Eastern Europe occupied by the Soviets... Germany, bloodless, fragmented and on a saucer served to two predators.
And in the middle of that is the story of a little man. Barbara, a brilliant pediatrician, for pro-Western initiative, by the Stasi, refers from Berlin to Tmutarakan. Almost daily searches in a new apartment, but there is a piano (disturbed).
The girl is depressed, but she has a lover from the West and he prepares his beloved escape plan.
Admittedly, recently met with the directorial talent of Christian Petzold. Petzold removes, at first glance, clumsy, but every second of timekeeping at the box office.
Emotional tension is achieved (besides the historical context) by the absolutely stunning play of Petzold’s muse – Nina Hoss and Ronald Zerfeld.
I will not recommend the picture to anyone, it is too difficult. Think about it.
I accidentally stumbled across this movie and watched it, I don’t even think I’ll like it so much. Before us is a German drama directed by Christian Petzold. The movie turned out to be a drama in the style of arthouse. The picture is shot in a certain melancholic style, gradually immersing the viewer in the life and events of one woman.
This is 1980. Barbara, a female doctor, wants to leave her home country. She gives all the documents to leave the GDR, she is immediately sent to work in the province, and this is such a mild punishment. The intelligence services are watching her, but her lover from the West tries to help get out of the closed country into the world. We see how fate plays a cruel joke with Barbara and gives her a choice.
I really liked the atmosphere in this film. I felt every rustle, wind, even the thoughts of the main character. The ending of the picture is absolutely gorgeous. She's hypnotizing, and she just doesn't understand what's going on, it's like abstraction.
I remember Nina Hoss from her role in the film Elementary Particles. She is an interesting actress with a memorable appearance. She played Barbara. Her heroine was in a difficult situation and dreamed only to leave her country, but her final act is worthy of respect. I also remember Ronald Zerfeld playing the doctor. His character was the personification of the ideal man and the gift of fate for Barbara, which gives her an alternative choice.
"Barbara" is a dramatic film of 2012 and a picture for a narrow category of viewers. It is for lovers of arthouses and connoisseurs of European cinema. I appreciate this film and it deserves attention. Thank you.
... Fragmented into principalities of poetry, music, power, cut by borders into two unequal parts.
The first association that arises even before watching the film is the work of Fassbinder - more specifically "The Marriage of Maria Brown" and "Lily Marlene". Dirty Germany, weary Germany, “shattered by the boots of world progress” – and at its center is a feminine image: strong, courageous, going straight to its goal, no matter how dirt it demands from it. But the similarity ends there: where Fassbinder turns the human gut, turning cinema into a kind of “anatomical theater” (of course, figuratively speaking: just an analysis of the human essence, motivations and other things in his films is so detailed that involuntarily there are associations with moral vivisection), Petzold tells the story. Yes, just tells a story that is at once calm and vivid, logical, but does not fall into boring formalism, and emotional, but does not become biased. A documentary drama with social overtones accompanies the history of human relations with vivid symbolism and an abyss of personal suffering and the anguish of choice. Cinema sometimes seems too dry - in the best traditions of modern festival cinema, long plans with extreme reluctance replace each other, dialogues are exclusively everyday, devoid of any art, and the palette of colors is not rich; but this feeling passes almost immediately, as soon as the viewer pays attention to the subtlety of the acting game, the incredible and elaborate setting of the frame and a simple, but no less profound plot. Talking about such an ambiguous topic as the realities of the GDR, there is always a temptation to slide into populism and banal speculation – which, in general, everyone does. "Barbara" stands out against this background especially brightly - the restraint of the picture plays into her hand, helping to maintain a balance between methodical social drama and the history of internal choice. This makes “Barbara” such a reliable and really pleasant film: there are few films in modern European cinema on near-social themes that, on the one hand, would not be limited to it only, and on the other hand, would not try to speculate on the emotions of the viewer. There is neither slant nor judgment, but there is a sincere love for their characters and honesty with the viewer.
And also - an amazing gallery of acting portraits (for the first time discovered Nina Hoss, I want more!) and no less magnificent camera work, thanks to which the film is pleasant to watch. This is actually a rare success in European auteur cinema: of course, when you are fully focused on the story being told, visual beauty fades into the background, but it is because of this that the full perception of the director’s idea is lost. After all, cinema is an audio-visual art, and one should not neglect camera work: this is not an area that should be treated indifferently.
No, seriously, more often such films as “Barbara” were released; perhaps the viewer will cease to perceive European cinema as a gray grainy hodgepodge of speculative pathos, trying to be crooked to the realities of life.
