Germany

Toyland (2007)

André Crous

During the Second World War, a young non-Jewish boy who doesn’t want his Jewish friend to leave unknowingly alters their lives forever in Toyland.

SpielzeuglandGermany
4*

Director:
Jochen Alexander Freydank
Screenwriters:
Johann A. Bunners
Jochen Alexander Freydank
Director of Photography:
Christoph “Cico” Nicolaisen

Running time: 14 minutes

Original title: Spielzeugland

From Life is Beautiful and Fateless to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and The Painted Bird, stories of children caught up in the chaos and brutality of the Holocaust are nothing new. The horrors are often a turning point that inevitably marks the end of their innocent, protected childhood. But what happens less often is that the children’s loss of safety is that there is an explicit (and inextricable) link to the adults’ loss of control. Life is Beautiful hinted at this, and Sophie’s Choice centred on it. But Jochen Alexander Freydank’s innocently titled short film, Toyland, presents it with devastating clarity.

In a German city during the Second World War, the Meißners (Meissners) and the Silbersteins are next-door neighbours in their apartment block. Both families have boys who are the same age, play piano together and are the best of friends. Despite the war, it appears the two boys are unaware that one of them is Jewish. One evening, when Mrs Marianne Meißner and her son, Heinrich, are at the Silbersteins’, the boys’ duet on the piano is interrupted by someone else in the building screaming at the “the Jews” to keep it down. It is only a matter of time before the Gestapo hauls them off to the concentration camps.

Marianne has been trying to prepare Heinrich for the inevitable departure of his friend, David, and his family. She tells him that David is going on a trip to the “toyland” but that he can’t go with them. This place sounds like so much fun that Heinrich barks back at her that his father would have allowed him to go with the Silbersteins. But Marianne sticks to her story, even as she knows that her son will have his heart broken either way.

What follows, amid the period’s historic barbarity, is an extraordinarily touching demonstration of humanity that involves every single one of the five characters. The twist ending will grab at many a viewer’s heart, although the more sceptical amongst us will question the likelihood of such a drama being resolved so seamlessly.

Set in the deep of winter, the ominous greys everywhere shy away from the pageantry of the Nazis’ trademark crimson. It is a desperate, unforgiving landscape, and because Jews are not inherently distinct from other Germans, everyone can be a suspect. At one point, Marianne is mistaken for a Jew, and at another, David Silberstein is presumed to be Aryan. These mistakes remind us of the nonsense of the Nazis’ ideology of Aryan identity, but Toyland does not belabour the point. 

The acting from the main boy, Heinrich, is not the best, and Toyland’s final scene has an unfortunate Titanic quality to it, but the rest of the production is excellent.

A Hidden Life (2019)

André Crous

A Hidden Life may have relatively more substance than most of Terrence Malick’s other films, but the director’s immutable style is lazy at best and incongruous at worst.

A Hidden LifeUSA
3*

Director:
Terrence Malick
Screenwriter:
Terrence Malick
Director of Photography:
Jörg Widmer

Running time: 170 minutes

Most of us tell ourselves that we would have stood up for justice if we had lived in Germany under Hitler. While it is true that many Germans at the time were unaware of the full extent of the Jewish genocide, they knew enough. But what if your neighbours and friends also went along to get along, regardless of whether they believed in the Nazis’ hysterical nationalism and ideology of Aryan superiority? At what point would you have resisted the march towards groupthink? At what point would you have abandoned your principles?

A Hidden Life doesn’t get close to answering this question for us. However, this is a Terrence Malick film, so the question is not even evident at all. Nothing is, except the audio-visuals: In addition to reams of pages of voice-overs, which is, unfortunately, par for the course in a Malick production, there is also the expected curated selection of classical music (Bach, Beethoven, Dvořák) and other stunning instrumental pieces (Górecki, Pärt), as well as breathtaking emerald-green scenery that is far more complex than the film ever tries to be. 

Based on the true story of Franz Jägerstätter, a young Austrian farmer who refused to swear an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler, the plot is more substantial than many of the director’s other recent films. And yet, because it is Malick, we get very few scenes of genuine drama. Instead, there are plenty of oh-so-serious voice-overs or off-screen monologues to convey romance and struggle. These narrations are delivered in English by German actors. And since Malick has never cared much for the realism of the spoken word, they all fall flat.

We first meet Franz (August Diehl) and his young wife, Fani (Valerie Pachner), in 1939, around the time Germany invades Poland. We don’t get to see any of this, however, because the camera is too busy roving the lush green hillsides and calling our attention to the prominent church tower in the small town of St. Radegund, very close to the former border with Germany. (Austria had been annexed by the German Reich in March 1938.) The town’s aggressively nationalistic and often drunk town mayor likes to rant and rave about how “foreigners swarm over our streets – immigrants who don’t care for the past, only for what they can grab”. And the townspeople appear to share these views.

But all the while, the taciturn Franz’s face is sombre. We see his stubborn resistance. We see the wheels turning in his head. And we see his unwillingness to take up arms against Germany’s so-called enemies. But whatever personal, emotional or intellectual motivation he has remains obscured all the way through. Why does he resist when no one else does? What makes him different? Where does he find the resolve to persist despite threats of violence and, ultimately, the certainty that this path leads to an early death?

At first, Franz is called up to do military training. Although he is against the idea of ultimately using this knowledge to fight for the Reich, he heeds the call. A few years later, with the war in full swing, he is called up to serve, but upon arrival at the garrison, he refuses to pledge allegiance to Hitler and is arrested. He says he would be willing to serve in a non-combat capacity, but for this, he also has to take a loyalty oath. Thus begins his incarceration, which quickly leads to a trial and, in short order, his execution.

