Two to One: Economic Lessons for the Old GDR

This based on-fact caper was undeniably inflationary and it necessarily involved stealing from the government. Yet, the perpetrators consider it a victimless crime. In fact, these Est Germans think of themselves as victims of Germany’s reunification. In some sense they are not wrong, but they might be blaming the wrong villains in director-screenwriter Natja Brunckhorst’s Two to One, which just opened in the UK.

All the Reunification agreements have been negotiated, including the former East Germany’s adoption of the Western Mark. The deadline for former East Germans to convert their financial holdings is fast approaching, but Maren and her neighbors converted their funds almost immediately. Of course, she and her partner Robert are fascinated by his uncle Markowski’s description of the resulting mountains of old obsolete money piled in the underground vaults where he works as a security guard. On a lark, the three pull off what they consider a pointless caper, making off with several duffle bags full of useless cash—or so they thought.

The next day, they are stunned to hear one of the opportunistic traveling salesmen from the West assures Maren and Robert he would be delighted to accept any unused East German Marks they might have lying around—so, sure they will buy a microwave. In fact, they will take whatever his has in his car and they might buy even more if he comes back tomorrow.

Obviously, every West German salesman quickly descends on their apartment complex. With the help of Volker, Maren’s recently returned ex, they organize the entire building into an army of small appliance consumers. They even include cranky old Lunkewitz, so everyone is involved and nobody snitches. Volker becomes their chief operations officer, despite the awkwardness of their shared history—especially since Volker wants a relationship with Dini, the biological daughter Robert raised as his own.

Brunckhorst maintains a distinctively bittersweet vibe throughout Two to One. There is a good deal of humor, but it also expresses the sadness experienced by a community forced to confront the deception and corruption of the system they bought into. Eventually, Robert and Volker start recruiting returning GDR diplomats to convert old currency on their behalf, because they were granted extended deadlines. Yet, they are disgusted by the Commuunists’ grotesque venality. Most of their neighbors swapped 500 East German Marks, but the slimy Ambassador Kulitzka believes he can safely exchange 500,000 without attracting suspicion.

Indeed, the ethics of Two to One grow increasingly complex. While it starts out lampooning Western commercialism, it ultimately indicts the hypocrisy and the exploitation of the supposedly “good old” Socialist system.

The Universal Theory

Thanks to Oppenheimer, viewers are getting used to the idea of physicists as movie heroes. Indeed, as the grandson of a Marine slated for the Japanese mainland amphibious landing, I’m probably alive today thanks to his Manhattan Project. Unfortunately, Johannes Leneirt probably lacks Oppenheimer’s brilliance and virtues. Yet, through dumb luck, he might stumble onto the secret of time-travel, the multiverse, and everything in Timm Kroger’s The Universal Theory, which is now playing in New York.

Leinert’s thesis advisor, Dr. Strathan, thinks little of him, but reluctantly drags him along to a post-war conference in the Swiss Alps. Frankly, for Strathan and his not-so-friendly rival, Prof. Blumberg, WWII maybe still lingers. Indeed, as proteges of Heisenberg, their activities under the National Socialists remain intentionally vague.

Evidently, immigration troubles delay the arrival of the keynote speaker from Iran, so Leinert has plenty of time to kill as they wait. He would like to spend it with Karin Honig, the hotel’s resident jazz vocalist-pianist. Weirdly, when he next approaches her after their memorable first meeting, she acts like a total stranger. Nevertheless, she eventually agrees to a series of assignations, until she suddenly disappears. As Leinert searches for Honig, he hears strange rumors regarding the effects of plutonium on the mountain overshadowing the resort.

Or something like that. Stylistically, Universal Theory is definitely Guy Maddinesque, but if anything, Kroger’s takes an even more abstract approach to narrative. Admittedly, Kroger and co-screenwriter Roderick Warich try to do something very cool and provocative, but it is not sufficiently grounded to connect beyond an intellectual level. The clever wrap-around segments (featuring an older, embittered Leinert appearing on a 1970s talk show, promoting his tell-all memoir, which his publisher insisted on selling as science fiction) offer some ironic humor, but the guts of it all are just too vague, too coyly open-ended, and too resistant to interpretation. Ultimately, the pieces do not quite fit together and the equation never balances.

Frankly, Olivier Asselin’s Le Cyclotron and Gyorgy Palfi’s His Master’s Voice share similar themes and aesthetics, but those under-appreciated films were much better executed. Universal Theory looks amazing, but there is less substance than Kroger’s portentous style suggests. As they might say in the Alps, it is all lederhosen and no Alpine ibex. In terms of storytelling, it is more closely akin to Tav Falco’s Urania Descending or F.J. Ossang’s 9 Fingers, which proudly proclaimed their avant-garde nature. If none of these films mean anything to you, you’re hardly alone, but take it as sign Universal Theory maybe won’t be your cup of tea.

