OUR MOTHERS, OUR FATHERS (aka GENERATION WAR) is notable mostly for what it is, rather than how good it is. It's yet another German attempt to process the Second World War experience; a sort of German BAND OF BROTHERS. It covers the experiences of five friends - three men and two women, with one of the men being Jewish - during the war: the two brothers join up and see combat, one of the girls becomes a combat nurse, the other girl makes a Faustian pact to become a Nazi- approved singer, and the Jew tries to escape the Holocaust. Somewhat inevitably they all become disillusioned and it's not too hard to guess which ones are unlikely to survive. As a miniseries it consists of just three 90- minute episodes, which is the main weakness of a series with such a sweeping subject; in attempting to cover so many battles across the entire war and a huge number of historical topics in such a short time period it ends up not doing any of them justice. It also tends too much towards soap-esque plots, in which the benefit of hindsight and a lack of historical subtlety are too obvious: the Nazism is underplayed, at times the protagonists seem to run into every soon-to-be-killed Jew (and it's almost only Jews) in Eastern Europe, and there's a controversial section on the Polish AK which is not-untrue but poorly dealt with. There are also serious budget limitations, with the battle scenes trying for American-style intensity but only coming across as contrived. It's not a horrible series but it's not all that great either, and the most interesting part is to see how the Germans continue to try to process their traumatic 20th century.
Review of Generation War