While he is away, his wife, Fani, becomes the target of the villagers because her husband has a moral compass. On top of taking care of her three young daughters, she also has to plough the field, harvest the crops and draw water from a drying well. But the village turns against her, first with the scowling looks they give her, then by shouting at her in public and finally by shamelessly stealing produce from her field. She is even hounded out of church by the stares of her fellow congregants. She is othered because of her husband’s refusal to kill for their Führer and, more importantly, because of her love of and respect for Franz. But what her own views are is impossible to determine despite the hours we spend with her.

While Franz languishes in Tegel prison in Berlin, the soundtrack continues to be filled with his and Fani’s monotonous voice-over readings of their letters to each other. But because Franz speaks so rarely, at least outside the ethereal sphere of the voice-over, we don’t understand what he is really thinking in real time, and this ponderous approach gets us nowhere close to understanding what brought him to this point. “I can’t do what I believe is wrong”, he says. The Nazis are perplexed as to why he would risk his life to take a stand that is bound to be forgotten by history. Time and again, they tell him that his voice doesn’t matter. However, the question of why they should care if his actions are supposedly so insignificant is never addressed.

It goes without saying that this kind of bravery, especially in retrospect, is absolutely extraordinary. History provides us with very few examples of such men or women. And it is a shame that the film recounting his story is so empty. Over the course of its three-hour running time, we get to know every inch of the farm and the granite mountains but learn very little about the man at the centre. He is religious, but we never see him reading the Bible. He has no real answers to others’ questions, but he has no questions of his own.

Despite the vertiginous use of wide-angle lenses and restless camera movements, not to mention the frames that decapitate its characters, there are also countless beautiful shots. But presenting a film about suffering as if it were a spread in Outdoor Photography is highly questionable, particularly as these images have no discernible purpose other than beauty for the sake of beauty. Unlike The Thin Red Line, in which Malick depicted the Solomon Islands as an exotic utopia ravaged by the horrors of war, A Hidden Life never deviates from portraying Radegund as an aesthetically pleasing wonderland that is always lush and green, no matter the season.

By now, the Malick approach to cinematography has long run its course. A film cannot live off push-ins, pull-outs, jump cuts, low angles, a dazzling colour palette and endless voice-overs alone. Any five-minute extract will contain all of these elements. Sometimes, there is a surprise, but it is never a good one, as when the camera suddenly takes a first-person perspective for no other reason than to show off. The most memorable example is of a prison guard assaulting Franz, causing the camera to flail around violently on the ground. Or when a fade-out elides an expected confrontation before it even starts. Or when a Nazi officer quotes from Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy.

The struggle and the suffering get lost in the poetry of it all. Whatever is going on, there will be a tiresome voice-over intruding on the action or a violin playing in the background. It’s all mesmerising and can lull us into a state of reverie but is completely lacking in immersion or immediacy. 

This is a story worth telling, but A Hidden Life is not the way to tell it.

Exile (2020)

André Crous

In Exile, a long-term German resident originally from Kosovo appears to be experiencing daily discrimination at work, but is he overreacting and paranoid or is something sinister afoot?

ExileKosovo/Germany
4*

Director:
Visar Morina
Screenwriter:
Visar Morina
Director of Photography:
Matteo Cocco

Running time: 120 minutes

Original title: Exil

If Franz Kafka had written in anything other than German, perhaps his Josef K. would have been a well-balanced individual and the nameless, overbearing powers that be would have left him in peace.

A bit like Dancer in the Dark, Visar Morina’s Exile is about desperation (for both the central character and the viewer) in the face of injustice, except here, there aren’t any musical numbers to dilute the misery. No, from the very first scene, we have a sick feeling in the pit of our stomachs. And it doesn’t get better or go away, not even once, over the course of a full two hours. 

Xhafer Kryeziu (Mišel Matičević) is a man in a country that is not his own and works with people who never accept him. Originally from Kosovo, he works as a pharmaceutical engineer at a big laboratory. His native language may be Albanian, but his life is effectively German: his wife, his mother-in-law, his daughter, his job and everyone working with him. With a name like his, however, it doesn’t matter how well you speak the language. When you introduce yourself and people notice the slight accent, everyone will remind you, often by flashing a quizzical smile, that you are different.

In that opening scene, he finds a rat tied to the fence in front of his middle-class suburban home. The fact that his workplace often uses rats in experiments and that his colleagues know he has a phobia about these rodents is no trivial coincidence. But without any proof, what can he do? What can he accomplish against an invisible enemy?

Xhafer soon realises that he does not receive any group e-mails, which causes him to miss important meetings. He hears others sign up for a weekend trip, but he doesn’t get an invitation. And whenever he wants to speak to the boss, the secretary says there is no way because running the company keeps him so busy.

Does he keep his head down to pretend everything is fine and nothing is getting to him? Or does he confront those he perceives to be the most antagonistic towards him? He opens up to his wife, Nora (Sandra Hüller, playing the same emotionless character here as she did to such great effect in Toni Erdmann, whose director, Maren Ade, co-produces here) about this silent bullying at work, but she comes up with benign excuses for her fellow Germans. Maybe these incidents were all unintentional. Or maybe, she says, he is just an asshole and should try harder to be friends. After all, she says, things could be much harder: “You don’t look like a foreigner. If you were an Arab, it would be different.” Indeed, it might be, but why should it matter?

Understandably, Xhafer’s exclusion leads to loneliness. Without any emotional support, his attention turns to those who are somewhat more similar to him. He strikes up a casual sexual relationship with the film’s only other Albanian speaker, a cleaning lady at his company. But we quickly see that this doesn’t alleviate his problems; it merely pushes them out of his mind for a five-minute quickie in a bathroom stall.

