Joseph Fiennes is well cast as a nasty, weak man who betrays everyone - his wife, his daughters and even the peasant farmer woman who inexplicably lusts after him in this war film. The film blurb does not help audience understanding by implying that the events are those of the 1939 invasion of Poland - when it is actually set in the first part of 1941, just as the Germans are rounding up Polish Jews as part of the ghettoisation programme.
The stifling rural milieu which is the setting after the initial section is well drawn, and Neve McIntosh puts in a fine performance as the younger version of the wife who finds herself having to balance the lives of her daughter and herself against her husband's infidelities and erratic behaviour. Clare Higgins is also good as the older version of the character, part of the film being set in 1971 with quite complex but fairly clear flashbacks.
However, the events in the last twenty minutes of the film are shown in a confusing way, and it does not help viewers that all the characters speak in a dodgy Slavic accent. The somewhat portentous references to the source work add little.