2015 Top Ten List # 3 Phoenix

PHOENIX                  A                    

Germany  Poland  (98 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Christian Petzold         Official site

Speak low when you speak, love,
Our summer day withers away
Too soon, too soon.

Speak low when you speak, love,
Our moment is swift, like ships adrift,
We’re swept apart too soon.

Speak low, darling speak low,
Love is a spark lost in the dark,
Too soon, too soon,
I feel wherever I go
That tomorrow is near, tomorrow is here
And always too soon.

Time is so old and love so brief,
Love is pure gold and time a thief.

We’re late darling, we’re late,
The curtain descends, ev’rything ends
Too soon, too soon,
I wait darling, I wait

Will you speak low to me,
Speak love to me and soon.

—“Speak Low,” by Kurt Weill (written while in exile in America) and Ogden Nash, 1943, Billie Holiday Speak Low YouTube (4:26)              

Like the surprise hit of last year, 2014 Top Ten List #2 Ida, Christian Petzold returns to form with this tense, brutally moving Holocaust drama that was inexplicably rejected by both Cannes and Venice, displaying another level of newfound maturity in his still evolving career with what is arguably his best film yet.  Like his others, it’s meticulously directed, but contains the most complexly intriguing story he’s ever worked with, another showcase for actress Nina Hoss, who is onscreen in nearly every shot in what is essentially an intensely personal search for a newly constructed post-war German identity, adapted by Petzold and the late Harun Farocki in his last screenplay, who worked with Petzold on and off since his very first feature THE STATE I AM IN (2000).  Loosely based on Hubert Monteilhet’s 1961 detective novel Le Retour des Vendres (The Return of the Ashes), the film is accentuated by a beautifully understated and low key jazz score that both begins and ends the film, enticing the audience from the opening frame while also creating what is the most haunting ending of any film seen this year.  For a story that explores human identity, you won’t find a more symmetrically perfect screenplay from start to finish, where the formalism of its construction is marked by an economy of intricate precision, but this is a throwback to a Fassbinder style story where Germany is trying to come to terms with the evils of its own troubled past, with shades of THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN (1979) and LILI MARLENE (1981), or an improvement on DESPAIR (1978), once more embellishing upon a film noir theme, the third time Petzold has used this device, where Yella (2007) and Jerichow (2008) were impressionistic reconstructions of earlier films CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962) and THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1946), where this one utilizes Georges Franju’s EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1960), as both use surgical reconstruction to evoke the medical atrocities of Nazi SS officer Josef Mengele’s fanatical quest for Aryan purity by performing deadly genetic experiments on Auschwitz concentration camp victims.  Hoss plays Nelly Lenz, a survivor of Auschwitz who is shot in the face in the waning days of the war, having to undergo painful facial reconstruction, introduced to the audience with her entire head covered with protective bandages, where her surgeon suggests after the war “a new face is an advantage,” as it allows one a fresh start in life.  Nelly, however, continues to dwell on her former life, which is unknown to the viewer and only comes together in bits and pieces, where her intentions remain shrouded in mystery for a good deal of the film, only really revealing herself in the magnificence of the final shot.      

Described as a Trümmerfilm (literally “rubble film”), narratively, the film has an interesting structure to it, continually shifting the perspective through the eyes of various characters while Nelly is forced to retreat into the background, lost inside her head, unable to recognize herself or even speak after the operation, where she’s painfully forced to admit that for all practical purposes, she no longer exists, Phoenix (Christian Petzold, 2014 YouTube (4:47).  Not only a war casualty, rescued after spending two years in Auschwitz, her essential humanity has been stripped from her as well, seen early on wandering through the bombed out ruins of postwar Berlin searching for any semblance of her former life.  With the help of a loyal friend Lene Winter (Nina Kunzendorf), a clerk in the Hall of Jewish Records who painstakingly goes through the files attempting to identify Nazi’s and reconstruct the lives of the missing, Nelly returns to Berlin for plastic surgery and a chance for rest and recovery, and while she’s not at all pleased with the results, finding it difficult to live with herself, it does allow her the opportunity to rebuild her shattered confidence.  Lene’s generosity and kindness are expressed in every frame, as she goes to great measures to protect Nelly and insure she is as comfortable as possible, consolidating her family assets, while it’s her fervent desire they may both move to a new Zionist homeland currently envisioned as Palestine, a safe refuge for Jews displaced by the war.  What better place to start a new life?  A staunch Nazi hater, Lene can’t continue to live among them or even bear listening to German songs anymore, though for Nelly, she continues to find rapturous delight in the Germany she once knew.  When shown pictures of Haifa, where they could live overlooking the sea, there is a suggestion of sexual undertone when Nelly almost contemptuously replies “I am not a Jew,” raising questions not only about her identity but her state of mind, a stranger to the changing world around her as she insists upon finding her lost husband Johnny, where thoughts of him were the only thing that kept her alive in the dark days of the camps where she lost her entire family. 

