The Resistance Banker

After a week of rest, we start with a story during the Second World War. Usually, stories about this period take place in Germany, Poland, France, even Haiti (Pearl Harbor)… However, it is rare to see the unfolding of these disastrous days in a country such as the Netherlands. Let’s go fix that.

Summary: The Netherlands is occupied and every inhabitant must help the Nazi ideology. Nevertheless, men and women decided to help the Allies from the shadows. One man in particular, Walraven Van Hall, a simple banker, wants to take matters into his own hands. He convinces his brother to help him with his idea, that of creating a parallel bank to finance the resistance. Then begins the establishment of a secret organization with perfectly well-oiled cogs under a background of distrust, suspicion and hope.

So… I don’t know where to start. Let’s start with the good news: the movie is awesome. I’m a bit hyper empathetic. The nervousness, the suspense had me throughout. It was very interesting, because it was a part of history that I was completely unfamiliar with. I think I would have been more interested learning about the world wars at school if we had been taught little historical anecdotes like this. There may have been mention of the Netherlands during this period, but then, it left me with no memory. While an anecdote about Stalin with my Latin teacher, I still remember it. But that’s not the point.

I still have research to do as to the veracity of this whole story (because it is about a person who really existed), on the other hand, we cannot take away from the film the emotions that it was able to deliver. I watched it with my mom and I could tell we couldn’t take our eyes off the screen. However, just for the record, we both have the difficulty of just watching a movie without doing anything else. This was not the case that evening. My nervousness was such that I wonder if I could have expressed resistance as the fear of being discovered seeps into each of your cells.

To sum up, a thrilling and stressful story to watch straight away.

A Dutch cookie?