Witchcraft, on Eurochannel

The kind of antisemitic “blood libel” slander you can currently find on tiktok and social media comes straight out of the 13^th Century, so why should we be surprised by modern day accusations of witchcraft? Such rumors dogged Hanna’s missing-and-presumed-dead mother when she lived in this rustic community in northern Germany, so they predictably fall on her too when she returns for a hot, uncomfortable summer in Esther Bialas’s Witchcraft (a.k.a. Hanna’s Homecoming), which premieres tomorrow on Eurochannel.

Hanna’s dad has a serious case of denial. He seems to think nothing will happen if Hanna keeps her head down, spending all her time working for the family’s farm and butcher shop. Yet, even the family employees start bullying her as soon as she arrives, especially the brutish Gunnar. It only gets worse when several of her tormentors (or their pets) experience painful misadventures. She only makes one friend, the mysterious Eva, who is also an outsider visiting family. However, she exerts a questionable influence over Hanna.

If you cannot figure out Eva’s deal after five minutes, you probably have not seen very many genre movies. Nevertheless, Bialas does a decent job maintaining the is-it-supernatural-or-is-it-Scooby-Doo-villainy ambiguity. She creates a creepy atmosphere, especially through the use of the Blair Witch-y sigils that adorn the forest and out-buildings. Nevertheless, there is a simplicity to Lena Krumkamp’s screenplay that betrays Witchcraft’s made-for-German-TV origins.

Skin Deep: Modern German Body-Swapping

This is the mysterious island of body-swapping, but the transfers are not funny, like in Vice Versa and Big, or scary like it Freaky or Suitable Flesh, except maybe in an emotional way. A woman with undefined troubles is convinced seeing life through a different body will cure what ails her in Alex Schaad’s Skin Deep, which opens Friday in theaters.

Leyla’s friend Stella has run the weird body-swapping island resort with her father, until he died from an aneurism in her brain, during their switch. Now, she carries on, in his body. Leyla’s boyfriend Tristan was skeptical, but he agreed to try it with her, for her sake. However, his reluctance is vindicated when Mo, his body-swapper, tries to sexual assault him, while in his own body. Yet, Skin Deep helps perpetuate the stigma many male victims of sexual assault feel, by making light of his trauma. Poor Tristan even laughs along with Leyla over the incident, when he tells her about it.

Not surprisingly, Tristan wants out, but Leyla still feels compelled to inhabit another body. Even they were forced to relinquish their swap-couples’ bodies, Roman, the handyman (and the much younger lover of Stella’s late dad) agrees to swap with her, because he is miserable in any body. Of course, she is frisky in Roman’s muscular frame, but Tristan is not so sure how he feels about that, which offends Leyla, who takes it as a personal rejection.

Yes, there is “gender-bending.” Fine, whatever. The thing that is troubling about Skin Deep is the way it suggests your sense of self is defined by your physical body. You have to wonder what the disabled community would make of this film. Would they be welcomed to swap at Stella’s island? That is a question the Schaads (director Alex and his co-screenwriter Dimitrij)  have no interest in answering. Regardless, it is pretty clear Leyla and Roman would laugh at the cliched notion that “its what’s inside that counts.”

In a Land that No Longer Exists: Striking a Pose in the GDR

Suzie Schultz was one of the few East German women to wear her country’s Haute Couture. That was because the GDR fashion industry produced its pret-a-porter collections solely for export to the West, in exchange for hard currency. They still had to drape the clothes over pretty models, so that was where she came in. However, she ran afoul of the Stasi because of her friendships with gay and otherwise undesirable colleagues in screenwriter-director Aelrun Goette’s In a Land that No Longer Exists, which is currently available on outbound international American flights.

It is early 1989. Viewers should know what that means. The Stasi is strenuously trying to prevent it, but obviously they will fail. Regardless, when the college-bound Schultz is caught with a copy of Orwell’s 1984, she is banned from university and assigned a menial factory job as punishment. From what her mechanic father hears from clients, she got off easy. That does not make her proletariat co-workers’ hostility any easier to take. Then one fateful night, “Coyote” a freelance fashion photographer takes a candid Bill Cunningham-style picture of her that Sibylle, the leading GDR fashion magazine, publishes.

The publisher is hesitant to sign Schultz to a full-time contract, but her gay assistant Rudi coaches her to walk and carry herself like a proper model. Coyote’s “celebration of labor” spread shot at Schultz’s workplace seals the deal. Not surprisingly, Schultz grows increasingly close to Rudi as a friend and Coyote as a lover. However, their “anti-social” tendencies could make further trouble for her with the Stasi. In fact, it will not be the dissident Coyote whom they demand she inform upon. Instead, they want her to dish dirt on Rudi, solely due to his sexuality.

