Not Reconciled, or Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules

Straub-Huillet take dynamite to both their Heinrich Böll source novel and the fabric of postwar Germany in their powerful adaptation, “built on the equation M [military] = M3 [murder].” While the novel presented several generations of the German bourgeoisie as they skated from the 1910s through the Nazi era and the postwar economic “miracle,” Not Reconciled merged decades, generations, and characters together, underlining Straub-Huillet’s belief that fascism never left. “But the roles you played then and today are the same,” one character notes. “Long live dynamite!”