As much about individual destinies as an emphasis on social conditions, in their former lives Nelly was a cabaret singer to his piano playing, so she searches the bars for any trace of him, finally discovering him working as an impoverished busboy in a decadent Berlin night club appropriately named Phoenix, a music hall beer drinking establishment for soldiers featuring showgirls and musical entertainment, where we see a tawdry German rendition of Cole Porter’s “Night and Day.”  While she is petrified at what he will think, Johnny, Ronald Zehrfeld from Barbara (2012), doesn’t recognize her (described by the director in Cinema Scope [Adam Neyman] as two ghosts that can’t recognize each other), too busy scraping by at the bottom end of the wage scale.  Undeterred, she tries again, introducing herself as Esther (the name of her dead sister), to which he replies, “There aren’t many of those left,” where her persistence gets her thrown out of the club, but Johnny has other ideas, concocting an idea where he can use her resemblance to impersonate his dead wife who stands to inherit the family fortune locked away in a Swiss bank, becoming a mad homage to Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), both men haunted by the tragic loss of their dead wives, literally trying to reinvent them with another woman, training them to look, act, and talk the same, wearing the same clothes and hair style, as if resurrecting a ghost.  Despite the wickedness of Johnny’s harebrained scheme, Nelly allows herself to be used, literally playing the part of herself, clinging to the beleaguered hopes that her husband would recognize her for who she is, at one point feverishly waking up Lene in the middle of the night to excitedly reveal, “I know he loves her” (referring to herself), but Johnny is equally certain of her death.  Lene has no interest in Johnny and in fact despises him, warning Nelly that it was Johnny who betrayed her to the Gestapo, where according to records she uncovered he was arrested two days before and was released on the same day as her arrest.  Lene’s profound influence over this film is remarkable, noted by her clear, unambiguous archival revelations and her measured assurance, as she comes to represent the Jewish reaction “after” the war, a voice of unwavering authority that some have chosen to ignore to this very day.   Refusing to believe the man she loves is a Nazi collaborator, having spent months during wartime hiding in a hole, Nelly has her own doubts, where her shattered interior world struggles to heal, but she willingly plays along with his tortuous game, and in doing so the audience delves even deeper into Johnny’s dubious personality. 