Schultz is a fictional character, but her story is directly inspired by Goette’s own experiences as a fashion model in East Germany. It is a tragic and provocative narrative and a timely reminder of the pervasive homophobia of the Soviet-dominated Socialist regimes. Goette also captures the arbitrariness and the pettiness of the Stasi’s punitive measures. There is little nostalgia in Land that No Longer Exists, except for the giddily rebellious art shows staged by Rudi’s circle of friends.

A Pure Place

It is a parable of fascism, refracted through a cult of personality, produced in Greece, by German filmmakers. That makes perverse sense, because if anyone knows fascism and authoritarians who demand obedience, it is the Germans and the Greeks. Two siblings will be corrupted by a psychopath’s cult of cleanliness and virtue in Nikias Chryssos’s A Pure Place, which releases today on VOD.

Initially, it sounds like Irina has bought into the purity mythos of the evil Jim Jones-like Fust, but he younger brother Paul cannot help but ask awkward questions. When Fust plucks her out of the basement soap factory to replace the aging Maria as his “favorite,” Irina is supposed to leave Paul behind, but she cannot shun him altogether.

Despite his less advanced years, Paul is the more experienced sibling, because he often helps Albrich, the soap foreman, ship and sell their product. That necessarily involves leaving the villa-compound, even though the children are told exposure to the air outside can lead to death. As he becomes more skeptical, Paul grows more defiant and potentially violent.

Having the Puritanical death cult produce soap is a little too on-the-nose and in-your-face, but that is definitely how A Pure Place rolls. It seems unlikely the Greek-German Chryssos would be totally unaware of soap-making’s horrific historical associations. Admittedly, the cult’s soap business is non-lethal, for the most part, but it summons far too real images, just for the sake of driving home his themes of outer cleanliness and inner corruption, with merciless blunt force.

The Forger: Cioma Schonhaus’s Survivor Story

Cioma Schonhaus had two advantages that helped him survive the National Socialists. First of all, he looked more like a blond matinee idol than the regime’s anti-Semitic caricatures. Of course, it was not enough to look the part. He also had to have the right papers, but he could help himself there too. Schonhaus’s incredible survival story unfolds in Maggie Peren’s The Forger, which opens today in New York.

The rest of Schonhaus’s family have been deported East, but he is allowed to remain in Berlin, because of his menial munitions job—at least, for now. Most of his family’s flat has been sealed by the authorities and the contents exhaustively catalogued. Schonhaus has been relegated to one small room, which he happily shares with his friend Detlev Kassriel, a fellow Jew rendered homeless by National Socialist appropriation.

However, the two young men try not to let that stand in the way of a good time. Using uniforms abandoned at a tailor’s, Schonhaus and Kassriel regularly party the nights away at hot spots, pretending to be junior officers on the night before their deployments. During the days, Schonhaus is recruited by the once-socially prominent resistance leader Franz Kaufmann, applying his graphic design training to forge identity papers.

The Forger is not exactly intended as a breakneck thriller, but Schonhaus’s ability to brazenly bluff his way out of sticky situations is hugely impressive and often highly entertaining to witness. However, it is also a meditation on the loneliness of exile (even within one’s own home) and the quality of life, even while enduring extreme pressure.

In fact, Schonhaus is not always so heroic. Sometimes he is rash and irresponsible, as so many of us were in our early twenties. Regardless, it might sound like a tired cliché, but Schonhaus really did try to live on his own terms—and he definitely survived to tell his story—he was the most compelling interview subject in Claus Rafle’s hybrid-documentary, The Invisibles, which released a few months after his death.

1989: a Spy Story, on MHz

Before 1989, if you were named in Stasi records as a mole or an informant, you could count on that intel staying secret. After 1989, you were potentially in a heck of a lot of trouble. That is the position Saskia Starke finds herself in as a mole in America’ West German embassy in Sven Bohse’s 1989: a Spy Story (a.k.a. Wendezeit), a film produced for German television, which premieres this Tuesday on MHz.

Actually, Starke is not the original name she was born with. However, as the daughter of a high-ranking Stasi agent, she had to do her duty, assuming the identity of a West German leftist, who defected to GDR. The real Starke had been estranged from her former National Socialist parents, so it was easy for her imposter to re-start her life fresh in West Berlin.

Eventually, she married her husband, a diplomat in the West German embassy and wormed her way into an in-country analyst gig with the CIA. Yet, it was only by luck that her colleague Betsy Jordan blabbed during a dinner party about an operation to pick up a Stasi defector who could burn her. Starke manages to liquidate him before his rendezvous with the CIA, but that tips off the Agency that they have a mole in the embassy. It will be Jeremy Redman’s job to find the deep-cover Stasi agent. Supposedly, he is the one who sleuthed out the Walker spy ring—and he immediately suspects Starke.

