The pleasures inherent in historical dramas usually lift them above the average movie in terms of what the viewer can take away from them, which mostly has to do with placing the viewer in an unfamiliar time and place and telling them how to feel in that milieu. More significantly, the details of a historical moment enrich the story by conveying knowledge about that moment the viewer didn’t possess previously. Fatih Akin, a veteran German director whose heritage is Turkish, has adapted a screenplay written by his late cinematic mentor Hark Bohm about Bohm’s childhood during World War II on the small titular island off the northern coast of Germany, where the inhabitants spoke Frisian and practiced agriculture and whaling for centuries. The protagonist, a 12-year-old boy named Nanning (Jasper Billerbeck), has been evacuated from Hamburg with his pregnant mother, Hille (Laura Tonke), and younger brother due to the Allied bombing, leaving behind his father, who serves in the SS. Though Hille grew up on Amrum, she has since acculturated to the German mentality and is a staunch follower of Hitler and the Nazi cause. Her homecoming is fraught with awkward reconnections since the natives are not staunch followers. If anything, they identify more with the enemy owing to historical factors that forced a good many of them to migrate overseas after the whaling industry faded. As one former “cowboy” who used to live in the U.S. and returned to Amrum when the Great Depression hit, there are more Amrumers in New York City than that are on Amrum. 

This set of circumstances provide enough dramatic substance for a movie that doesn’t rely on a conventional plot, but Bohm’s and Akin’s screenplay is built on one that is meant to be sturdy on its own. Nanning, a member of the Hitler Youth whose own belief in the cause is mostly determined by what he’s told by adults, spends the entire film trying to provide his mother, who, following the birth of the new baby, suffers post-partum depression, a small bit of luxury in the form of white bread with butter and honey, none of which is readily available on an island where provisions are scarce because of the war. Even worse, it is clear to most of the natives, if not the interlopers, that Germany is losing, but to say so out loud invites the wrath of the local military authorities, as evidenced by an impromptu visit by a stern officer to Nanning’s employer (Diane Kruger), who has casually revealed her relief at these rumored developments. Believing correctly that it was Nanning who spilled the beans, however inadvertently, she fires him, making his culinary quest that much more difficult. 

The quest itself gives the movie structure and purpose, but tends to detract from those elements that elaborate on the unique way-of-life pursued by the Amrumers, and as a result the island’s place in German society feels frustratingly undersold. It’s not just in terms of the brute primal methods that inform survival based on the land and the sea (to get what he needs, Nanning must learn how to finagle his neighbors, as well as butcher livestock and steal eggs from wild geese), but also in how an isolated population can achieve a more worldly sensibility than that of the general citizenry, which in this case has been ground down by fascism. Akin only occasionally allows these matters to rise to the surface, thus creating even more questions that he can’t hope to answer. More successful is his depiction of the natural setting—the film was shot on Amrum, which seems to have changed little over the past century—which is vividly unique and wondrous, not to mention dangerous. Amrum is a gorgeously evocative film that leaves you rushing to find a book somewhere that might tell you more about the place than the movie does. 

In German and Frisian. Opens Aug. 7 in Tokyo at Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (03-6259-8608), Shinjuku Musashinokan (03-3354-5670).

Amrum home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2025 Bombero International Gmbh & Co. Kg