This movie is perfect but only if you want to deeply fall asleep, and the first 20 minutes should be enough do the work. But if you feel able to endure the suffering beyond that point, I've got something to tell you: it's not gonna get better at any point, nothing is ever gonna happen, it's the same crap over and over again. What a silly lost of time and what a waste of brain power. I feel mercilessly violated by this movie, which should have never been filmed at all, in the first place. Talking to the producers of this piece of nothing: ever thought about including some story into the project? Yes, "story", hello! anybody? I know it may sound like doing hard work and stuff but sometimes it is necessary, like when, you know..., like when you want to produce and deliver a meaningful film and not just rhetoric crap.

The timing for my watching this movie was unfortunate; I have recently seen three movies on related subject of the Holocaust, so I was not disposed in being entirely objective. That being said, this movie did offer an original take; it included a moving relation between a man saving a young Jewish boy from the well known fate of the rest of his family. The boy, Young Jakob, is played by Robbie Kay, who performs well, certainly thanks to the direction of Jeremy Podeswa (Boardwalk Empire) who also wrote the script from Anne Michael's novel; Kay portrays what it was to live in the haunting memory of the family he could not extinguish from his mind and in particular the memory of his 15 year old sister Bella, played by the beautiful and charming Nina Dobrev.The movie does not follow a formal timeline not even in its flashbacks and in the scenes when both young Jakob and older Jakob has visions of his sister; she had an indelible mark on Jakob. The story also goes back and forth intermittently showing how devoted, kind and understanding the boy's savior, Athos, was and how he helped shape his future. The actors do a splendid job, but I found it was a bit too melodramatic at times. Perhaps the introverted character of older Jakob, played by Stephen Dillane, was what made the melodrama a bit more than I cared to see. It does not take away from his performance; I just was not in the best mood for this. He became a writer, encouraged by Athos, and predictably, his writings dealt with subject relating to the loss and effects of the loss of his family in WWII.Rade Serbedzija, who plays Athos Roussos, Jakob's savior, performs his part very well, but it seems he always plays that very same character in so many of his movies; at least here I liked how he was, for all intent and purpose, a damn good father figure for Jakob. I won't forget the mature Jakob's love interests, Alex, played by the talented and delicious Rosamund Pike, who's zest for life was too much for the melancholic Jakob; thankfully he later is introduced to the gorgeous Michaela, played by Ayelet Zurer, a kindred spirit who unleashes in Jakob the desire for love and life in ways the viewer was likely to believe he was incapable of finding. The ending was unexpectedly a happy one, well not the sad one we could have expected before Michaela's introduction; it was the redeeming factor, which makes me okay with recommending it, providing the storyline is one that does not turn you off. p.s. The scenery of the Greek Islands where a good part of the story takes place will make you wish you lived there.

i hope that this insightful movie educates the world about the atrocities of the holocaust!!! unfortunately there are to many fools in the world who deny that such a thing even happened. this movie is just a glimpse of what hatred can do to our world its amazing to see a nation build themselves up again after so much wrong has been done to them, with their faith intact or even stronger than before! even though this movie does not show the evils of the holocaust in detail, it focuses on the aftermath and the psychological affect it has on generation to come in a subtle manner which proves to be somewhat more effective.

This is a beautiful well crafted movie. I was struck by how the movie doesn't fill in the blanks for you, but gives you a chance to imagine what the characters are feeling and thinking. The cinematography is exquisite, contrasting the light of the scenes in Greece with the darkness of the scenes where the young Jakob is escaping from the Nazis. One quote from the movie is that "it is not extraordinary that wood can burn, but that it can float". You don't have to be a descendant of a Holocaust victim to appreciate the very strong message delivered by the movie, that you can either be consumed with the fire of your past life's horrors or allow yourself to float and survive and thrive.technolog