She was once a true believer in Socialism, but Starke's faith has been shaken. However, she still ardently believes in staying alive and at liberty. Given her circumstances and shifting beliefs, her reactions to current events in the GDR are quite conflicted, but she has to put on a happy face at work. She also totally freaks when she learns her rebellious daughter has been secretly seeing an East German punker, for so many reasons.

1989 is a really smart and sophisticated espionage thriller (written by Silke Steiner) that has a lot of le Carre-esque betrayals and shifting loyalties, but is consistently critical of the Communist experiment in misery. It definitely looks and feels like 1989 (wasn’t that a great year) and Bohse keeps building the suspense as Redman gets closer and closer to uncovering Starke’s secret mission.

Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes

You don't have to get every reference to Euro cult cinema to pick up on this film’s vibes, but why wouldn’t you? Regardless, this horror movie wears its influences on its sleeve. That’s just part of its style, which is heavy and often effective. Atmosphere is everything in Kevin Kopacka’s Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes, which releases Friday on VOD.

A bickering couple are visiting the decrepit family manor house she inherited, despite the lateness of the hour. It is all because of Dieter’s obnoxious attitude. He refused to stop at a hotel to make some kind of point. Critics will probably try to hang the “toxic masculinity” label on him, but there is nothing manly about him. That will not stop him from trying to compensate, as when he becomes fascinated by a whip he finds in a trunk.

And then everything changes, in a big, landscape-altering kind of way, but without the gentle humor of an obvious but spoilery comparison. Also, maybe not everything changes. There is still something very wrong about the German chateau.

That would be the Gothic Herrenhaus Vogelsang, which is definitely a creepy setting. Indeed, everything about the look and design of Dawn is quite masterful. Many are making the obvious comparison to Helene Cattet & Bruno Forzani’s Giallo pastiches, like Amer and The Strange Color of Your Bodys' Tears, but Kopacka’s screenplay is much more narrative driven. Initially, that makes it more accessible, but it also causes greater frustration when it takes an arty detour into oblivion.

Human Factors, from Germany

The home invasion ended quickly, but the family dysfunction lingers on and on. Viewers get to see it all from multiple perspectives in Ronny Trocker’s Human Factors, which is now playing in Brooklyn.

Mark and Nina are an unhappy-on-the-inside German couple who run a boutique advertising agency together. They also have a teen daughter, Emma and Max, an introverted moppet with a pet rat named Zorro (who is easily the most likable character in the film). For a brief getaway, they popped over to their Belgian summer house, but while dad was off at the grocery, mom has a brief run-in with masked intruders, who were hidden upstairs—or did she? Or was he?

No real harm was done, except Zorro managed to make a break for the woods during the confusion. Nevertheless, Nina is shaken. The next day, everyone tries to act like everything is all better, but Max is worried about Zorro and Mark is even more annoyed by Nina’s brother Florian, when he decides to make a reassuring visit.

In the next few days, a lot of family angst and resentment will come out. It also spills over into the office when Mark admits he accepted a Euroskeptic political party as a client without consulting Nina. Just what happened in Belgium? Several flashbacks from other perspectives will help illuminate the truth.

The trouble is the crime itself is basically trespassing. The stakes are entirely familial and emotional, rather than criminal. Yet, it is structured like a Rashomon-like thriller, sort of like a family drama directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, but it is nowhere near that interesting. Trocker tries so hard to keep the audience at arm’s length, it ends up straining the entire film.

Wood and Water, Adrift in HK

The last few years have been rough on Hong Kong families. First, the puppet government’s crackdown on the democracy protests kept them apart. Now, they are separated by yet another zero-tolerance Covid lockdown. Back in 2019, a German mother visited hoping to reconnect with her expat son, but she has to settle for discovering the soon-to-be beleaguered city in Jonas Bak’s Wood and Water, which opens today at MoMA.

Our main character has just retired from her church receptionist job to spend more time with her grown children. Her daughter and sister are there for her celebration, but her son Max’s flight from Hong Kong is cancelled due to the protests. Or so he claims. Frankly, his sister expected him to have an excuse to bail, which he did. The “Mother” decides the Mountain must go to Muhammad, but when she arrives in HK, he’s not there.

Instead, Mother Deutsch explores the city on her own, getting help from strangers and Max’s friendly doorman. Like all Hongkongers, she learns to navigate the protests, but she is fortunate to avoid exposure to the cops’ tear gas.

