At the beginning when Mutti is getting rid of files, one of them says 'Hereditary differences' or something like that... what was that about? I also noticed how Lore looked at the farmers son with a disability.
Also, when Mutti takes silverware and comes back she is crying about the Fuhrer being dead. She was bleeding and I was wondering if she had been raped while she went out looking for food etc? Or was it her menses?
The files they were burning was evidence of the atrocious research being done on the handicapped in the concentration camps.
The mother took the silver for an abortion.
thank you, I had a feeling that's what Mutti did but wasn't sure.
The mother took the silver for an abortion.I missed this!
Away with the manners of withered virginsshare
i missed this as well.......how could i not have caught it?
shareThinking back it makes sense as Mutti leaves with all the silverware and obviously doesn't buy food as we see the children do that. Later she falls down collecting the firewood and is evidently distraught as her daughter tries to help cover her bleeding.
Away with the manners of withered virginsshare
I'm curious about this abortion theory...
- Whose child would she be aborting?
- Why would she want to abort the child AFTER her husband left?
- Did she know before the abortion that Hitler had died?
- What made her want to abort the child?
I kind of assumed she intended to buy food, but was shunned by the townspeople who knew that Hitler had died. And then just hated her so much for being a Nazi that she was robbed and raped. This would further illustrate that cruelty can come from both sides, both the "good" (Allies) side and the "bad" (Nazis) side.
I thought that too, an abortion never came to my mind.
shareShe was aborting her husband's child because they had lost everything and she knew they were facing prison, perhaps even execution. She planned the abortion, I believe, when they were packing to flee their house because of the way she instructed Lore to pack all of the silver. So the timing of Hitler's death in relation to her abortion was irrelevant.
If she had intended to buy food then what became of the silver? When you see the small amounts Lore was paying for food, her mother would hardly take the entire silver collection for bread and milk.
Never test the depth of the water with both feetshare
Nowadays our flatware is made of stainless steel, and the name "silverware" just an odd anomaly. But not all that long ago the flatware in more well off households really was made of silver. It was the only metal known to be soft enough to work into those shapes, yet hard enough to stand up to use without bending.
The phrase "the family silver" was common. Handing down silverware from one generation to the next was also common (sometimes it was a "wedding present"). A mansion/museum in the town I live in has a large oddly shaped safe built into the wall just for storing the silverware.
Mutti took all the silverware just like she took her jewelry: it was valuable and fairly easy to carry. The immediate meanings were simply that this was a very difficult situation, and they weren't coming back.
Mutti may (or may not) have had an abortion, and if so she apparently used the silverware. But that's probably not what she was thinking when she commanded all the silverware to be packed several days earlier.
While the film's intention may indeed have been to suggest an abortion, I have my doubts such an abortion was really a realistic possibility.
Where was the anaesthetic? Where was the sterile environment? The flatware seems too short. I've never heard of a woman performing an abortion on herself, it seems abortions are always performed by someone else.
If that's indeed what happened, then Mutti demonstrated extreme grit and determination.
"The mother took the silver for an abortion."
Stated with such authority, I thought it must have been a detail from the book or something. Now I suspect it's just nonsense. I'm not sure what happened (as in so many scenes in this movie), but can anyone who subscribes to the abortion or menstruation theories explain why her stockings would be shredded?
I think her mother was robbed and raped, but it's just an hypothesis. But yes, an abortion is also plausible. About the book, her father was a nazi official and perhaps these books were used as justification to kill disable people or jews.
shareAt the time, I was also thinking robbed/raped, especially given that Russian soldiers routinely raped German women as revenge for what German soldiers did in Russia.
I would discount the possibility of an abortion. I was under the impression the father was away for quite some time. At the beginning of the film, when he sees Lore, he remarks how much older she now looks and she says that she's hasn't forgotten how he looks. Mutti was quite slender, so she couldn't have been more than a couple months pregnant at most.
