Starring: Franz Rogowski, Paula Beer, Godehard Giese, Maryam Zaree, Ronald Kukulies
Distributor: Madman Films
Runtime: 102 mins. Reviewed in Apr 2019
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This subtitled German-French Film is based on Anna Seghers’s novel of the same name which was published in 1944, and set in 1942. It was selected for competition at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival. It tells the tale of war-time refugees trapped while trying to flee from Nazi persecution. It is a film about the approaching shadow of fascism, and has been rated by “Sight & Sound” as one of the best films of 2018.
A man flees from fascism and Nazi arrest. He assumes another person’s identity and then meets a woman desperate to find the person he is impersonating. The film takes Seghers’s novel and transposes it to the present to explore the plight of displaced people in World War II Europe.
Georg (Franz Rogowski), a German, is seeking passage to North America from Nazi-occupied France. He flees from Paris to Marseille to escape Nazi arrest, and waits in Marseilles for permission to enter another country.
Through a fateful encounter, Georg ends up carrying documents in the name of a controversial, communist novelist called Weidel, who killed himself in a French hotel. Georg knows that Weidel committed suicide, and he assumes Weidel’s name and mixes with other refugees in Marseilles, hoping to get safe passage on a ship that will take him to freedom.
While waiting for his ship, and mingling with those around him, Franz happens by chance to meet Marie Weidel (Paula Beer), who is the wife of the dead man whose identity he has assumed. Marie is desperately looking for her husband, and Georg falls in love with her. The authorities want proof of identity for anyone wanting to leave the country – Marie can’t leave without her husband, and Georg needs Marie to validate his new identity. Neither can leave without supplying a guarantee of who they really are.
Georg becomes a version of the man who left Marie behind, and Marie is left wondering why her husband never replied to the letter she sent to him. Georg becomes convinced he can save Marie, but he knows that any connection with her is based on a lie.
This is a powerful film that pays moving tribute to the resilience of people under war-time occupation stress. It compellingly shows a sensitive understanding of wartime experiences, and the plight of refugees in particular, and focuses on the tensions created by fear of persecution and mistaken identity. It is a nightmarish account of the stresses surrounding identity that displaced persons often face. Although romance lies at the heart of the movie, it is absorbed into the story line to become an integral element of the terrible plights of displaced persons.
The acting in this movie is intense. Franz Rogowski is especially impressive as the tortured Georg. The direction of the film by Christian Petzold keeps the ambiguity of the film’s themes vibrantly alive, and Petzold uses camera lighting in the film to construct just the right dramatic visual tone to support its unfolding narrative.
The film movingly communicates the message that people are often not what they seem, and teaches the viewer that awareness of the past links meaningfully with the stresses of the present. The film plays creatively and forcefully with plot contrivance through a pattern of tragic coincidences, and it cleverly sets its themes around separation and abandonment.
This is a film that deserves to be seen. It is elegantly directed and intellectually challenging, and combines past and present history to convey the need to understand the present by never forgetting the significance of what has happened in the past.
Peter W. Sheehan is Associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
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