“Simon and the Oaks” make a curious choice to be a WWII drama without much in the way of wartime suffering. Eschewing grand displays of European misery to keep confrontations intimate, the feature is an unexpectedly bitter effort, surveying the erosion of domestic protection as a situation of parenting assistance turns into a colossal shift in a household dynamic. This Swedish picture, based on the best seller by Marianne Fredriksson, is surprising but also frustrating, especially when larger ideas on musical liberation and environmental connection are lost to the melodrama, resulting in an intermittently powerful, yet vaguely detailed film. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com