Phoenix (2014): Written by
Christian Petzold, Harun Farocki, and Hubert Monteilhet, directed by Christian
Petzold. Starring: Nina Hoss, Ronald
Zehrfeld, and Nina Kunzendorf. Running
Time: 98 minutes.
Rating: 4/4
I have long felt that movies
centering around (or whose stories are in some way connected to) WWII,
Holocaust, and/or other atrocities associated with that era of human history
are among the easiest kinds of movies to make.
For clarity’s sake, before anyone reading this gets upset, let me stress
that I do not mean that confronting the hard, terrible truths of that time are
easy, or simple, or quickly dismissed. I
do not mean to come across as dismissive of the agony and suffering caused by
the megalomaniacal, greedy, cruel, angry, or just plain frightened men that
drove events, and obviously I am not saying that such acts can or should be
easily forgiven. Nor am I implying that
the level of talent and effective collaboration necessary to make a good film
about WWII is in any way less than that necessary for any other kind of
film.
What I mean is that, since nearly all
kinds of stories rely on conflict of some kind, WWII-related films are easy in
that, when trying to tell a story about that time period, a conflict and/or
readily identifiable bad guy (or bad guys) arrives practically gift-wrapped at
your doorstep. There is no need to
embellish the acts of Hitler, or Stalin, or the SS, or the Japanese
government. There is no need to invent a
villain or conflict. The true events
themselves are heinous enough that simply showing (or referencing) them as they
really happened will inevitably cause anyone with a properly-functioning moral
compass to recoil in horror, and to automatically sympathize with whichever
victims said film has chosen to focus on.
I am not saying that this is a good or bad thing, simply observing how
so many films/books/plays/video games/whathaveyou are able to easily lean back
on the Nazis as go-to bad guys, almost automatically guaranteeing audience
sympathy with their main characters (except, obviously, in cases where the film
in question is deliberately upending or deconstructing this tendency, like in Saving Private Ryan or Inglorious Basterds).
It’s one small aspect of our
continuing Western cultural obsession with the Nazis, a much broader topic of
great enough importance to me that I am already considering how to tackle it
more directly in a later series of posts.
The reason why I bring it up here is because Phoenix, a German film that centers around the post-war experiences
of an Auschwitz survivor, is remarkable in part because of how it uses none of
the now almost standard images of Nazi atrocities or the horrors of war to win
us over to the heroine’s side. Although
we know the main character is a camp survivor, we are offered no memories,
flashbacks, or nightmarish dreams (ala Shutter
Island) that show exactly what she saw, suffered, and experienced. Everything we need to know can be found in
her tortured performance, in the pain etched into her eyes and in her shuffled,
beaten walk. No further explanation or
display needed.
Said woman is named Nelly, (Nina
Hoss), a German-Jewish singer who survived the camps, but not without having
her face horribly ravaged. A friend and
fellow survivor, the angry and sadly bitter Lene, brings her through the
American lines to the Western area of Berlin for reconstructive surgery. In a strange metaphysical twist, the doctor
who handles the surgery is played by Michael Maertens, who happened to play
another doctor working with skin (albeit in a far creepier manner) in last
year’s surreal Finsterworld. She
is offered the chance to take on a new face and a new identity, but her
response is a shaky-but-firm no; she wants to look as much like she did before
as possible.
Her reason for doing this is so that
she can find and reunite with her husband, Johnny, who apparently survived the
war as well (some of her other friends did not, and others, she is shocked to
learn, were active Nazis). This
horrifies Lene, who sees emigration to Israel as the only option for Europe’s
remaining Jews, but despite her fears, Nelly cannot conceive of doing anything
else. Wandering alone at night through
the crime-ridden and waste-filled ruins of Berlin (as dreary a dystopia as one
can imagine, filled with mountains of debris and lights that cast long,
misshapen shadows), she eventually does find him working at a bar called the
Phoenix (that this is the nominal inspiration for the film’s title is clear,
but the obvious symbolic overtones will be lost on no one). Unsurprisingly though, since her appearance
was somewhat altered by surgery, he does not recognize her when they first
encounter each other. That said, he does
admit that she bears a close resemblance to his “late” wife (his certainty of
her death may be a psychological reason he does not realize it’s her), and
immediately hatches a plan. He will provide
her with some of Nelly’s old clothes, teach her to walk and act like her, and
have her memorize key facts of their marriage together. Once that is accomplished, they will go to the
authorities to show them that Nelly Lenz has returned.
Why all the chicanery? Since Nelly had several very rich relatives,
themselves Jewish, and since all of them died, she has quite an inheritance
attached her name (said inheritance is, in fact, what she and Lene are living
off of while she tries to get her husband to recognize her). Johnny is aware of this, and as he has been
down on his luck since the war’s end, he tells Nelly that once they win over
the authorities and she receives the inheritance, they will split everything
50/50, and she will be free to go along her way.
It is a horridly pessimistic and
cynical scheme, made hard to watch by how painfully and obviously Nelly yearns
for her husband to recognize her. Nina
Hoss gives a stunning performance, conveying the right mix of utter brokenness
with her hard-to-contain hope that somehow, someway, things can be as they once
were. Her only wish is to be able to sing
once more with “her Johnny.” Even her
most fervent hopes, however, begin to be tested as she grows less and less
certain of what really happened that led the authorities to her hiding place. She had been secluded away near a friend’s
house, and the family husband seems less than enthused when she returns. Could they have turned her over? Or perhaps there is a grimmer reason why her
husband seems so, so certain that his wife is dead and gone? The inevitable possibility that that thought
leads to is never spoken, but you can see its implications creep into her eyes
and demeanor over time.
The final moment of true
realization, for both characters, is a moment of pure cinematic perfection. Christian Petzold knew exactly how to utilize
the cards in his hand, and he reveals them each, one by one, in perfect
sequence. I was a little unsure halfway
through where, exactly, the film was going, and it can be somewhat aggravating
how dense the husband is; once you’ve acknowledged how closely resembles a
loved one, someone who automatically called you by a pet name, wouldn’t the
bells start ringing once they show they can perfectly mimic that person’s
handwriting without needing a sample beforehand? That, however, is part of the point- even
without a definitive answer to the questions posed above, the degree to which
Johnny is unable to recognize his own wife in front of him can’t help but make
one wonder.
Phoenix
is a film that goes small but hard, dedicating itself wholeheartedly to the
story at hand. Like I wrote at the
beginning of this review, not once does it feel the need to directly allude to
the events of the Holocaust; all the suffering we need to see is in Nelly’s
eyes. And in a way, the film’s silence
on the past mirrors the silence towards the war displayed by nearly everyone in
the city, an unspoken critique of the brief postwar period of German amnesia
towards Nazism. As Johnny himself says,
when Nelly worries about how detailed she should be in describing the camps to
the authorities, he merely replies, “No one will ask.”
-Noah
Franc
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