Just like people, the film is much more complicated than it appears at first blush. We gradually come to understand that Morina is not going to offer us any real explanation for the central mystery of what is happening to Xhafer or why. He doesn’t confirm Xhafer’s paranoia but slowly makes us a part of his world. This means we expect other people to behave indifferently towards him because to everyone else, a foreigner is a foreigner is a foreigner. His colleagues all think he’s Croatian. But is this indifference or something darker? Are they behaving from a place of malice or are they just condescending, passive racists?

The film’s inference is that Germans are either racist to your face or racist behind your back. Xhafer says as much during a very well-written and even better-executed altercation with Nora. This may be too harsh a judgment on German society as a whole, but there is an evident, ubiquitous hostility to his mere presence. Because we lack a global understanding of the facts, we empathise with Xhafer, whose point of view we share to the point of witnessing his nightmares. He is far from perfect, but that doesn’t make him any less worthy of respect than anyone else.

But in the film’s final act, a few things happen that seem to contradict Xhafer’s (and our) reading of events. Our precarious explanation slips through our fingers, leaving us with an even more uncertain understanding of what is going on. We cannot read other people’s minds; we can only go by their actions, but these interpretations are almost always tainted by our own perspectives. Do his colleagues really hate him? Does he intimidate them, somehow? Or is their behaviour informed by factors that have nothing to do with him personally? And when they seem to reveal their intentions, can we trust what they say?

The fragmented editing, the hypnotic tracking shots inside his laboratory’s gloomy corridors, the darkness that envelops his marriage bed, the cold blues and nauseating ambers and the eerie music on the soundtrack all make for a disorientating experience as we try but fail, along with Xhafer, to make sense of it all. It all leads to a final shot that – similarly to that of another recent immigrant film, Synonyms – brutally but figuratively conveys the uncertainty of having to wait for acceptance, perhaps indefinitely.

Exile is a film that deserves to be watched a second time, but few in the audience will have the nerve or the stomach to go through this harrowing ordeal again straightaway.

Viewed at the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival.

Persian Lessons (2020)

André Crous

Persian Lessons may not be the most believable film about a Jew’s survival under occupation, but Nahuel Pérez Biscayart’s seemingly infinite skills as an actor make this a worthy addition to the genre.

Persian LessonsRussia/Germany
4*

Director:
Vadim Perelman
Screenwriter:
Ilja Zofin
Director of Photography:
Vladislav Opelyants

Running time: 125 minutes

When people talk about the Holocaust as something we should never forget, they are usually referring to the events: the othering, the captivity, the humiliation, the torture and the extermination of human beings. But what is often forgotten is the individuals themselves. Jews were the primary targets, but what were their names? Who were they?

In a surprisingly effective high-wire act that pays off in large part thanks to the discreet but ultimately emotionally overwhelming performance of its lead actor, Vadim Perelman’s Persian Lessons uses its entire cast to construct a truly unique language. The film centres on a dark-featured Belgian Jew named Gilles, who poses as a Persian named Reza in order to avoid being killed in a firing squad by German officers in France during the Second World War. The officers spare him because they know their captain, who wants to open a restaurant in Iran (commonly known as “Persia” at the time) once the war is over, is looking for someone to teach him Farsi. Thus begin the many months, which turn into years, of Reza teaching “Farsi”, when in fact he only knows a single word: “bawbaw” (dad, بابا).

If you can look past this rather improbable plot point and suspend your disbelief for the two-hour running time, you will be well rewarded. There is one reason we are able to do this, and his name is Nahuel Pérez Biscayart. After making waves with a dizzying performance in 120 BPM, this Argentine actor who has quickly learnt to speak the language like a native Frenchman appears to have no problem forming sentences in German either. Although Biscayart and his character, Reza, are obviously two different people, the former’s facility with languages goes a long way toward making us believe the latter might possibly remember the hundreds of fake words he teaches his captor.

It all starts with a German Army truck driving through a forest in Occupied France. It is transporting a new batch of Jews, including Gilles, a rabbi’s son, who has managed to sneak a sandwich with him in his coat. A fellow passenger trades a first-edition book with a handwritten dedication in Farsi for the food. He explains that it was a gift from “bawbaw” to his son, Reza. Moments later, the first dozen of them are gunned down. Gilles, in the second wave, sees what is coming and insists he is not Jewish but Persian.

At the transit camp, which serves as a limbo between Occupation and certain death at a concentration camp, Hauptsturmführer Klaus Koch (played with chilling friendliness by Lars Eidinger) is delighted to meet “Reza”. Over time, we learn that Koch’s brother lives in Teheran and escaped Germany just before the rise of the Nazi Party. However, Captain Koch is a loyal soldier and has no qualms about being a Nazi, but he is clearly a complicated individual; Perelman drops a few incredibly subtle hints that Koch might be gay, but thankfully there is never a reason to empathise with him, and his final scene in the film will be particularly satisfying to the viewer.

Gilles’s continued survival depends on him teaching a fake language and learning to speak it as if it were a second tongue. He does this with astonishing (at times, impossible) adroitness, but our suspense of disbelief is assisted in this regard by other films about the Second World War we may have seen already, like Life is Beautiful (La vita è bella), in which Roberto Benigni shelters his son from the horrors of war by pretending it is all a game, or In Darkness, whose Jewish characters hide out in sewers in the war-torn Polish city of Lviv. Over the decades, we have learnt in the history books, through survivors’ eyewitness accounts and on film how some people managed to find inhuman strength to hang on to life amid the abominable reality of the Shoah. As a result, this story, dissimilar though it might be to our own experience, does not seem entirely unrealistic.

