Mother Courage and Her Children is a powerful film that outlines a mother and her children's attempt to survive (or perhaps thrive) in a world torn apart by the seemingly endless 30 year war between Protestants and Catholics in the 17th century. The setting and conflict mean little however to the overall story, instead what is ever present is war, fought for reasons that are not important to Mother Courage even as the impact of it is impossible to avoid.
Mother Courage is a peddler, selling goods to soldiers and men in need in order to support a living for her and her children. The questionable nature of her actions, for she is profiting off the suffering and death of others, is present, but put second to the villain that is disambiguated as war. War makes one sympathetic to Mother Courage, whether or not she is deserving of it. The film is slow, presented not as a Hollywood movie, but as if pulled directly from the stage it was intended (with curtains and everything). While this on one hand pulls from the film's ability to lure you in, I suspect it is as Bertolt Brecht would have wanted. The writing is put first, followed by simple expressions and emotion, meant not to entertain, but to challenge.
Indeed, if you allow yourself to sink into the slow march that is Mother Courage and Her Children you may not walk away entertained in the same way as you would after a modern movie, but you will find yourself challenged with the difficulty of war and survival, and just maybe with a new point of view. Not my favorite film (although not helped by my subpar German language skills), but perhaps the best anti-war piece I have seen. If you made it far enough to be reading this, I suspect this film may be worth a watch.
