Interesting film to say the least. Compared to our other WWII movie You are Not an Orphan, this film shows the harsh realities of a period that would later be called the Great Patriotic War by the USSR. Both of these films deal with orphans but in very different ways.
In Orphan, we are treated to a storybook version of the war, at least what we see. It is assumed that the Germans are the enemies but never really brought out as an issue. People in the villages never torment any of the children. One man even joins in briefly with the game of hide and seek the children are playing.
The orphans in Little Angel are German children left behind, while their parents are sent to Siberia. They are innocent victims of circumstance and none of them have ever done anything wrong. Yet they are treated like Hitler incarnate by the Communist officials and left to die of starvation and disease. Anyone that helps the children are imprisoned. These children are forced into conditions that you wouldn't hope on your worst enemies. And they have done nothing wrong.
The differing views on orphans within the Soviet Union changed mainly due to time passing. Orphans was made during the Khrushchev Thaw and was allowed some artistic flow but still had to remain within a certain boundary. You can even see examples of propaganda within the film every so often, especially with the police women that allows the orphans to go home at the end. Little Angel was made in 1994, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and had to respect no boundaries. It's unique because it shows that not all Germans are evil; the "bad guy" could be anybody, even the Russians. It showed that things are not black and white, that World War II didn't have all Germans ready to fight. Some are just trying to survive.
Little Angel allows viewers to see a different side of the war, that of the Germans, which is not often portrayed in a good light. However, this picture of innocence being tortured just because of its ethnicity is utterly horrifying but shows that when dealing with war, nobody is just as you think they are.
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Joe I so agree with you that the film did not have to respect any boundariee. It truly gave the impression that it just wanted to show you what kind of brutality these children had to deal with and all the discrimination they had to endure. I also agree that they are victims of circumstance and that they were just caualties. but I think it is also important to say that these casualties could have been prevented if the country was not so segregated. I think that if more of the families in the film were willing to help these young orphans it would have been a different turn out.
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