Delving into realms of moral duplicity, Petzold builds suspense by continually allowing unanswered questions to linger, where the audience remains in doubt whether Johnny ever loved her or could actually expose her to the Nazi’s, and is he just pretending not to know her real identity?  All the characters come under a broader cloud of suspicion in the immediate aftermath of the war, as who among them was not a willing participant?  What friends and neighbors were also collaborators and betrayers?  How many ordinary citizens simply looked the other way?  The setting itself is fraught with fear and suspicion, where the tantalizing mood is drenched in a suffocating atmosphere of dread.  The deeper one gets into the psychological plight of each character, the more the world around them is stained by the toxic lead-in to war.  Perhaps most revealing is a family photograph that Nelly discovers taken before the war, where circles have been placed around the heads of those identified as Nazi’s while crosses are placed above those that are now dead.  It’s a horrifying notion to think that one’s fondest memories have been defiled and contaminated by the despicable acts of one’s own country.  Brilliantly conceived and masterfully crafted, Petzold reaches elevated territory in this impressionistic psychological mosaic that becomes a literal postwar reawakening to the reality of the world around them.  Joining the ranks of essential postwar films, Petzold shows how delusion becomes a coping mechanism for an enveloping madness, like Johnny, whose refusal to recognize his wife (or the role he played in her capture) is not by accident, as he comes to signify those ordinary citizens blinded by their own willful collusion, refusing to see their own complicity in the crimes taking place around them, which may start out as fear or a defense mechanism, but saving themselves at any cost ends up becoming a way of life that eventually leads to the Holocaust.  Many more lives are lost to suicide even after the war is over as a result of “collateral damage,” a descent into a moral disillusionment that evokes a special note of sadness.  But this is ultimately a film about Nelly, a lone survivor whose longing to claw her way back into a reconstructed German society represents the need of an entire nation, where the agonizing doubts and concerns are reflected in the marvelously subtle performance by Nina Hoss, who is the real star of the show in a remarkable portrait of a devastated society suffering the impact of enormous historic crimes, where the postwar debacle is revealed in the broken wreckage of fallen debris and ruined lives.  Shot in the Brandenburg region in Germany by Hans Fromm’s dark cinematography, with a few shots in Wroclaw, Poland, the jazz score by Stefan Will is particularly expressive, setting the tone of eloquent, emotional restraint.  If this film does anything, however, it delivers enormously with a huge payoff in the virtuosic final scene, where everything in the entire film leads to this moment, and Petzold delivers with one of the great cinematic endings that resonates so powerfully that it will become one of the most discussed shots in the annals of cinema history, Speak Low performed by Nina Hoss @ Phoenix YouTube (3:01, recommend not to be watched until “after” seeing the film), where part of its power is its unexpectedness, yet according to the director, TIFF Review: Petzold's “Phoenix” Soars – City By Heart, the ending plays out quite differently in front of German audiences.  By itself, it’s hardly spectacular, but seen in context with everything that has come before, the composite effect is simply stunning, an indictment of Johnny, and the nation’s, collective forgetfulness, where the specter of the past seeps into the uncertain present and all lingering questions and concerns are finally put to rest.  

An excerpt from Jeffrey Fleishman’s interview with the director from The LA Times, July 29, 2015, World Cinema: Christian Petzold's 'Phoenix' haunted by ...

The eerie mood and questions raised by “Phoenix” have intrigued Petzold.  He said his next film will be set in the 1940’s in the French town of Marseille as refugees hide and hurry to catch boats to Mexico as the German army closes in.  Part of him, he said, wants to capture the aura and verve of German filmmakers, such as Fritz Lang and Max Ophüls, who fled to America to escape Hitler.

“The light from Germany went to the U.S.A. in the 1930s,” he said.  “We have to bring the light and style back to Germany, especially the noir which was created by Austrian and German refugees.” 

Barbara

BARBARA                              B                     

Germany  (105 mi)  2012  d:  Christian Petzold             Official site [Germany]

No other movie about East Germany in the past 20 years (including the Oscar-winning “The Lives of Others”) has touched me, a former East German, as much as this one. It vividly brought back memories and emotions I had long forgotten. Everything is just so in this film, nothing exaggerated or glorified. In a convincing unhurried way, Mr Petzold has caught the spirit and atmosphere of the time. Each gesture, each tableau, from the hospital equipment and apartment furnishings to the smallest accessory, such as a folkloristic Bulgarian ashtray (something no East German household could be without) is rendered just right. Spiritually, too, the film airs the values that many East Germans feel have got lost in the more opulent, materialist world of a unified Germany. It is a fine homage to ordinary people living in extraordinary times.

—excerpt from The Economist, May 10, 2012,  New film: "Barbara": Ordinary people at extraordinary times 

Winner of the Silver Bear award for Best Director at Berlin 2012, Petzold has created perhaps his most conventional film, though initially resorting to the most uncompromising means, turning vaguely compromising only at the end, which feels somewhat disappointing.  Within this über repressive East German society on the edge of the Baltic Sea in 1980, the film stays completely under the surface for nearly the entire film, where feelings are a liability that can only get you into trouble, where everyone is under suspicion, often visited and scrutinized by the Stasi secret police, which means apartments searched and citizens subject to a thoroughly humiliating body cavity inspection, so the entire society exists as a kind of ghost world.  As seen through the eyes of a single character who is in nearly every frame of the film, Nina Hoss as the title character plays a disgraced citizen recently released from interrogation, where her crime was apparently requesting an exit visa, exiled to a small rural village where a somewhat dilapidated apartment has been assigned to her, also a job working as a physician at a local hospital, where everyone has been prepped by the Stasi for her arrival, particularly her boss André (Ronald Zehrfeld), the lead physician.  Barbara plays her role with such a subdued nature, her eyes downturned, never showing any sign of interest, completely guarded as if every living soul is spying on her.  Every neighbor and coworker has ulterior motives, as is every car parked outside, or every ring of the doorbell becomes a continuing sign of oppression, as it’s never a welcome visitor.  In terms of a character study, it’s reminiscent of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Elena (2011), the subjugation of an older woman living in Moscow that feels equally suffocating, though in that film it’s all about the capitalist power of economics.  Still existing in the socialist era, neighbors spy on neighbors, where even your own lover could fall under suspicion, but there is no wealth whatsoever on display, instead children are sent to forced labor camps.