At the time, I was also thinking robbed/raped, especially given that Russian soldiers routinely raped German women as revenge for what German soldiers did in Russia.
Thanks for the clarification. I remembered Gunther's fate after they made contact with the Russians but didn't stop to think about their original starting point.
shareYes, they went from the Black Forest to the North Sea, from the South West of Germany to the North West which is about a 900km distance or so. You're right, they mentioned going into the Russian sector so they didn't take the direct route but made some detours, probably because people weren't generally allowed to cross sectors, there was a scene when the Americans didn't let them cross a sector checkpoint.
shareI have to agree with this. In the scene where she had gone inside to sit and blood can be seen on her legs, her knee also looked bruised and badly scraped, which gave me the impression that she had been raped.
shareand injured her leg
shareIf Mutti had all the intention in returning, has anyone entertained the idea of prostitution? Maybe that is why she was all dressed up, lipstick and all, to solicit sex for money to provide for her children, or maybe for herself, or both. I know it wouldnt be unrealistic as well to believe someone could just easily have raped her, but consentual sex might be a bargaining chip.About the excess blood and bruises, maybe her exploits did not fair to well in her favor. Just a thought.
shareI think it was rape to
shareI read this entire thread and I don't understand how the theory of an abortion came up.
For one, we see her openly reject the soldier's (her husband?) advances and there is an infant still in diapers (remember, the soldier handed the baby to one of the younger girls because he was wet) so it seems like the mother had given birth some time within the previous year (the baby wasn't walking and didn't seem big enough to be able to walk either).
Secondly, it seems like it would be hard for the mother to take off and just find a place to obtain an abortion. Were they so prevalent that one could just walk up to a place and obtain one for a few dollars (or their currency) or pieces of silverware? It would seem more plausible that she would have addressed that kind of need before they left and she was still in more familiar surroundings. It just seems like an odd errand, I guess. Why would she need to get dressed up for that goal?
I tend to lean toward the theory of her being raped and/or robbed wherever her destination/goal was. It would explain her disorientation/exhaustion in carrying the firewood and general angry demeanor toward Lore. I don't quite get why she is so angry at her daughter, but she seems angry, in general.
I haven't read anything on or about this movie so there may be some explanation out there clarifying if this journey was about an abortion. Regardless, that was not evident in the movie.
Would it be fair to infer that whatever it was was fatal? She still seems rather bloodied when Lore finds her face down in the mud.
shareIt's been awhile since I've seen this movie. Would you care to point me toward a time where I can watch the scene you describe?
- Get busy living, or get busy dying. Andy (The Shawshank Redemption)
He's confusing the woman who was raped to death at the farmhouse with all the empty egg shells. That was not Mutti.
Lore's mother was definitely raped, no doubt. There is a scene after her mother comes back beaten and bloodied that Lore notices bruising around her mothers neck. Later on, there is a scene near the church where a woman is being raped and the rapist has his hand around her neck, the way he is strangling the women explains the bruise Lore saw on her mothers neck.
Man without relatives is man without troubles. Charlie Chan
Ah, since her face isn't visible, it's entirely possible that wasn't her. But may I ask how you know for sure it wasn't and how you know she was raped to death? In any case, if the decease was raped, I'd assume Mutti was too, since their injuries look so similar. That's why I thought it was her in the first place.
shareTheir mother goes in to town to turn herself in and the children are left to fend for themselves. She says something along the lines of it's better to turn herself in than have them come out and get her, they knew who she was and she knew the jig was up. I haven't seen the film in a while, but it's inferred that she too was part of the killing machine of the Third Reich by the material she was burning at the beginning of the film.
Man without relatives is man without troubles. Charlie Chan
I thought she had a miscarriage. She had urged her "coward" husband to return to the front to face certain death and now she was regretful. Also, Hitler had committed suicide and it became clear that the whole war was lost and the Germany defeated, all she and her husband had worked for was lost. The stress then caused the miscarriage and her sorry state.
share