MovieChat Forums > Rosenstrasse (2003) Discussion > Reason for Hannah's search SPOILERS

Reason for Hannah's search SPOILERS


Compliments to the director and (screen)writer of this movie. It was by far one of the most excellent and original WW2 drama's I have seen for a long time.
I was therefore quite astonished to read the overall negative comments on this website. Many felt that the context inwhich the story of Lena unfolded was over the top and move rapidly to focus only on the WW2 part of the story. It was the original starting point of the story that added an extra special dimension and meaning to the movie! This movie is also about a mother/daughter relationship, a daughter's search for her roots (by trying to find out about her mother's past) and how war trauma can affect someone till the present day and even can affect the next generation's life.

It was not the death of Hannah's father that prompted her search, but first of all her mother's unusual behaviour during the funeral eg religion and Jewish rituals became a major importance suddenly. Then Ruth all of a sudden rejected Hannah's boyfriend because he was not Jewish. Then there was the unknown cousin whom the mother refused to acknowledge and who revealed a few facts about Ruth's past which were hitherto unknown to Hannah.
It was obvious to me that the shock and grief caused by death of Ruth's husband reactivated an old trauma from her youth Ruth hadn't dealt with as an adult.
She refused to talk about matters with Hannah, but expressed regret for not having known her mother. It's then that Hannah realizes she also wants to really know her mother.After all knowing and understanding your parents is essential I think for discovering and strengthening you own identity.
What Hannah learns eventually shocks her to the core! The father of Ruth who deserted his own wife and child in order to survive, the waiting and hoping for her mom in Rosenstrasse, her death, the being sent away to USA by Lena and then having to share the next caregiver with another girl.....
All reveal the suppressed and extreme anger, pain, betrayal, grief, disappointment of Ruth, the child. What a joy for this child to learn that Lena has loved her all these years and would love to see her again! To have her mother's precious ring returned to her, restoring her with what has been good and dear from an otherwise traumatic past.
And it must have been very healing that her story and pain have been "heard" by daughter Hannah who searched for it. The healing manifests itself in Ruth's sudden changed attitude and blessing of Hannah's wedding with boyfriend.
Besides the whole journey was also beneficial for Hannah in other ways. The passion of her search helped her to deal with otherwise "demanding" boyfriend, who expected her to drop everything when he needed her. She learned to respect her own needs and teached boyfriend that she has boundaries.

I thought this was a wonderful, heartwarming story by itself.
I hope that by writing it down others will also be able to see and understand/appreciate the richness and complexity of the movies plot.
It was a joy for me to recall and summarize it here.



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Thank you for this wonderful summery. It was nice remembering this wonderful movie. When I first saw it, it touch me personally. I remember that I even cried during the final “ring” scene.

Thanks!

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Yes, it's striking that some of Ruth's actions during the time of mourning, in New York, mirror things that we see happened around the child Ruth in 1943. Her cruel line "If he (Luis) marries her, then Hannah is not my daughter" echoes Lena's father who denies his daughter because of her marriage to a Jew. And you could even say the kaddish ritual (sitting silent on the floor) is mirrored in the street vigil of the women later in the movie. I'm sure these are conscious touches in the script.

it shgould also be noted that Ruth (and thus Hannah, although Robert was a jew) is not of "pure" jewish descent: Ruth's dad would have been an "aryan" German. The film emphasises the reconciliation and interplay of German and Jewish.

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Orthodox and conservative Jews consider a person Jewish if and only if that person's mother was born a Jew (that is, born to a Jewish mother). The father's religion has no bearing on the child's acceptance as a Jew. Reform Jews welcome all children who have at least one Jewish parent (either by birth or Reform/easy conversion). So, in all branches of Judaism, a child born of a Jewish mother is regarded as being as Jewish as a child born from two Jewish parents.

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Yes, actually German citizenship law runs on the same lines. A child born of a German mother (German as in citizenship, in whatever way she acquired it, not in any mystical "blood" sense) becomes a German citizen from birth. The nationality of the father doesn't count in the same way. I think it was the same already before Hitler.

What I wanted to indicate was rather that the film quietly refuses to streamline things into a simple view where people "own" a conflict, a historical tragedy or a moral vantage point simply because of being born into a certain people, or some specially qualified family, and other people are excluded. Lena is not a Jew 'by blood' and we don't know whether she has lived as a Jew after the war, but that doesn't rob her of her voice or her status as one of the many people whose lives were scarred by the Third Reich.




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Thanks for posting, Mariawong99. I agree that this movie is much better than the critics made it out to be. The movie might be a touch emotionally manipulative, but really, how many Holocaust movies aren't? I have seen worse movies get away with more such manipulation.

A lot of critics also seem to complain about the length of _Rosenstrasse_. It is a long movie, but I never felt bored while watching it or thought that it needed any massive cutting.

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This is a film that needs not to feel rushed, to slowly pull its viewers in. If it had been shortened by forty minutes, the shifts between the present and the Third Reich and between New York and Berlin would have felt far choppier - and the film would likely have been forced to walk a much more in-your-face and manipulative avenue in the way it tells its story. Especially the deepening connection between Lena and Hannah.

The film business today has a fixation that a picture should normally never be longer than just over two hours. This is for commercial reasons (theatre and tv scheduling) but many newspaper critics have bought into the idea as well. Unfortunately it rips up the narrative flow and pacing of many films.

Another aspect many critics (especially in America) probably had trouble with is, the film avoids typically heroic stand-off moments. The women are victorious in the end (a conditional victory, though) but they don't get there by storming the jail or by openly taunting the guards as if they were their superiors. There's an expectation about this kind of subject in films that the key good guys should exhibit brash heroism, the worse the conditions the sooner. Neither the women nor the captive jews, nor even Arthur rebels in a two-fisted way or forces that kind of standoff here, the guards at the prison don't shoot at the women either. The threat is clearly present but in the street it erupts only once, in the scene where the soldiers try to push back the women. Even then, there is no fire, though bloodshed could be imminent if it hadn't been broken by the military high guy arriving. This is true to the story as it would have happened, but it negates Hollywood scripting.



You are a lunatic, Sir, and you're going to end up on the Russian front. I have a car waiting.

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You enhanced my appreciation of the movie greatly! My initial reaction was how can we clean this up and in turn shorten it. Not any more!

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