The film generally steers clear of so many of the obvious moments in similar films. There is a single aerial shot that indicates the ongoing massacre of people and their cremation in nondescript buildings across the European countryside. But in this transit camp, people do not inhale gas in the showers, and the number of swastikas is kept to a minimum. There is no need for Nazi pageantry. One small picture of Hitler in the background of a shot suffices to remind us of the ongoing horrors at the next camp, and the next, and the next.

Perelman, who is best known for his 2003 feature, The House of Sand and Fog, has finally delivered another film on the level of that stunning début. Not just because both films refer to their final moments in their opening scenes but also because when their background tension is unexpectedly released, there will be few dry eyes left in the house. This was mostly thanks to Perelman’s staging in his first film, but here our gratitude goes to Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, who is simply extraordinary as “Reza”.

Persian Lessons is what a mainstream film about Jewish oppression during the Second World War (as opposed to, say, a more artistically minded film like Son of Saul, which was unconventionally staged for maximum visceral effect) should look like. One can nitpick about the necessity of opening the film by revealing the ending or question the decision to have the main character interact so little with his fellow prisoners, but none of this takes away from what is simply a remarkable production.

Viewed at the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival.

Toni Erdmann (2016)

André Crous

In Toni Erdmann, a combination of daddy issues, Bulgarian masks and false teeth creates a hilarious story about a father and daughter struggling to make a connection.

toni-erdmannGermany/Austria
4.5*

Director:
Maren Ade
Screenwriter:
Maren Ade
Director of Photography:
Patrick Orth

Running time: 160 minutes

Toni Erdmann is, in fact, Wilfried Conradi, an elderly German man who tries to reconnect with his high-strung consultant daughter when his beloved dog and longtime companion, Willi, passes away. But don’t let this description put you off because this is one of the funniest films you are ever likely to see.

A lot of the humour has to do with awkwardness, and our laughter is as much the result of nervousness on our part as the expression of wide-eyed astonishment that the actors can stay unfazed by the unexpected drama around them.

Wilfried (Peter Simonischek) is a primary school music teacher who clearly has never given up being a child himself. The opening scene sets the tone perfectly, as a delivery man rings the doorbell to find Wilfried refusing to accept the delivery because his brother, “Toni”, to whom the package is addressed, has just been released from prison following a conviction for sending mail bombs. Moments later, Toni, with buckteeth and a very bad hairpiece, arrives to sign for the package, whose content we get to see only a few scenes later.

In the meantime, the stage is set for what would otherwise be a dour domestic drama examining the difficulty of reconnecting with one’s child as an adult. The child, in this case, is the 30-something Ines (Sandra Hüller), who is doing consulting work for an oil company in Bucharest and spends every moment of her birthday party talking (or pretending to talk) on the phone with business clients. She clearly has little patience for her the antics of her father, who arrives at the party made up to look like a zombie.

But then, something very mundane happens, and it changes everything. In an underplayed but devastating ellipsis, Wilfried’s dog dies in the middle of the night. The following morning, he ups and flies off to Bucharest, because besides him knowing next to nothing about Ines’s life, he now appreciates that this relationship should be cherished as long as they are both around to do so. The problem, admittedly, is that his daughter has neither the time nor the inclination nor, frankly, the social experience to extend a helping hand to her father and comfort him during this time of crisis.

And yet, from the moment he bursts into her carefully preserved house of cards in Bucharest, even though they are basically strangers to each other, and Wilfried’s presence is always on the verge of upending a fragile business deal, they cannot (and we certainly don’t want them to) let go of each other. Ines is so tense she looks like she is always about to have a nosebleed, and yet father, the ultimate foil, sits down on whoopee cushions in front of her colleagues and tells a major client he has decided to hire someone to play his daughter at home because Ines never visits.

Toni is an alter ago, but we get to know him much better than we do Wilfried, and that is the genius behind the film and behind Wilfried’s approach to Ines: These two may be father and daughter, but for whatever reason, there is no way for them to relate to each other in the present, and therefore, the best alternative is for them to relate to each other as Toni and Ines. The resulting chemistry, with all its attendant reactions, is volatile but produces a combination so beautiful and rare we might as well be dealing with successful alchemy.

While some may baulk at the running time, there is little drag, except for one extended car-bound conversation between Ines and her colleagues that could have been trimmed significantly. Whatever mystery Toni Erdmann has is tied to our awareness – and eventually, our giddy expectation – that the man with the bad wig on his head and the false teeth in his mouth may reappear at any moment.

All of a sudden, in the film’s final act, all the random parts suddenly unify in two unexpectedly brilliant scenes. The first is a musical number; the second, which involves a Bulgarian mask of sorts, flips the script with a scene that had the entire audience in stitches for a full uninterrupted five-minute stretch. Even more impressive is that this latter scene is punctuated by a stunningly poignant, emotionally devastating and indisputably unique catharsis.

The film may be on the long side, but its message is clear: Life is short, so make the most of it, because laughing with and cherishing those close to us is a much better use of our time than pretending to be on a phone call to avoid speaking to those who love us and around whom we can be ourselves.

Viewed at the Be2Can 2016 Film Festival.

Oh Boy (2012)

André Crous

Black-and-white jewel of a movie about the magic that can be found on a journey as mundane as seeking a cup of coffee lights up the screen with subtlety and emotional intelligence.

oh-boyGermany
4*

Director:
Jan Ole Gerster
Screenwriter:
Jan Ole Gerster
Director of Photography:
Philipp Kirsamer

Running time: 85 minutes

Alternate title: A Coffee in Berlin

Magic can happen, even in the most tedious of circumstances, even over a single day, and luckily director Jan Ole Gerster was there to capture it. The début film of this German director, Oh Boy, is a black-and-white work of art that vaguely calls to mind Woody Allen’s Manhattan but without the core of self-doubt that is so fundamental to the U.S. filmmaker’s oeuvre. It tells the story of a young man mired in indecision and passivity but into whose life the most startling and arbitrary but also incredibly evocative characters fall out of nowhere, and the director’s fine sense for subtle comedic timing is simply gorgeous.

