberation Is A Gut-Wrenching Anti-War Danish Human Drama

Humanism above hatred. This is the bottom line of the beautifully designed anti-war Danish film Liberation (also known as Before It Ends) featuring actors who don’t ACT, technicians who don’t show off, and an epic scale that doesn’t flaunt its skills.

In other words, a near-perfect fable of morality, a timely lesson as the words woo the language of war all over again.

This is April 1945 in the picture postcard island of Funen in Denmark. The principal Jacob (Pilou Asbæk) has just been informed that his school will house thousands of German refugees, and really, he has no say in the matter. The harsh reality of the situation—sleeping with the enemy, so to speak– is never over-burnished for effect.

For a film with such steep level of ingrained violence, there is very little actual physical violence on screen. This is not another anti-Nazi film fueled by hatred and intolerance against the butchers deployed by that funny man with a funny mustache.

Going beyond the malevolence Liberation tells us why it is important to not forget our humanity even when it is under severe attack. More than a story of cultural realignment during stressful times, this is a father-son story, structured in a way that the core relationship defines the mood texture and morality of the entire theme.

Jacob’s young son Søren (Lasse Peter, wonderful) is torn between his father’s newly-assigned duty to look after the “enemy” and his blurred understanding of what it means to be the son of a man who the whole village suddenly hates for no fault of his.

The moral arc of this emotionally dense drama is enormously complex. Who is the enemy here? And is it right to let the German civilians sicken and die since Germany’s five-year occupation of Denmark gives the Danes no reason to be on their best behavior? The Danish locals are very clear on this: you can’t be nice to the people who have made your life hell for five years.

But it isn’t easy for Jacob and his strong-willed wife Liz (Katrine Greis-Rosenthal) when they have to watch children and old people die in front of their eyes, even if they are the hated Germans.

It is to the director Anders Walter and his co-writer Miriam Nørgaard’s credit that they do not topple the narrative with self-righteousness. Throughout the austerely assembled drama, the director preserves a balance between practical hard reality and human compassion.

To me, Jacob’s son Soren seems to be the central character. It couldn’t have been easy for little Lasse Peter Larsen to be shown as a child caught in the ferocious moral crossfire. There is a harrowing sequence in which Soren is tied to a tree by his schoolmates, stripped and left to freeze in the snow…what follows is a scene of humanism with a German girl rescuing Soren, that could have easily lapsed into maudlinism.

It doesn’t. The real triumph of this miraculous mortality tale is it tells us not to take sides during a war. But just go by the unwritten laws of humanism. It isn’t the enemy you are facing. It is just another human being who had nothing to do with what the funny man with the funny mustache was doing.

Elegant, compassionate, and deeply moving, Liberation is about freedom from the tyranny of hatred.