Amrum

There are no grand moments, enormous revelations or manipulatively overpowering scores in his delicately constructed and produced film — it is as narratively straightforward as movies come.

The new film is both Akin’s strongest and, with its stately, picturesque classicism, his least characteristic work in some time.

Can a brainwashed boy in Hitler Youth learn to stop worrying and love being a Nazi hater? Beautifully directed by Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin, this unexpectedly tender mesmerizer has an answer you won’t see coming

Amrum is something of a departure for Akin, the kind of precision miniature work that can be achieved on a smaller canvas.

To Akin’s credit, the film isn’t tastelessly sentimental (see “Jojo Rabbit”), and it depicts Nanning’s awakening with the kind of subtlety and restraint that suggests his moral education will continue evolving after the end of the movie.

What does it mean to lose faith in one’s role models and form an identity outside their ideological purview? It’s a conventional narrative drama, but Amrum approaches this question with commendable tenderness.

Fatih Akin’s Amrum is a delicate coming-of-age parable tracking national identity and violence to their most intimate origin points during the waning days of the Third Reich.