Our man is Niko (Tom Schilling), who abandoned his law studies at the university two years ago and has had a spot of trouble with alcohol. His absent father, whom he sees once in a blue moon, is unwittingly sponsoring this life in stasis to the tune of 1,000 euros a month, but on the day we meet and spend with Niko, the ATM swallows his card, and his father informs him this is where he has to get off the gravy train.

Oh Boy is filled with moments that make us smile, even laugh, with unexpected humour. Niko goes to a film set with one of his best friends, Matze, to visit an acquaintance who is playing a Nazi soldier. The actor’s passion for his role is affecting but awkward, and we don’t quite know whether to laugh with or feel for him, but when Niko leaves the set and lights a cigarette with two actors, we briefly notice the costumes they are wearing: The one has a swastika on his arm, the other has the star of David over his heart. It is a moment of visual brilliance that is not held for effect but instead immediately lightens the mood after the heavy emotion of the previous scene.

One gets a clear impression that Gerster has put himself in the shoes of his audience. His images are beautiful, his characters are sometimes pathetic but always intriguing, and he often catches us by surprise with moments of unmistakable beauty, like the sequence of shots in which we see Berlin at a standstill. This is no mere visual flourish, although even if it were, it would be striking enough, but an important part of the narrative.

Another scene that both endears Niko to us and demonstrates how it is possible for us to be affected by the utterly mundane is the one between him and an elderly lady who speaks little but shares a moment of common understanding with him. When they hug at the end of the scene, having said very little but clearly having grown closer over the course of a few minutes, the hairs on our neck stand on end.

Because he is such a slouch (when, in the opening scene, he realises he is late for a meeting, he stays put for a moment to finish a glass of water), Niko should be much more objectionable. But perhaps we care about him because he seems lost, and we like him because the people around him are such idiots: His new neighbour brings him pretty disgusting meatballs and has a nervous breakdown in his apartment; Matze considers himself a great actor but his refusal to accept most parts means few people now take him seriously; and Julianka, a former school mate who used to be fat is now an actress who wants to make up for everything she missed out on at school.

There is a clear thread that runs through the film, connecting the various episodes of Niko’s day and night: coffee. He struggles to find a cup of coffee that is not too expensive, not too small, but just right, and there are many different reasons, both visual and rhetorical, why his struggle is a source of comedy for the viewer. By the time we reach the final shot, it becomes clear what the director’s motivation was for including this sequence of events, and in fact, the film’s title in some markets is A Coffee in Berlin.

Gerster is a weaver of dreams in black and white, and a master of playing with our emotions by deploying characters and situations that seem slightly unreal but never unrealistic or contrived, and Oh Boy is a breathtaking first feature.

Viewed at the Festroia International Film Festival 2014

Heil (2015)

André Crous

Nazi satire is heavy on the jokes but makes no serious effort to convey a coherent message except to mock those seeking power.

heil-bruggemannGermany
3*

Director:
Dietrich Brüggemann
Screenwriter:
Dietrich Brüggemann
Director of Photography:
Alexander Sass

Running time: 100 minutes

Hitler seems to be all the rage recently, and not just because of the recent celebrations marking 70 years since the end of World War II. What makes the former Führer’s comical resurgence all the more interesting is that it originates in Germany, a country that has been ashamed of its Nazi past to the point that Mein Kampf is banned (copyright is held by the government until it expires in 2016), and any display of the Nazi salute is prohibited.

In the opening credits sequence of his latest film, Heil, the playful German director Dietrich Brüggemann intercuts the Nazi salute with Angela Merkel raising her hand to take the oath of office. Despite the provocative title, Hitler himself does not appear in the film, but the scourge of neo-Nazism is addressed in a very light-hearted way that basically makes caricatures out of any individuals with far-right tendencies.

The literary hit from a few years ago, Look Who’s Back, took a similar tack by having Adolf Hitler wake up from a coma in the present and work his way back into the public consciousness. One of the highlights of the book is a meeting between the principled, highly disciplined former leader of the Reich and a far-right party official who pretends to be in favour of Hitler’s policies but is only a few marbles away from being illiterate.

While it is debatable whether comedic simplification is the best approach to tackle this admittedly toxic subject, the issue has been topical for some time, and with the current emphasis across Europe on immigration, at least with regard to non-European or non-Western citizens, national identity is worth considerable discussion.

However, that is all far from the mind of Brüggemann, who plays up the sensationalism of Nazism in the opening minutes before he settles into a slapstick narrative that is always fun and has a booming soundtrack that pretends to propel the action forward even when little of note is happening.

The plot revolves around Sebastian Klein (Jerry Hoffmann), a handsome young Afro-German intellectual who regularly makes an appearance on the speaking circuit following the publication of his book, The Coffee-Stained Nation. Klein is about to become a father, but his (white) girlfriend and mother-to-be of his child, Nina (Liv Lisa Fries), still harbours fears he would break up with her and move back to his ex, Stella Gustafsson. When Klein is hit on the head, abducted by neo-Nazis, branded with a swastika on his forehead and turned into a zombie, the film enters the world of unbridled comedy that makes one or two points about how weak the characters on the anti-immigrant side really are.

Meanwhile, the not-quite-German-named Sven Stanislawski (Benno Fürmann), an ambitious but incompetent leader of a neo-Nazi cell, wants to impress his girlfriend by staging a false-flag operation that would lead to the invasion of Poland. However, he has his work cut out for him as at least two in his gang are informants, albeit with very little grey matter between them. In the opening scene, one of them, Johnny (Jacob Matschenz), struggles to write “White Power” correctly, and this emphasis on the stupidity of the neo-Nazis is a running joke in the film.