Wood and Water is a quiet, meditative, and immersive, in ways that cut both ways. You could definitely call it slow cinema. Bak has a keen eye for visuals and he vividly captures the flavor of Hong Kong, in the twilight of its “One Country Two Systems” relative freedoms. Bak’s own mother, Anke also brings a very warm and sympathetic screen presence. Rather logically, she is convincingly maternal.

However, it is somewhat troublesome to see Bak use the 2019 protests as signpost for the film’s time and place, while having so little to say about them. The suppression of the democracy movement has ultimately led to 7.4 million Hongkongers losing their freedoms. That is about as serious as it gets. Would a film use events such as the Burning of the Reichstag as a neutral backdrop for an exploration of personal and familial alienation? Hopefully not, but what has transpired in Hong Kong approaches that sort of dire national turning point.

Petzold’s Undine

According to artistic and literary representations, Undine (or Ondine), the water nymph, is usually female and seductive. You wouldn’t expect them to be experts in GDR-era architecture and post-Unification urbanization, but Undine Wibeau certainly is. Just what her connection is to her namesake myth will be revealed over the course of Christian Petzold’s Undine, which releases this Friday in theaters and on VOD.

Wibeau has just been dumped by her faithless boyfriend Johannes and she is not dealing with it well. Providentially, her rebound, Christoph is right there in the audience of her latest museum lecture. She is almost too self-absorbed in her resentment and codependency to notice him, until fate explosively intervenes. Soon, she finds the sort of romantic relationship she always desired with Christoph, the industrial diver.

He is actually the one who makes his living from the water. In fact, he is eager to show her an old shipwreck that bears her name on its prow. Unfortunately, fate will intervene once again, forcing Wibeau to come to terms with her true self.

Petzold’s Undine is radically different from most mermaid/selkie films, but it would still make an intriguing pairing with Neil Jordan's Ondine, which its title brings to mind (both intriguingly riff off selkie/mermaid myths, without trotting out tail fins or tridents). Frankly, some reviews and synopses probably give away too much. It is better to go into Undine not knowing about as much as you might learn from this review.

If you do, Undine definitely engages on a deep level. It is not as powerful and moving as Petzold’s masterworks, Phoenix and Barbara, but it still ranks with them rather than his more cerebral films, such as Transit and Jerichow.

Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski (who also co-starred in Transit) have terrific (awkward in the right kind of way) chemistry as Wibeau and Christoph. Neither come across as blow-dried romantic leads, but that helps us take an emotional stake in their relationship. Jacob Matschenz and Maryam Zaree also have sizeable roles as Johannes and Monika, Christoph’s diving partner, but Beer and Rogowski completely outshine them.

Enfant Terrible: Rainer Werner Fassbinder at his Most Scandalous

West German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder has yet to get the credit he deserves for predating and in some ways surpassing the Matrix films, way back in 1973 with his TV miniseries, World on a Wire. This film will not make that case either. Instead, it revels in Fassbinder’s well-documented hedonism and excesses. Does it ever. Yet, in doing so, director Oskar Roehler gives Fassbinder a rather Fassbinderesque depiction in Enfant Terrible, which expands to more cities this week.

Before he was a legend, Fassbinder was a film school drop-out with an insanely high opinion of his talents. Fortunately for him, his pining agent “Britta,” presumably a composite of male and female lovers, shared his confidence and wanted to share more. Instead, Fassbinder just used his early patron, like he uses everyone else.

Eventually, Fassbinder’s in-your-face provocation developed into international celebrity. We see him churn out dozens of low-budget, sexually-charged films, but each one is an exhausting struggle due to Fassbinder’s abusive and undisciplined working methods. Along the way, he engages in numerous sexual relationships that are way more exploitative than any conventional commercial arrangement in the West German capitalist system he often rails against.

Honestly, there are scenes in Enfant that are difficult to watch, but they are certainly true to what cineastes have probably heard about the subject. Frankly, after watching Enfant, most viewers will be grateful they never met the man. Oliver Masucci (also seen in this week’s When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit) commits to portray Fassbinder’s largely-than-life persona and hulking indulgence-ravaged body 200%, but it is always a drug and hormone-crazed physical performance. The man himself comes across as soulless and empty inside.

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit: Caroline Link Adapts Judith Kerr

Her father was a theater critic who scathingly panned Bertolt Brecht, whom he accused of plagiarism. Eventually, she would write the beloved children’s book, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, so there should be plenty of good karma for their family. However, it did not seem that way for the secular Jewish family in 1933 Berlin. Warned by a sympathetic police source, the Kerrs opted for a life in exile while they could. Kerr told her family story in her fictionalized 1971 YA novel, the first of the Out of Hitler Time Trilogy. Shortly after her death in 2019, both the BBC animated production of Tiger and Caroline Link’s adaptation of When Hitler Stole Pink Bunny premiered in Europe. The latter, Link’s When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, now actually opens theatrically this Friday in major American markets.

