Franz is shunted off to prison, wherein attempts to change his stance include everything from cordial chats to outright torture. Franz took his decision to say no to war, at a time when a fanatic ruler does not take kindly to citizens who choose to say no to him. For it makes one question along the way too. Yet they do not seem too out of place at any point. The dialogues are often poetic when between people, and philosophical and introspective otherwise. There are a lot of routine and mundane activities that capture life in the village that plays on longer than one would imagine, and that helps contemplate the predicament, thought or situation that the character is going through.Ī lot of these scenes are also presented without dialogues or any sort of background music – strangely adding to this distinctive style of storytelling. It is, however, fascinating to experience how the same beautiful landscapes spread a sense of joy at one point in the story and yet are heavily laden with sorrow at another point.
It is the breath-taking and artistic shots of Franz’s village, and later also his prisons, that the camera lingers on. This film is long, stretching to almost three hours, but seems longer. Franz did not believe in war, and his refusal to comply with something he did not believe in, began with his non-compliance to respond adequately to a ‘Heil Hitler’ and continued to the torturous never-ending expanse of time in prison and finally to an expected end. By the time he is called on again, Germany was on a rampage to conquer and kill. He had had a glimpse of that with a brief stint, minus actual combat. At a time when Hitler’s army was calling all eligible men to fight the war, Franz Jägerstätte – an Austrian farmer and family man with a wife and three little daughters, failed to see the point in going out to kill innocent people in the name of war. He was a simple peasant who simply believed in doing what he felt was right. He was not a soldier, or a revolutionist or an evangelist or even a politician.
Review: This is a story of an unsung hero. What are the repercussions of taking such a stand – on Franz and his family? To what extent of injustice will this family be able to bear due to Franz’s conviction of not inflicting injustice onto innocent people during the war?
Plot: Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätte refuses to fight for the Nazis in World War II.
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