KINO! ’17: Hanna’s Sleeping Dogs

In a small town like Wels, Austria, everybody knows everyone’s business. That makes life terribly uncomfortable for Johanna Berger’s family, but frankly they are about the only ones with nothing to be embarrassed about in Andreas Gruber’s Hanna’s Sleeping Dogs (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 KINO! Festival of German Cinema in New York.

Even though she was blinded by a bomb blast, Ruth Eberth still survived the war through sheer determination. Her conveniently corrupt gentile second husband also helped. Unfortunately, persistence would have a price. Her roguish first husband was indeed deported to a concentration camp, but her daughter Katharina was able to pass for an Aryan Christian thanks to the sponsorship of Öllinger, the president of the local Wels bank. Of course, he extracted compensation in ways we can immediately guess, but the film treats like a deep, dark secret.

Naturally, Johanna is blissfully ignorant of her family history and her clueless father Franz hardly knows little more than she does. Neither recognizes the ill-concealed aggression in Herr Öllinger close-talking pleasantries. Nor does Johanna understand why the Catholic school’s lay catechism teacher is so openly hostile towards her. However, Eberth gets it only too well. She also knows exactly who their ogre-like building superintendent is and what he did in Linz during the war. She might be blind, but she sees better than anyone.

It seems like Gruber’s one fear in adapting Elisabeth Escher’s partly autobiographical novel was that someone might miss her point, so she just drives it into the ground. Granted, the events of Sleeping Dogs most likely take place in the early 1960s, a few years before Fritz Bauer’s Frankfort Auschwitz Trials, but it is hard to fathom how this small town would be so overtly anti-Semitic and unrepentantly nostalgic for the National Socialists. The kind of boorish, emotionally abusive behavior directed at young Johanna boggles the mind to the point of stretching credibility, which has rather frightening implications for a film like this.

As Johana, young Nike Seitz truly looks and sound like a Heavenly angel, which further exemplifies Gruber’s manipulative aesthetic. However, Hannelore Elsner provides invaluable support as Eberth, a truly wise a forceful presence, in a sharp-tongued kind of way.

Sleeping Dogs strives to do right and illuminate the dark corners of the Austro-German soul, but it is hindered by its own didacticism. We all understand many if not most Germans and Austrians remained in denial for decades after the war, but the Wels townsfolk practically act like they are living in 1934 Nuremberg. There are some moments of power that might just redeem the whole film, but we can’t deny its awkwardness. We want to like this film, but we feel compelled to instead recommend the documentary Inside Hanna’s Suitcase as an alternative film about young people confronting the truth of the Holocaust. Regardless, Hanna’s Sleeping Dogs screens tomorrow (4/4) and Wednesday (4/5) as part of this year’s KINO! in New York.

KINO! ’17: The Verdict

When the German Supreme Court nullified a law allowing the Luftwaffe to shoot down hijacked planes that had been weaponized, many predicted it would provide an incentive for future terrorists to do exactly that. The waters were further muddied when then Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung announced he would still probably give the order to shoot down airliners seized for terrorist purposes. He ignited a media firestorm, but it was probably prudent to increase the uncertainty amongst the al-Qaedas, Daeshes, and Hammases of the world. That uncertainty also extends to German public opinion as well, judging from the enormous ratings and social media response to Lars Kraume’s The Verdict (trailer here), a television feature adaptation of Ferdinand von Schirach’s play dramatizing exactly such an extra-legal shootdown, which screens during the 2017 KINO! festival of German Cinema in New York.

As an extra added hook, German viewers were invited to cast their vote to help determine the verdict of the Federal Republic of Germany vs. Major Lars Koch, updating the gimmick of Ayn Rand’s Broadway hit, The Night of January 16^th. Most of the evidence in the case is not in dispute. A commercial airliner was indeed hijacked by Islamist terrorists (a fact conveniently confirmed by their own gloating broadcasts). They did indeed point the plane towards a football stadium packed with 70,000 fans, nearly all of whom would have likely died, had Maj. Koch not shot the plane, still carrying 164 innocent passengers and crew, out of the sky. He did so against the orders of the ranking duty officer, yet it is clear his superior was greatly relieved when Maj. Koch engaged the airliner anyway.