The Kerrs are now the Kempers, but father Arthur is still a drama critic and anti-Hitler political commentator, while his wife Dorothea remains a pianist and composer. Nine-year-old Anna Kemper does not understand politics, but the continuation of the life she has always known hinges on an election. Tipped that the National Socialists intend to confiscate her father’s passport, the Kempers make haste to Switzerland. If Hitler loses, they will immediately return. Of course, that does not happen.

Suddenly, Kemper and her teen brother Max must navigate the mores and customs of Swiss youth and adapt to linguistic differences. They are resilient, but it is difficult for their family to make ends meet, because the neutral Swiss are afraid to publish the outspoken Arthur Kemper, for fear of offending their new neighbors. As a result, the Kempers start to hope Paris represents greener pastures.

Although the Kempers largely escape the worst horrors of WWII (as far as the nuclear family is concerned, which tragically does not include Uncle Julius, Anna’s godfather), they still face a great deal of anti-Semitism—especially in France. Yet, the film is surprisingly optimistic. Of course, the Kerr/Kemper family obviously had impeccable timing, always getting out while the getting was good. Yet, even after losing their wealth and privilege, they come together as a family.

Oliver Masucci is terrific portraying the wounded pride and dignity of Arthur Kemper, as well as his protective fatherly nature. Carla Juri does some of her best work as the fierce 1930s tiger-mom, Dorothea. Frankly, many viewers will grow frustrated waiting for Riva Krymalowski’s Anna Kemper to grow up, recognize the gravity of her parents’ situation, and finally start acting accordingly (after all, kids pick up on these things better than anyone). Still, that is much more a function of Link’s decisions. The young thesp clearly does everything asked of her.

Schwochow’s The German Lesson

The National Socialists were harsh art critics, whose tastes were highly suspect. Now it is a badge of honor, but the artists whose work they dubbed “Degenerate” faced professional hardship and even personal peril. Max Ludwig Nansen is one such artist. He has been officially prohibited from painting and his old friend Jens Ole Jepsen willingly enforces the edict. The resulting resentment, tragedy, and bad karma will envelop everyone close to them, especially Jepsen’s son Siggi, in Christian Schwochow’s English language adaptation of Siegfried Lenz’s classic post-war novel, The German Lesson, which releases digitally today.

The war is over and twenty-something Siggi is undergoing some strict rehabilitation. As part of the program, he must write an essay on the joys of duty, with respects to German citizenship (hence the title). The disgraced Siggi embraces the task, with excessive and obsessive zeal. Most of the film flashbacks to the war years, to explain how he reached this point.

As a child, he considered Nansen, the gifted but suspiciously bohemian artist more of a father-figure than his own martinet father, a true-believing local National Socialist official. Nansen was once close friends with his father. The artist even saved the latter’s life years ago. However, the elder Jepsen almost fetishizes authoritarian conceptions of duty and loyalty, so he consequently turned against his friend. Yet, in their small northern coastal town, it is hard to avoid each other, especially when the rest of Jepsen’s family maintains bonds of friendship with Nansen and his ailing wife. Of course, bitterness builds in all quarters when the elder Jepsen suspects the Nansens of harboring his oldest son, an army deserter.

At various junctures, young Siggi’s naivete and carelessness make matters worse for Nansen. Yet, he retains a love of art (especially the modern variety) instilled in him during their painting lessons. He is not his father’s son, so to speak, but his dysfunctional formative years take a toll. Frankly, he could probably use some kind of rehab.

Lenz’s source novel enjoys a lofty reputation in Germany, but it is not so well-known here in America, giving us a fresher slate to judge Schwochnow’s adaptation, written by his screenwriter mother, Heide. In terms of theme and subject matter, German Lesson sounds comparable to Never Look Away, with a Max Beckmann-figure (at least in terms of  style) replacing the Gerhard Richter-Sigmar Polke composite, but Donnersmarck’s film was grander and far more emotionally resonant.

In contrast, German Lesson is a darker, murkier exploration of the German national character, during its worst historical moments, like The Reader, but with a better developed moral-ethical sensibility. There is never any sympathy expressed for the abusive elder Jepsen. Indeed, the film’s depiction of censorship and the confiscation of art produces visceral outrage.

Back to School: The Silent Revolution

Kids are not any safer living under oppressive regimes and ideologies than their parents are. That is a lesson all students should learn sooner rather than later, for all our sakes. In 1956 East Germany, the Stalinstadt senior class always basically knew the Communist government was vicious and unjust, but dramatic events will prove it beyond all doubt in Lars Kraume’s historically-based The Silent Revolution, which is a perfect supplement for your schooling-at-home lesson plans.