There is no question that Brüggemann’s gamble pays off, as his satirical take on Nazism – and the potential (or not) of a hate group to take up the mantle of the Führer once more – is uproarious and seemingly informed even though it is in fact little more serious than your average film coming out of Hollywood. Brüggemann seems to lose his nerve to address deep-rooted problems of integration in German society almost immediately after his opening credits, and while some of his comedy is rooted in (tragic) reality, as when we are reminded how much easier it is to get a gun in the United States than in Germany, most of it is purely for the sake of a quick laugh.

The most serious indictment of politics today comes in the form of a powerful song that accompanies the end credits. Performed by Adam Angst, the track “Splitter von Granaten” throws firebombs in the direction of Obama, the NSA and the German chancellor before this golden line is uttered: “Putin runs through woods and kills bears for pleasure and gives the green light to beat up homosexuals.” Heil briefly reminds us that while it is possible to be a (brainwashed) black Nazi, being gay is an unpardonable offence in certain circles; however, the only time a connection, tenuous though it may be, between the nationalist figures of Putin and Hitler is made is during the end credits, which appears to be another missed opportunity.

Speaking truth to power is not exactly what Heil is going for, and the film turns out to be infinitely less political than the viewer would hope for. But if you are looking for a comedy tinged here and there with an astute observation on what miserable creatures the neo-Nazis are and how they should be mocked instead of feared, look no further.

Viewed at the 2015 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

Schmitke (2015)

André Crous

Début filmmaker’s surreal mystery set in the Czech countryside is a baffling take on finding identity.

schmitkeCzech Republic/Germany
3.5*

Director:
Štěpán Altrichter
Screenwriters:
Jan Fusek
Tomáš Končinský
Štěpán Altrichter
Director of Photography:
Cristian Pirjol

Running time: 95 minutes

Something is a little off in the German-language Schmitke, which opens in Berlin – where there is much talk of a “Bear-Man” who has been discovered in the wild – and closes deep in the forests of the former Sudetenland, on the Czech side of the border with Germany. Right at the beginning, when we first meet the title character, a middle-aged, unsmiling engineer (Peter Kurth) working for Deutsche Windenergie, we notice this German company has English-language posters on which the word “engineers” is misspelled. It is a small point, but if you notice it, you will immediately recognise that the world of the film is deliberately warped and confused, and things quickly get even weirder.

Julius Schmitke’s daughter arrives out of the blue and (literally) sets up camp inside his house, adding a statue of Buddha to his furnishings and trying to convince him to reconsider his nondescript existence. At work, his boss decides to send him and his loudmouth assistant, Thomas (Johann Jürgens), to the Ore Mountains to fix a broken wind turbine, and once the two arrive in the backwoods of civilisation, where the fog hangs thick and the forest almost becomes a character, everything they knew is turned upside down.

Schmitke is unconventional and uncategorisable, striving simultaneously to be a gentle contemplation of the mysteries of nature and a madcap absurdist thriller. Directed by the young Czech filmmaker Štěpán Altrichter, it is impossible to ever get a firm grip on the events that, as revealed during the final credits, may all just be a big dream.

The opening scenes at the energy company in Berlin have moments reminiscent of Roy Andersson’s work, especially when a crowd of people, expressionless and motionless, intently focuses on the only object in the room that is in motion. For the most part, Kurth’s imperturbable, deadpan performance is very effective, as it counters the actions of others in unpredictable ways. But the major plot point driving the narrative forward – the sudden and unexplained disappearance of Thomas – gets lost in the thick, mysterious atmosphere that Altrichter so painstakingly constructs.

With the exception of Julie (Helena Dvořáková), who runs a fancy hotel on a hilltop, it is impossible to describe anyone in the film as devoid of eccentricity, and the director emphasises the peculiarities of the Czech rural population in particular with sly digs at their language (Julie’s surname is the unpronouncable Řeřichová, the town is Chřmelava) and customs (upon arriving in the tiny town, Thomas proclaims they have travelled back in time; and in the bar, a deadly silence fills the room when Schmitke asks for tea instead of beer).

The style of the film may perhaps be best described as a kind of provincial surrealism mixed with poetic absurdism that leads to scenes such as a GPS system breaking down by changing its mind (“turn right… no… turn left…”) and a wind turbine that seemingly stops and starts just to provoke and confound the rational Schmitke.

Schmitke is no Homo Faber, but in the end, he does show some potential for having a fuller appreciation of the inexplicable. It is just a shame that the film itself nearly collapses in the process. It switches gears too rapidly from broad comedy to observational minimalism, and especially the second half of the film feels like a slow-motion implosion that is only flimsily sustained by the comical sounds of the Hammond organ on the soundtrack and the screeching sounds of the wind turbine struggling to rotate its blades.

Some of the film’s most intelligent details are its small moments of humour, like when Schmitke and Thomas get keys to rooms ‘1’ and ‘3’, clearly signalling impending misfortune, or the unexpected words of wisdom of an old lady at the bar, or the subtle repetition of incidents suggesting we may either be seeing different shades of the same event or people running on a hamster wheel.

There are few answers – even the questions are in short supply – and this lack of concrete information will frustrate many a viewer looking for a sturdy narrative backbone.

Unfortunately, the abundance of shots of the forest and the director’s unwillingness to make language more of an issue (everybody in this Czech hamlet can apparently speak almost perfect German, which leads to absolutely no discomfort, ever) hurt the audience’s involvement in this film that should have been much shorter than its 100-minute running time. Also, a shot in which Schmitke walks off-screen through heavy fog in a fixed long shot could have been utilised much more effectively, for example, by having him re-enter from the other side, at the same or at another location.