German Democratic Republic, 1980. The whole enlightened world will relish the taste of freedom of action and thought while the socialist system survives its final years. But before the fall of the Berlin Wall, there are still 10 years left, so the inhabitants of the GDR have to put up with the gloomy reality surrounding them. Some people do it better and others do it worse. So, for example, Barbara, who is not that old, but on his doorstep, is, to put it mildly, not sweet. After a request to leave the country, she is literally exiled to a small provincial town, where she is under the constant control of special services. At first glance, it seems that Barbara has settled down. She works in a local hospital, leads a boring and ordinary lifestyle, trying not to attract anyone’s attention. But in fact, she lives only a few hours a week - when her fiancé comes to her on forbidden dates, passionately wanting to take her beloved out of the country.
“Barbara” – the film of the German director Christian Petzold once again offers the viewer to feel the feelings of unfortunate people oppressed by the Communist regime. The main character turns out to be hostage to a difficult moral situation when she is imbued with sympathy for her boss - a pretty young doctor Andre. In addition, her professional duty as a doctor adds to her problems. Young Stella is another innocent victim crushed by the regime, can only trust Barbara, which does not make her life or the life of the main character easier. Thus, the main leitmotif of Petzold’s film is an analysis of the human character and willpower of an individual in the face of an impersonal system. The topic is not new, but always relevant, because its roots come exclusively from the historical and, at the same time, recent experience of mankind. In such cases, the stylistic component always comes out in the first place, how convincing and by what means the director submits the material. “Barbara”, like an old story, diluted with new details and therefore sounding more interesting, looks convincing in purely cinematic aspects. Despite the initial orientation to the festivals and the general art-house atmosphere, the plot is filled with events, and the film itself looks vivid and interesting. The main structural detail of the film, diluting the action itself and favorably highlighting “Barbara” against the background of similar in concept pictures, is the profession of the heroine. Had she not been a doctor, Barbara would have been a film about a lonely, incredulous woman who, like a prisoner in prison, is just waiting to be released. And making her a doctor, and not ordinary, but responsible and skillful, the director added drama and moral contradictions to the image of his central character. Without which Barbara, the whole film behaving somewhat arrogantly and coldly, would be difficult to sympathize with.
Despite the fact that the new, eighteenth film of the most interesting and original German director tells about his country, it is not really her – “Barbara” explores the world of the GDR or East Germany, while Petzold and his family left it in 1975 and grew up in the West. Everything he had heard from his relatives in his youth about other Soviet-occupied territory was very unflattering and mostly consisted of exclamations like “how can one live in such a cruel system?” As the years passed, the director became interested in how life was going on on the other side of the Berlin Wall, and he became friends with former GDR journalists, whose family members told Petzold many unfictional stories about his topic, about themselves and people they knew then. In the end, such first-hand information and several books on similar topics, pushed the director to the idea of the film “Barbara”, which was to show the GDR differently than it was done on the screen before him: “In the cinema, the GDR has always been portrayed so canned and stuffy.” I needed something organic so you could feel the emotions, the distrust and the important decisions.”
The setting of the film was a hospital, which is a state institution and can show the brutality of the system, but at the same time it is also a world where ideology is discarded and naked emotions appear, where you can see other tragedies than the pressure of the regime of the republic, and, finally, where your own morality operates, which teaches to slay any wounded, regardless of whether he is bad or good. The two main characters, a doctor who wants to leave the republic, and the one who is satisfied with everything, have mirror images in the chambers, acting as the best catalysts for resolving the main drama. On the one hand, this is a boy who tried to kill himself, and not at all out of state tyranny, on the other hand, an unlucky girl who denies any future for the GDR, but does not build one for herself. They are illustrations of two points of view, two opposing views on life and what is important in it, as well as the main characters who, with the help of these two patients, will be forced to find a point of intersection and determine their own priorities.
The main feature of Petzold’s films is that he, being an independent director to the brain and bones, is not inclined to chew everything for the viewer, and this applies not only to shouts like “How dare you, she is my sister!” when you need to indicate someone’s family connection. “Barbara” does not depart from the main principle of the author, and the first hour is rather vaguely represented by the main conflict of the work, but in the second half of the film the director is rapidly gaining momentum and becomes even a little more simple and understandable than in his other works. He puts the main character between a quite logical choice for her situation - to be where she is and with all her strength to help others who remained aloof from ideological conflicts, or to escape to a beautiful rich life and have enough to do nothing until old age. The director opens to the central character of her story the world of the province, where people think more about the urgent and less about the global, which at first seems to her a cruel reference, and then clarifies her true desires - a reliable shoulder next to her and the opportunity to be a professional in the case she once chose for herself. As a result, “Barbara” turned out to be a strict and logical film, which, perhaps, lacks a more explicit depiction of emotions in some moments, but, on the other hand, thanks to this, it is unequivocally possible to say that Petzold does not speculate on any feelings, but simply methodically tells about the other side of the GDR, which also lived worthy people who found the courage to cope with the regime he did not like.