The crowd-pleaser Goethe!, directed by Philipp Stolzl and starring Alexander Fehling, a fresh face and rising Teuton star, will have an international distribution under the title Goethe in Love. Unabashedly modern in sensibility and narrative structure, the film is out to emulate the international art-house sucess of Shakespeare in Love. Beautiful people in period costumes (although fashionably dishevelled), the story closely follows the emotional and creative process leading to Goethe's first success, the novella "Werther" about a young writer whose passionate first love is doomed by the lack of economic prospect. Even though no scandalous new ground is broken about this beloved literary figure, the film manges to remain engaging through its Masterpiece Theater approach. (If you are riveted by Downton Abbey recently shown on PBS, Goethe! will be your cup of tea).
The success of Inglourious Basterds was obviously responsible for the green light given to My Best Enemy, an Austrian Nazi-era revenge fantasy, based on a novel by an Holocaust survivor, about a Jewish gallery owner in Vienna who beats the Nazis at their game. Lavishly produced, starring the ubiquitous Moritz Bleibtreu as a dashing Viennese who gets the last laugh, the film does not have the hysterical absurdities and unbearable suspense of the Tarantino opus, but packs a punch or two, especially among those familiar with the 'degenerate art' topic, which gets a funny twist. The caricature of German military efficiency gone awry has its roots in Chaplin, even though here it borders on the cliche.
The origins of the Baader-Meinhoff terrorist group of the 1960s and 70s is approached by filmmaker Andres Veiel from a fresh angle - very different from sound and fury of the 2008 The Baader-Meinhoof Complex. Based on a non-fiction book about the romantic and intellectual entanglements of Gudrun Esslin - one of the founders of the Red Army - with left-wing writer Bernward Vesper, the son of a Nazi writer, If Not Us, Who probes in the personal aspects of their no-strings-attached love affair, leaving the ideological as a looming background. Like the recent French biopic Carlos, by Olivier Assayas, the film is not about left-wing terrorism emerging in a materialistic post-war Europe, as much as a probe into a complicated couple's interpersonal dynamics as they become radicalized and part ways. By concentrating in the early 1960s the film dissects the roots of youthful discontent leading to the revolts later in the decade. Unsentimental and unflinching, If Not Us, Who eschews the hagiography relished by Motorcycle Diaries as well as the frantic pace of Carlos, to place the life of these emblematic self-destructive rebels in light and shadow, without an editorial comment.
The DDR, the acronym for the Communist German Democratic Republic, is the subject of the intriguing and aptly title The Price, directed by Elke Hauck. The story alternates between the present tense and the last days of the DDR, with the sympathy on the side of the characters that understand, and also miss, a country that no longer exists. The Price distills the Ossie perspective, that is the East German view of life and historical experience, minus the virulent ideological component. A subdued drama about three friends in the last year of high school and the different paths they take (one tragic) when Communism imploded, the picture assesses the results of the political changes without the hilarity of Good-bye, Lenin, although inserting a good dose of old-fashioned realism and a touch of irony. The "Preis" of the German title can mean both 'price' and 'prize'. Made twenty years after the German reunification, the film can be taken as a piece of fiction documenting an East German perspective with a distinctive voice.
Such is the case, also, of the fascinating documentary Vaterlandsverrater (Traitor to the Motherland, translated as Enemy of the State), directed by Annekristin Hendel - like Elke Hauck, a filmmaker born and raised in the former DDR. It is centered on a 75-year-old writer, Paul Gratzik, who was a Stasi informer. A fervent Communist and a womanizer with a flair for words, the protagonist puts on a show for the viewer, with the filmmaker probing the armor for weak spots and not findng many. From the onset, asked about how he feels about his decision to inform on colleagues in East Berlin's cultural scene, Gratzik turns the table on the director by aserting with dith-Piaf-defiance that he doesn't regret anything. Without archival footage, and relying solely on interviews, and some exquisite drawings illustrating people and events, the director builds the portrait of a complicated man, and by extension offers a layered view about the symbiotic relationship between the DDR surveillance system and its informers (An excellent complement to this documetary is "The File", the autobiographical account by Timothy Garton Ash about his own Stasi file and those who informed on him in the early 1980s).
In this context, one should argue that The Enemy of the State can be placed squarely opposite The Life of Others (2006), a fictionalized account of a Stasi informer's job by a West German director. Filmmakers from East Germany, like Annekristin Hendel (with whom I had a very interesting one-hour talk, together with my friend and colleague Silvia Kratzer, who filled in my German lacunae), argue that by virtue of having lived the horrors and absurdities of the system, they are in a position to show it in a more accurate and realistic way. These Ossie directors don't favor the polished looks and narratives of the Hollywood-style of cinema (think Run, Lola, Run) but a more truthful look at how life is. This is an ongoing subject of debate, and one to which contribute the many East German filmmakers in the Berlinale every year.
The last film shown in the competition was Unknown, a German-British-French thriller set in present day Berlin about an American, Liam Neeson, who loses his identity as a result of an accident, and wakes up from a coma to discover that he is pursued by ruthless killers. A Hitchcock rip-off (Torn Curtain with a twist) and with a Bourne Identity complex, the film is nevertheless quite entertaining (the Berlin locations are fun to spot). Bruno Ganz steals the show in a few scenes as a man who has had to reinvent himself: formerly a Stasi officer, he is now a detective impeccably positioned to unlock Neeson's dark past. Ganz played the role with over the top gusto, and his last scene had the public roaring with laughter, with its tragicomic overtones.
German history ... always good stuff to work from ...
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