Perhaps it is partly due to our proximity to Ground Zero, but the moral case for Maj. Koch’s actions, 70,000 vs. 164 who are essentially doomed anyway, seems nearly impossible to question. The prosecutor’s concerns for the dignity of life denied to the hijacking victims by denying them another five minutes of terror approach the absurd. Yet, perversely, the guilty verdict scene sounds much more in accordance with German law, whereas the innocent verdict is more interesting from a dramatic perspective, but the legal rationale definitely sounds forced.

Regardless, as a courtroom drama, The Verdict is tight, tense, and often fascinating. As Maj. Koch, Florian David Fitz so adroitly balances personal anguish and moral conviction, it almost fatally tilts the film in his favor. Lars Eidinger is terrific as his sharp-tongued attorney Herr Biegler. Martina Gedeck is also quite commanding as prosecutor Nelson, almost managing to sell an argument that could just as logically support the most extreme anti-abortion prohibitions.

Hopefully, the huge ratings Verdict has scored all over Europe will spur the German government to better resolve what looks like a rather awkward constitutional and national security conundrum. To put it in colloquial American legal terms, the facts seem to be on Koch’s side and the law seems to be on Nelson’s side, but since this is a German legal proceeding, nobody resorts to cheap table-pounding. In fact, the German setting (the glass and steel courtroom, the powder blue uniforms) is rather cinematic and makes it easier to believe an officer in Koch’s position would face a very public criminal trial for his actions. It just seems like a very Euro thing to do. Highly recommended, The Verdict screens this Tuesday (4/4) as part of this year’s KINO! in New York.

KINO! ’17: Paula

Paula Modersohn-Becker is considered an early pioneer of Expressionism, but the chauvinistic art world has yet to fully acknowledge her significance. In contrast, the patriarchy could be relied upon to shower acclaim and prestige upon male artists, like Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec, right? Maybe it is just tough for any artist with a truly original vision. Despite her early death, Modersohn-Becker seems to have lived an easier life than her aforementioned contemporaries, at least judging from Christian Schwochow’s biopic, Paula (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 KINO! festival of German cinema in New York.

If viewers had a dollar for every time a man pats Modersohn-Becker on the head and tells her pretty little ladies can’t paint, they might be able to afford one of her paintings. Yet, her unsupportive father was supportive enough to cover her expenses while she was a pupil at the Worpswede artists’ colony. Most of the faculty were predictably dismissive, but obviously not the widowed Otto Modersohn. Their union had its issues, including artistic rivalry, but he continued to support her, even when she absconded to Paris.

Frankly, screenwriters Stefan (Generation War) Kolditz & Stephan Suschke do not exactly burnish Modersohn-Becker’s reputation as a feminist icon. In point of fact, she comes across as rather selfish and short on empathy. It is a good thing she produced such distinctive work or else the two-hour-and-three-minute running time would really feel excessive.

On the other hand, Carla Juri’s Modersohn-Becker is truly a neurotic tornado. You would definitely say she has an artistic temperament. Roxane Duran provides a reality check and an accessible audience vantage point as Modersohn-Becker’s best friend and colleague Clara Westoff (Rilke). However, it is Albrecht Schuch who really engages viewers’ sympathy as the put-upon Otto.

Arguably, Paula is a perfectly presentable work of biographical narrative filmmaking, but Schwochow never develops a hook to differentiate it from thematically similar films, such as Séraphine. The period trappings are quite lovely, but the arc is as predictable as the setting sun. Still, it is the sort of safe programming choice that always gets a positive response.

In the doc !Women Art Revolution, New Yorkers were asked if they could name three women artists, but few could get past Frida Kahlo. You might think any school child could rattle off Georgia O’Keefe, Marry Cassatt, and Diane Arbus, but apparently, the state of New York public schools is such that they cannot. Maybe the increased attention for Hilma af Klint in Personal Shopper and Modersohn-Becker here will help them with their next man-in-the-street pop quiz. It is classy and informative, but not particularly involving. Recommended for fans of films like Cézanne et Moi and Renoir, Paula screens tomorrow (3/31) and Saturday (4/1) as part of this year’s KINO.