Written and directed by Beth Lane, co-written by Aaron Soffin, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor uncovers the extraordinary story of her mother and six siblings’ escape from Nazi Germany.
Filmmakers continue to frequently explore World War II and the Holocaust, but whereas many choose to focus on the waging of war that we’ve seen told over and over again, it’s stories like that of the Weber family featured in UnBroken which are the ones we should be highlighting. The stories of unsung heroes, everyday people who chose to help families escape persecution. The journey that the Weber children took is not one often told, how far and wide they travelled simply to survive. Especially as their story is told through a lens of appreciation, the trauma and grief are recognised but the focus is on celebrating the efforts that went into their escape.
However, it does feel as though Beth Lane needed to pick a more specific perspective. UnBroken moves back and forth between telling the wider story of the family and showing Lane’s journey to visit the key places from their past. It splits the tone, with one style being a very personal, intimate view and the other being a step back. Part of that issue is also that it can occasionally feel like it’s trying too hard to evoke emotion, which it absolutely does not need to do. The film is at its most moving in the ending scenes when it’s simple and wholesome but earlier on it’s using a heavy score, animation and more purposefully constructed moments to push towards feeling.
It’s something that the film does struggle with, particularly as it never quite builds up a strong flow. It moves through different anecdotes and history without creating a clear path, they’re interesting but not truly building upon one another, despite being told in a linear fashion. It can be a touch awkward at times and the style is lacking, it attempts a lot of different things, but the talking heads segments in particular needed a bit of refinement. To use a simpler shot and background to let the focus be entirely on the family member, whereas it can often instead feel like a home-movie.
UnBroken is a wonderful testament to how generosity and selflessness can make such a vast difference in the lives of others. It’s exactly the type of story which should continue to be told and it’s interesting to see how complicated the journey of the Weber children was to arrive at genuine safety. However, the style feels weak and unfocused, it’s missing a good flow to add a sharpness to their journey. It perhaps needed an extra hand at the wheel who wasn’t so personally involved to guide it towards a more powerful style to match its story.
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