It all started when two high school seniors wanted to see German bombshell Marion Michael in the risqué (for the time) Liane, Jungle Goddess, naturally only screening in the morally decadent West (this is pre-Wall, when travel between East and West was not strictly forbidden). However, before the feature, Theo Lemke and Kurt Wachter are amazed by a newsreel accurately reporting the Soviet crackdown on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Lemke is the class clown and Wachter is the son of a local Party official. Neither fits the revolutionary profile (or rather “counter-revolutionary,” according to Party propagandists), but they are both electrified. On returning, they listen to West German radio with their classmates to confirm their reports.

At school, they decide to observe two minutes of silence to honor the fallen Hungarian freedom fighters. Essentially, it was Wachter’s idea, but a majority agreed to it. The only vehement no vote comes from Erik Babinsky, who believes he is the son of a martyred Communist partisan. However, the entire class is in huge trouble when the ministry gets wind of their silent protest. Following Franklin’s advice, the two “ringleaders” try to keep the class hanging together, so they do not hang separately, but the Communists will ruthlessly exploit any and all of the young students’ weaknesses.

Silent Revolution is an absolutely terrific film everyone ought to see, just because its great cinema. It is especially recommended for students, who can surely identify with the teen characters. It can help explain the nature of Communism, particularly with respects to the Hungarian Revolution and the divided Germany. The tragically ill-fated 1953 Uprising also casts a shadow over the events it dramatizes. Yet, Kraume’s adaptation of Dietrich Garstka’s book also addresses worthy themes like personal loyalty, family love and sacrifice, the demands of integrity, and the corrosive impact of lies and propaganda on society.

Fantasia ’20: Free Country

Patrick Stein, from West Germany, is a fiercely honest cop who will investigate the politically protected, no matter the consequences. East German Markus Bach has made a career arresting those who legally guilty of violating unjust laws. Thanks to reunification, they must work together solve a brutal double murder in Christian Alvart’s Free Country, which screens as an on-demand selection of the 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Back in the West, Stein opened up a corruption case against the brother of his superior, so now he is on assignment in this former-GDR backwater. He has been partnered-up with the beefy Bach, who still takes a more physical approach to police work. However, both cops are rather put-off by the town’s callous disinterest in the fate of the missing (and presumed dead) Kraft sisters. The local brass wants them close the case quickly, but they are perversely dogged, especially when they get anonymous threats. With a pregnant wife back in the FRG, Stein has more to lose, but his intuition and initiative starts to grudgingly impress the guilt-wracked Bach. As they follow-up leads, they start to suspect the Kraft sisters were actually the victim of a serial killer.

Technically, Free Country is a remake of the Spanish film Marshland, but Alvart and co-screenwriter Siegfried Kamml cleverly adapt the post-Franco thriller to reunified Germany.  The mystery and procedural stuff of both films are perfectly respectable but they are still probably on the level of what you might find in many of the grittier European crime shows on MHz. Yet, what really sets Free Country apart is the reunification angle. Alvart takes us to a very particular time and place, when former East Germans were coming to terms with the crimes of the Communist regime. Bach is just at the right level to slide through to the new unified order, while still carrying baggage from his past.

The grungy setting is also quite distinctive. Invariably, the investigation draws Stein and Bach to rusty, abandoned industrial behemoths that probably never made sense economically and were maybe only built in the first place to supply a boastful line in a long-forgotten Erich Honecker speech.

The Tobacconist: Bruno Ganz is Sigmund Freud

This film teaches the pleasures of fine cigar, so enjoy it while you can. Coincidentally, it is also about the rise of a totalitarian regime. Coming of age is never easy, but it gets rather perilous for a naïve teen living in Vienna on the eve of the National Socialist takeover. At least he has access to first-rate counsel in Nikolaus Leytner’s The Tobacconist, which releases virtually tomorrow in New York.

When Franz Huchel’s mother suddenly loses the protection of her older lover, she packs him off to Vienna to work in Otto Trsnjek’s tabak. Apparently, they had a fling years ago, during more care-free times. The film openly invites viewers to speculate Trsnjek, the WWI veteran-amputee, may in fact be Huchel’s father, but the thought apparently never crosses the lad’s mind. Nevertheless, Trsnjek becomes a crusty father figure to Huchel, but for problems of the heart, he turns to their celebrated customer, Prof. Sigmund Freud. Remember, he always had a lot to say about cigars.

Huchel has fallen for the Bavarian Anezka, who you could safely say is much more experienced than he. Perhaps even professionally so. That could very well spell considerable heartache for Huchel, but Freud will be the first to explain to him love does not always make sense. Yet, if The Tobacconist sounds something like Il Postino, with Freud replacing Neruda, than keep in mind the rise of Hitler’s regime is equally weighted with Huchel’s personal drama, until the micro is logically and tragically consumed by the macro.

