@atomicpoet @movies Given all the non-Lithuanian names, I’m guessing it’s probably one of the latter two?
In which case, it was good on Antanas Smetona to let them hold on to the castle during the First Lithuanian republic (1918–1939): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antanas/_Smetona
And when the Soviets invaded the first time from 1939 to 1941 after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, it was nice that they let them keep the castle. Especially given 130,000 people from the Baltic states were forcibly deported in that time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet/_occupation/_of/_the/_Baltic/states/(1940)
And the Lechters somehow held on to the castle through the German Nazi occupation (1941–1944) as well.
Now, let’s run through the names of the Lithuanian Nazis. Vladis Grutas, Petras Kolnas are both plausible (-is! -as! Not hard!).
Then Enrikas (okay) Dortlich. Dortlich I presume had a dad from Serbia or Croatia?
Then there’s Zigmas (okay) Milko. The charitable explanation here is his dad is Russian.
Because in Lithuanian, the -o suffix denotes a noun in the possessive/genitive case. Roughly equivalent to -'s in English.
For example, Kauno apskritis translates to Kaunas’ county.
Also, the word for milk in Lithuanian is pienas. But “milk” gets used sometimes as a loanword with imported dairy products.
So there’s a villain named Ziggy Foreign-milk’s
Or Ziggy Owned-by-a-foreign-milk.
2/3
@atomicpoet @movies Now we fast forward to 1952, at the height of the Cold War.
Stalin is still running the Soviet Union, and there’s an anti-Soviet-occupation insurgency in Lithuania: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian/_partisans
Castle Lechter in the Lithuanian Alps has finally been seized by the Commies and turned into an orphanage.
(As an aside, my elderly mum still jokes about “that movie with the castle in the Lithuanian alps” 20 years later.)
Young Hannibal’s uncle is a descendant of Lithuanian aristocracy living in France.
He somehow gets permission from the Stalinist Russian authorities to visit his family’s ancestral castle in occupied Lithuania.
This French citizen somehow managed to rescue/adopt a kid from Soviet-occupied Lithuania. And the Russians were cool with it?
What gets glossed over is the potentially problematic detail of when Uncle Lechter moved to France?
More precisely: Was it after the end of World War 2, or before?
If it’s before: The Germans that occupied France weren’t exactly keen on interracial marriages at that time, even if it involved people from their AXIS partner. There’s implications.
That’s before the action.
Yes, I’m overanalysing an awful film.
But if you set a film in a random country without basic research, you end up with “Belonging to imported dairy products” as a villain.
3/3