Patriarch is considered to be an unruly thing at any time and in any region. In the film, Edmund, who is only eleven or twelve years old, takes the assassin. He is not a murderous person, and a very sensible child. At the beginning of the film, Edmund lied about his age and wanted to get more resources to support his family and created this image early. The war lured more children into the abyss. In the film, Joe and the girl who sells cigarettes under the guise of selling soap are examples.
The war caused severe damage to basic industries such as education and medical care, which resulted in the lack of children's basic moral cognition during the war. The act of killing a father is morally intolerable, but in Edmund's view, death can liberate the father. Children's cognition is like soft plasticine, which can be easily shaped. After his father complained about himself, the landlord complained about his father’s increased burden, and most importantly, the former teacher’s misleading catalysis, Edmund personally poisoned his father under the evil possession of the environment. After his father's death, several separate shots of Edmund running away from home were used in the film to show his thinking and struggle: the pain and helplessness of his father's death gradually entangled him. He decided to confess this matter to the teacher. He thought that the teacher could understand him and even forgive him on behalf of some sacred power. However, the teacher's ugly face became the last straw that crushed Edmund. Narrative from the perspective of children has updated people's understanding of war. In the eyes of young children, all absurd and outrageous things are so reasonable.
In "Germany Year Zero", Edmund is just a puppet of the war devil. The death of his father was the result of qualitative changes caused by the quantitative changes brought about by the war: poverty, disease, hunger... In the Japanese animated film "The Tomb of Fireflies", the death of the protagonist's sister was also caused by the same reason. After the death of a loved one, the emotions and thoughts of the child protagonists in these films will be violently stirred and upset, which is also the climax of the film. After this, the protagonist is completely ruined. For example, in "Germany Zero Year", Edmund wakes up after his father's death and finds that he has committed an unforgivable crime. But he didn't understand why this was, why his father had clearly gained freedom, but he became so painful. He didn't understand that this was the distortion of society caused by the war.
The audience, as an outsider, certainly knows that everything started because of the war. However, the film cut off the audience from the children who had fallen into the suffering caused by the war. The audience watched the original innocent children go to annihilation and could only stand idly by. It was very cruel to achieve the anti-war effect.
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