I've seen many Holocaust and WWII films, and for me Spring 1941 is up there among the best of them. It shows how people would tolerate just about anything to save their own lives and the lives of their loved ones. In this case, a Jewish couple left their home in order to avoid Nazi capture. Along the way one of their young daughters is killed. The remaining child and the parents stay at the home of a local farmer who also happens to be in love with the husband in the couple, as he was her doctor. They enter into a relationship and the scorned wife wants out. Ultimately the husband chooses his family over the farmer, and they take their chances by leaving the farmer's home and joining the Jews being marched to god knows where.

The story of the past is interspersed with the story of the wife thirty years later when she has become a famous cellist and returns to Poland to receive an award. I believe the alternating between 1941 and 1971 was done effectively. By the film's end it has evolved into a real tear jerker, presenting the overwhelming sadness that the characters have had to bear, from 1941 to the present. That's what came across most intensely for me: that no matter what the details were of any individual's or family's story, every one of them was tragic with an ensuing lifetime of sad memories. No matter how extensive the accomplishments of Holocaust survivors, and no matter how much time passes, the images of their perished loved ones and the heinous sadistic abuse they endured, never go away.

For such an intense, emotional story, I think the acting was excellent and did it justice. I never felt, as at least one reviewer did, that the film descended into melodrama.

In 1971 Poland, older cello player Planck is greeted as a returning triumph with her daughter. In 1941 Poland, doctor Artur Planck (Joseph Fiennes),his wife Clara (Clare Higgins) and their two daughters are trying to escape the coming Nazis. One of the girls is killed. They find shelter at Emilia (Maria Pakulnis)'s farm house. She's the local grocer whose husband is lost in the fighting. While Clara is forced to stay in the attic, Emilia gets romantic with Artur and tells people that he's her cousin.

This Holocaust story could have been made more intense. There is a slight tone problem. It strays too far into love triangle territories. Those parts should be treated with more matter-of-factness. Every hurt feeling and every hesitation adds an unwanted melodramatic feel to the movie. This should have been more tense.

There are some very powerful and very emotionally moving moments in this movie. Certainly the deaths of Artur and Clara's two young daughters after they're shot by German soldiers are horrifying, Clare Higgins was riveting as she described Artur's final fate, and the concert at the end of the movie as she played the cello and saw in the audience the faces from her past certainly made the point that survivors of the Holocaust must be haunted by their memories and must find it difficult to move on. But on the whole this movie disappoints. Those powerful moments are somewhat scattered and so don't really hold this together or raise it to a higher level.

Instead, this movie came across to me as rather muddled. It shifts back and forth repeatedly from 1971, as Clara revisits some of the places from her past, to 1941, as we're given the story of what happened to her family. The shifts are somewhat abrupt. They didn't flow very well; they weren't smooth. I also thought that the movie had an unfortunate air of melodrama to it as it traces the relationship between Artur and Emilia - the young woman in whose farmhouse the Plancks hide, and who falls in love with Artur and begins a somewhat strained relationship with him. I'm not denying that such things could have happened, but it really didn't seem to be the plot point around which a movie of this type should revolve.

As an addition to the "Holocaust" collection of films, I have to say that this is not one of the stronger ones. (3/10)