Schmitke is an experimental but quirky take on finding oneself. It is not always successful at keeping us engaged, and its second act is unnecessarily slow, but the rich soundtrack and unflappable performance of the lead actor will make this an interesting addition to any festival lineup.

Viewed at the 22nd International Film Festival Prague (Febiofest)

Citizenfour (2014)

André Crous

Chilling documentary about maligned whistleblower contrasts his consistent belief in privacy, transparency with government’s wild, dishonest flip-flopping.

citizenfourUSA/Germany
4.5*

Director:
Laura Poitras
Edited by:
Mathilde Bonnefoy
Directors of Photography:
Kirsten Johnson
Trevor Paglen
Katy Scoggin

Running time: 115 minutes

One of the biggest disappointments of the Obama presidency has been that while the president has distinguished himself by seemingly approaching questions of national security with greater circumspection, or seriousness, than his predecessor, he has often arrived at the same conclusions and committed similar actions that have eroded public trust because of the seemingly sweeping power of the executive.

This administration, which has billed itself as the most transparent in history, has been equally opaque to both the press and the public, and those who criticise the government’s operations are labelled as traitors and their patriotism questioned, not only by those who did so in support of the previous administration but also by many in the current one.

Edward Snowden is not the first government whistleblower during the Obama years, but his case has certainly generated the most publicity because of the almost unimaginable reach his leaks have exposed to the public. Halfway through Laura Poitras’ chilling documentary Citizenfour, when we see President Obama for the first time, saying “I don’t think Mr. Snowden was a patriot”, his words convey the exact opposite of what he represented when he ran for office, and he seems out of touch with reality, having become a prisoner to the greedy national security apparatus.

The title of the film refers to the name by which Snowden introduced himself when he first made contact with Poitras online. Poitras is no stranger to the government’s heavy-handedness, as U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents have interrogated her on multiple occasions since the 2006 release of her My Country, My Country, which looked at life in Iraq after the U.S. forces invaded and occupied the country in 2003.

She shot most of Citizenfour during that exciting time in the summer of 2013 when the world did not yet know who had leaked the abundant treasure trove of National Security Agency (NSA) documents that indicated relentless, government-sanctioned spying on almost everyone. It suddenly seemed like this leak would finally cast light on the U.S. government’s invasion of privacy. For a while, that is what happened, but because the spectre of terrorism still hangs over and propels every argument from the intelligence community more than a decade after their failure to prevent the events of Sept. 11, 2001, many people at all levels of society and government are hesitant to call out the invasive nature of surveillance.

Just like those who questioned the United States–led invasion of Iraq were labelled anti-American, Snowden and those who support his selective leaks about the state’s reach into everyone’s electronic footprint are now said to be friends with America’s enemies. Although they will deny it, the people who flippantly make the latter argument seem to think that the government is their friend, when in fact it has become their enemy. Ironically, it is taking away U.S. and non-U.S. citizens’ rights while pretending to do so for their own good.

Half of the film – exactly one hour – takes place in Hong Kong, most of it inside Snowden’s room at the Mira Hotel, whither he had invited Poitras and Rio de Janeiro–based journalist Glenn Greenwald, as well as The Guardian’s Ewen MacAskill. While these four people were holed up in that tiny room, Snowden’s life is on the verge of going up in flames, a fact underscored when he learns government agents have paid a visit to his girlfriend back home, even though his identity as the whistleblower was still undisclosed.

He provides documents, charts and other presentations to the journalists and helps them sift through the information that at times is almost too stunning to contemplate. Recognising the sheer scale of the revelations, Snowden confirms this is as bad as it seems. “It’s not science fiction; this is happening right now.”

This central part covers brief explanations of the meanings of multiple acronyms or other code names, such as Prism, Tempora and XKeyscore, with enough disclosure about profound overreach to keep on giving the audience goosebumps for the entire duration. This section is bookended by 20 minutes to set the stage and 40 minutes to follow the consequences of the revelations, including the infamous detention of Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, at Heathrow Airport in August 2013. It is an emotional moment for the audience when Miranda arrives back in Rio de Janeiro, because the feeling of despair is palpable and truly overwhelming.

What follows Greenwald’s and MacAskill’s initial articles is a media frenzy and a clampdown on Snowden’s freedom, including the U.S. Department of State’s decision to revoke his passport, which left him in the no man’s land of one of Moscow’s international airports. We do not get to see this part of the journey, because Poitras says her own security was compromised by the leaks, and she spent much of the next year in Berlin to edit her footage.

However, one scene in Brazil is surprisingly moving and concerns a speech by Greenwald at a senate hearing to investigate NSA spying on Brazilian citizens. While Greenwald lays out some of the surveillance programs and their significance, a few people in the audience hold up paper printouts of Edward Snowden’s face. This kind of solidarity with a man on the run for illuminating the dirty truth is admirable and fortunately is free of the political shading it would be subjected to if it occurred in the United States (at the very least, the silent protesters would likely be put on a watch list immediately, curtailing their freedom of travel).

The film ends with a few big moments, but because the story is so current and still developing, it is necessarily incomplete. For now, Snowden still lives in Russia as a refugee. The film contains a single scene with WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange, who is also a refugee, currently in hiding inside the Embassy of Ecuador in London, but while we see him aware of Snowden’s flight from Hong Kong to Moscow, it is unfortunate that we get very little other information about his involvement in the affair.

