I'm posting this here largely because of the low imdb rating, which is plain wrong.
Resistance is a counterfactual tale set in a Welsh mountain valley which posits a successful Nazi invasion of Britain in 1944. There are a host of reasons why that scenario is difficult to square with the historical facts (what happened to the RAF, the Americans and the Russians?), but let's leave that to one side.
This is a powerful small-scale film focusing on the complex relationship between the occupier and the occupied. Only minimal hints about what is going on in the wider world are dropped (London falls, but Manchester and Birmingham are not subdued), and even at the end of the film you are left with several possible conclusions.
Because of its determinedly slow rhythm and elliptical style (lots of long Pinteresque pauses and staring into the middle distance), this film is not for thrill-seekers. To be honest, it would be a better film with a bit more happening. But there are more than enough (or far too many) movies full of explosions, machine guns and dumb revenge killings. Resistance has a different agenda.
As the enemy approaches, all the men leave the village, in the dead of night, without telling the women where they are going. The women suspect (rightly) they have gone to join the resistance. Soon afterwards a squad of Germans led by Hauptmann Wolfram (Tom Wlaschiha) arrives in the valley.
They appear to be searching for the men, but it turns out that Wolfram at least is more concerned with finding artworks that have been hidden in the area (specifically the medieval Mappa Mundi). Then the men just stay, through the winter to the following spring. They are kind to the women and help out with the sheep and the ploughing, and they even borrow civilian clothes when their uniforms start to wear out. They almost become protectors rather than enemies (not telling the Gestapo about the missing men, for example).
But they are met with a Silence du Mer treatment (the resistance of the title is that of the women). Wolfram tries hard to befriend one of the wives, Sarah (Andrea Risborough) and gives her a record player for her birthday, but he is rejected. He may be a decent person, and is clearly weary of the war, but he remains the enemy.
Resistance may be lacking in thrills, but it's also a salutary reminder of the pity of war which, maybe significantly, was made in the aftermath of the Iraq war and while British soldiers were fighting and dying in Afghanistan.
Resistance is a counterfactual tale set in a Welsh mountain valley which posits a successful Nazi invasion of Britain in 1944. There are a host of reasons why that scenario is difficult to square with the historical facts (what happened to the RAF, the Americans and the Russians?), but let's leave that to one side.
This is a powerful small-scale film focusing on the complex relationship between the occupier and the occupied. Only minimal hints about what is going on in the wider world are dropped (London falls, but Manchester and Birmingham are not subdued), and even at the end of the film you are left with several possible conclusions.
Because of its determinedly slow rhythm and elliptical style (lots of long Pinteresque pauses and staring into the middle distance), this film is not for thrill-seekers. To be honest, it would be a better film with a bit more happening. But there are more than enough (or far too many) movies full of explosions, machine guns and dumb revenge killings. Resistance has a different agenda.
As the enemy approaches, all the men leave the village, in the dead of night, without telling the women where they are going. The women suspect (rightly) they have gone to join the resistance. Soon afterwards a squad of Germans led by Hauptmann Wolfram (Tom Wlaschiha) arrives in the valley.
They appear to be searching for the men, but it turns out that Wolfram at least is more concerned with finding artworks that have been hidden in the area (specifically the medieval Mappa Mundi). Then the men just stay, through the winter to the following spring. They are kind to the women and help out with the sheep and the ploughing, and they even borrow civilian clothes when their uniforms start to wear out. They almost become protectors rather than enemies (not telling the Gestapo about the missing men, for example).
But they are met with a Silence du Mer treatment (the resistance of the title is that of the women). Wolfram tries hard to befriend one of the wives, Sarah (Andrea Risborough) and gives her a record player for her birthday, but he is rejected. He may be a decent person, and is clearly weary of the war, but he remains the enemy.
Resistance may be lacking in thrills, but it's also a salutary reminder of the pity of war which, maybe significantly, was made in the aftermath of the Iraq war and while British soldiers were fighting and dying in Afghanistan.