This is another minimalist film told with a certain rhythm and precision, with little information obtained through dialogue, as all normal channels of communication are blocked, buried beneath the surface, so instead it’s a film about body language, brief glances, furtive looks, inquisitive eyes, or stares, where Barbara is continually viewed as someone that has something to hide.  By following her routines even as no one is watching her, she does seem to have a secret life, riding her bike much of the time, often veering into the deep of the woods, obviously trying to avoid detection.  Often she is punished by the police simply for avoiding their watchful eyes when they cannot account for her actions.  While it feels like she is literally being run into the ground by incessant hounding, she never seems to have a moment of peace.  But in this society, that’s ordinary and what’s to be expected.  What’s unusual is for someone to care as much as Barbara does about the idea of freedom, where she’s already tasted it, lived it apparently, as she’s cultured and refined, one of the few doctors that actually listens to her patients, and away from the microscopic lens of the Stasi, she actually exhibits kindness to her patients, reading regularly to one of her young female adolescents, a story about riding down the Mississippi River on a raft from Huckleberry Finn, enjoying the air of being free, out from under the reach of an abusive father that cages and beats his own son.  The symbolism for freedom is not lost on the audience.  While the picture of life behind the Iron Curtain is one of mental captivity, where the State is always trying to capture and possess what’s in your mind, citizens find ways to elude the police, to tell them little or nothing, which is another way of not telling them anything at all.  While Barbara doesn’t exactly fit in, where all around her, everyone views her as a political subversive, André is continually supportive and helpful, attempting to make her life a little less miserable, which only makes her more suspicious of his motives.  

Petzold exudes formal restraint, exercising a Kieslowski Eastern European style cinema of moral anxiety, never allowing emotions to rise to the surface, showing a bleak world where life isn’t lived so much as barely tolerated, where nobody likes living under a police state, but most get used to the inevitability that people close to them are informers, as the Stasi claimed nearly a quarter of a million informers, most all of them ordinary citizens.  When Barbara ventures outdoors on her bike, it’s a sunless world draped in layers of grey, where the wind is always howling and it feels like storms are continually approaching.  Nature itself feels untamed and hostile as humans attempt to navigate their way through the dark.  Few clues are offered here, as it’s a barebones story with little to go on, where much of it is following the doctors as they make their rounds through the hospital, yet throughout, one feels like Barbara is resisting this everpresent weight on her back simply by not joining in, by adamantly refusing to go along with this repressive regime.  In a moment when she lets her guard down, she admits, “It's impossible to be happy here.”  Unlike THE LIVES OF OTHERS (2006), winner of the Best Foreign Language Film that told a similar story from the point of view of a conflicted Stasi officer, this reveals the everyday rhythms of the same subjugated society through the life of an ordinary citizen.  While the film gets many of the details right and dramatically reflects a downbeat and subservient society, it doesn’t expose the behind-the-scenes operations of the Stasi that THE LIVES OF OTHERS reveals or the profoundly effective interrogation techniques used to browbeat information out of people.  Instead BARBARA creates an atmospheric recreation of a toxic cloud hanging over East Germany, a time when people were choking on the fumes of a failed political regime that resorted to terrorizing their own citizens.  The more restricted people are from obtaining freedom, the more significant it ultimately becomes in their lives.  While Barbara seems frenetically driven to escape rather than remain a rat in a cage, some may find her end game baffling, as her outlook changes from dire, life and death circumstances where she’s literally gasping on her last breath from each insufferable moment to something else altogether, something unique in the human spirit.