In fact, Trsnjek could be the sort of radical centrist hero the times are calling out for. The tobacconist is openly contemptuous of Communists, but he still lets them patronize his store, whereas National Socialists are not welcome. Obviously, this policy will cause a great deal of strife as the winds shift in favor of demagogues and statists.

Somehow, Leytner and screenwriter Klaus Richter (who adapted Robert Seethaler’s novel) mostly get the balance right. Frankly, their approach is often downright Freudian, especially the interludes depicts Huchel’s increasingly turbulent dreams. Freud’s scenes with young Huchel are saturated with wistful humanism, but they are never cute, trite, or shticky. These are serious life conversations that just happen to be conducted against an ominous historical backdrop.

NYICFF ’20: Fritzi: A Revolutionary Tale

Totalitarian regimes cannot afford to let children grow up to be free-thinkers, so they try to beat them into obedience while they are still children. That means schools are more often a place of indoctrination than education. Young Fritzi becomes the focus of her teacher’s wrath through no fault of her own. However, history is on her side in Matthias Bruhn & Ralf Kukula’s animated feature, Fritzi: A Revolutionary Tale, which screens during the 2020 New York International Film Festival.

Fritzi and her best friend Sophie are so close, they are almost like sisters. That is nearly as true for their mothers, so Fritzi and her family agree without hesitation to look after Sophie’s dog Sputnik while she and her mom vacation in Hungary. They had heard reports that the Hungarian border was becoming rather porous during the summer of 1989, but they never gave it much thought until Sophie fails to return for the start of class.

Their venomous teacher, Ms. Liesegang openly condemns Sophie for abandoning the socialist state in class, but Fritzi naively defends her friend. That immediately puts her on the outs with Liesegang and the school’s Young Pioneer enforcers. Soon, only Bela, the hipster son of democracy activist parents will talk to her. Fritzi still does not fully understand the hypocrisy and oppression of the East German system, but she will learn the hard way when she innocently attempts to find her way to the Federal Republic, to reunite Sophie and Sputnik.

This is 1989, so there is a happy ending waiting for Fritzi, but getting there will not be easy. Along the way, she gets swept up in the Monday Demonstrations at St. Nicholas, first as an inadvertent bystander, but eventually as an active participant. Of course, we know where it is all headed, but Beate Volcker’s adaptation of Hannah Schott & Peter Palatsik children’s novel vividly captures the hope, fear, and uncertainty of the era. They also manage to shoehorn a girl-and-her-dog story into the grand historical events of 1989 quite nicely.

Balloon: Escaping Socialism

Hot air rises, even back in the cold, dingy GDR. Unfortunately, the wind rarely blew in a northernly direction. That is one of the many reasons why escape using a hot air balloon was such a desperate and unlikely plan. Nevertheless, two families oppressed by the socialist state will risk everything trying to sail away to freedom in Michael Bully Herbig’s historically accurate Balloon, which opens this Friday in New York.

If this premise sounds familiar, it is because the Walt Disney company produced Night Crossing in 1982, based on the same historical episode. Directed by the Oscar-winning Delbert Mann, the previous film is quite under-appreciated, but this is definitely a story worth re-telling, especially by German filmmakers.

In 1979, Erich Honecker rules East Germany with an iron hand, at Moscow’s behest. Border guards have orders to shoot to kill anyone attempting to cross over to the west, because that is what defending socialism entails. The Strelzyk and Wetzel families are determined to escape the oppressive regime to give their children better lives, so they have been secretly stitching together a hot air balloon as a means of escape. Unfortunately, Gunter Wetzel, the engineer who designed the balloon has come to the conclusion it cannot support both families. Due to the Wetzels’ circumstances, they defer to the Strelzyks, whose flight falters heartbreakingly close to the border.

Unlike the Mann film, which build up the maiden flight, Herbig essentially starts with the initial failed escape attempt and then cranks up the tension as both families go back to the drawing board, mindful that the dreaded Stasi is closing in on them. Rather awkwardly, the Strelzyks live right across the street from the local Stasi section chief. At least, Baumann is a dim-witted blowhard. On the other hand, Lt. Col. Seidel, who is overseeing the investigation of the first balloon crash site and the resulting manhunt, happens to be a shrewd and ruthless predator.

Well-known for comedy in Germany, Herbig set out to make his equivalent of The Lives of Others with Balloon. That is a daunting film to invite comparisons to, but Herbig fares surprisingly well. While Balloon does not have the same tragic heft and inspirational uplift, it is a grittily realistic film that is also nerve-wrackingly tense.