The final scene strongly hints at the knowledge of wrongdoing that time and again goes all the way to the top of the U.S. executive branch. Even just going by the Snowden documents, it seems to be clear that Obama has utterly failed to live up to the promise he made in a campaign speech in 2007, when he said, “I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom. That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens, no more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime, no more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war, no more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient.”

Citizenfour is an absolutely riveting and utterly compelling documentary that provides details about the U.S. and UK surveillance industries that only the most dedicated reader of The Guardian may have been familiar with. Snowden, dressed in a white T-shirt as he patiently explains the complex ways in which the NSA and its partners ignore people’s right to privacy, often smiles and projects a warm, friendly demeanour, far from the egomaniacal vision of self-righteousness many in government have suggested. He is calm, direct and very articulate; he also clearly measures his words when he speaks and is reluctant to become “the story”, even though he knows it is probably inevitable.

The only person less interested than Snowden in being the focus of the media spotlight is Poitras, who never appears on camera and whose voiceover is delivered dispassionately, because the information is powerful enough and does not require any emphasis for effect. Compare this approach with the bombast and the saturated onscreen presence of Michael Moore in his films, and the narcissism of the latter becomes difficult to ignore.

It is impossible to estimate what the importance of this material will be 10 or 20 years from now, and Snowden’s future (his current residence permit is valid until 2017) remains as opaque as his own movements. Poitras’ unique access to her subject has shown us the relatable man behind the revelations whom many call a traitor even though he came forward armed with the truth, while they ignore those who lied and were caught red-handed, like James Clapper and Keith Alexander, because they were allegedly doing this to protect the country. The battle for the truth and for the recognition of Snowden’s trailblazing activities continues, but Poitras’ film has gone a long way towards rightfully rehabilitating the image of one of the 21st century’s most consequential freedom fighters.

Wadjda (2013)

André Crous

Saudi Arabia’s first film directed by a woman, and one of its first feature films ever, steals our hearts with a determined teenage girl in the lead.

wadjdaSaudi Arabia/Germany
4.5*

Director:
Haifa al-Mansour
Screenwriter:
Haifa al-Mansour
Director of Photography:
Lutz Reitemeier

Running time: 100 minutes

Original title: وجدة

Finely balancing Western entertainment (a young girl in Saudi Arabia pursues her dreams in her conservative country, which basically amounts to an unconscious act of women’s liberation) with respect for the country’s traditional view of men and women, director Haifa al-Mansour has crafted a film that is sure to generate a lot of discussion abroad and at home.

Wadjda, which is also the name of the 12-year-old main character (played by Waad Mohammed), is a feel-good movie that doesn’t try to sugarcoat the reality of the restrictive environment for women in Saudi Arabia. And yet, even though women clearly have fewer rights than the men, the young Wadjda stands out not because of a deliberate activist streak but because of her very simple desire to speak truth whenever she is asked about her dreams.

Everything comes back to a bicycle, which Wadjda wants to ride – an act that is frowned upon in her society and her parents expressly forbid her to pursue. The reasoning goes the same as recent discussions about women driving in Saudi Arabia: It would allegedly render them infertile because they would be doing something that only men have been doing. Even Wadjda’s mother, who is not unintelligent, believes this drivel, and when she catches Wadjda riding a bike, she is convinced her daughter has damaged herself and her reputation by somehow losing her virginity in the process.

It is no coincidence that the mother has Wadjda’s virginity on her mind because she herself is now infertile after having had only one child. Wadjda’s father is unimpressed and is looking elsewhere for a second wife who can produce a son for him. The liberty granted by society to the men is easy to notice, as we recognise in a rather shocking scene when men are working on a roof overlooking the girls’ school that Wadjda attends, and it is up to the girls to go into hiding lest they be seen by (and therefore excite) the men, who usually only get to see the faces of the women in their own family.

Our insight into Wadjda’s state of mind regarding the bike doesn’t go as far as grasping whether she is entirely aware of the social resistance she is facing or simply decides to ignore others’ objections, but the important thing is that her determination comes across as courageous, because we know what she is up against.

The story, although rather simple, does provide a glimpse of burgeoning teenage sexuality, as Wadjda’s friendship and playful rivalry with a boy, Abdullah, makes clear: Her main goal in getting the bike for herself is so that she can race him and prove that she is actually just as good, if not better, than him. During the film, we get a firm impression that the young Abdullah is rather infatuated with Wadjda, and this relationship is a wondrous thing in a film where we see Salma, one of Wadjda’s classmates (also around 12 years of age), getting married off to an adult and Wadjda’s own mother rejected by her father because he now deems her reproductive organs useless to him.

The film does, however, have a wide array of characters, and besides Abdullah, the man who runs the toy shop that sells the bike that Wadjda yearns for is also a very important addition to the narrative, as he adds complexity to our perception of the Saudi population. Wadjda touches on a host of topics, including the pariah status that two girls incur when they seem to grow too close to each other, as well as the blatant lasciviousness expressed by adult males towards young girls.

Wadjda may be victimised by the men and even by her school principal, but she never plays the victim; on the contrary, we find her likeable because she reacts with the comebacks we want her to have, taking others to task for their hypocrisy and telling the truth when she feels passionate about her position. To make money to buy the bike, she also engages in some less than honest business, but we are on her side because she is not hurting anyone. And a very important scene in which she discovers a stash of money but doesn’t take any of it because it’s not hers affirms her good intentions and makes us admire her even more.

Wadjda is a strong character who clings to the truth and shows her mettle and her determination by taking part in a religious competition, and she may very well be one of the most likeable child characters to be onscreen in a very long time, making the film a true joy to watch.

When Saudis will be able to see the film, however, is still an open question, as the country barely has any movie theatres, and people get most of their silver-screen entertainment beamed in from abroad.

Viewed at the International Film Festival Bratislava 2013