A film about the human spirit whose protagonist is an inanimate object, In Those Days is a contradictory, troubling, and affecting work. Its narrator is an automobile that rolled off the assembly line on January 30, 1933: “When I was young I thought my life would last a thousand years...but a thousand turned to twelve.” In a series of flashbacks, the car bears witness to the experiences of its many owners: a composer condemned for his “degenerate” art; a pair of shopkeepers-one Jewish, one gentile; resistance workers, soldiers, and refugees. These are good Germans in bad times, buffeted by politics like leaves in a storm. “Their humanity was stronger than the times,” the narrator intones-a message Germans in these years were desperate to hear. But the background images of devastation speak louder than the hopeful words.