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| Hoss and Zehrfield weigh their options in Barbara. |
* * * 1/2 Barbara.
Written by Christian Petzold and Harun Farocki. Directed by Christian Petzold.
There’s developing a small but potent sub-genre of post-1989
European films about life behind the Iron Curtain. This column only selectively
covers foreign cinema, but has already lauded two examples in The Lives of Others (2006) and 4 Months, 3
Weeks and 2 Days (2008).
Now we have Christian Petzold’s impressive Barbara,
which was Germany’s submission for the 2013 Foreign language feature Oscar. The
Academy did not include it on the list of final nominees, but that doesn’t mean
you should snub it too. It’s better than 95% of the Hollywood scheiße up for any award that evening.
It’s
in the dark days of 1980 when Dr. Barbara Wolff (Nina Hoss) arrives at her new post
in a provincial hospital in the north of the DDR (communist East Germany).
She’s being punished, actually: for the crime of applying for a visa to leave
for the West, she was imprisoned and then banished to the hinterlands, where
she is regularly harassed by the Stasi (the east German secret police).
Her
suffering has left her bitter and all too eager to show her professional
superiority to her smallville colleagues. Nor has she necessarily given up on
her plans to escape, by any means necessary. As sketched in the smart and true
script by Petzold and Harun Farocki, Barbara can only cope with her misery by
minimizing her human contacts. But she doesn’t count on the instincts aroused
by a young female patient in even more trouble (Jasna Fritzi
Bauer), nor on meeting Andre
(Ronald Zehrfield), a brilliant, compassionate physician who, once upon a time,
was also run out of Berlin for his sins. The theme is familiar one for doctors in extremis: having to decide whether to
live, or to save the lives of others.
At a time when seriousness is only
forgivable when it’s cut with quirkiness, Barbara
is refreshingly retro. Told in a kind of patient sotto voce, it contains no gratuitous thespian fireworks, no “life
is beautiful” funny-‘cause-its-true bullshit. The only responsibility Petzold
seems have felt is to be true to his characters and their predicament. His
leading lady, Nina Hoss, gives only what the character would, and when she
gives more makes you feel the strain. Overall, this film has some of the authenticity
and heft of Rainer Werner Fassbinder (The
Marriage of Maria Braun, Berlin
Alexanderplatz), except that Petzold is better at the craft of filmmaking
at this stage of his career, and gives the impression (unlike Fassbinder) that
he actually likes his characters.
Indeed, the worst thing about Barbara is that it dismisses itself too
quickly. It ends the end of a dramatic choice, but never resolves the question
of how Barbara learns to live with her de
facto imprisonment. After all, there are nine long years to go before the
Wall comes down. It might have been nice to see her reaction to that sudden
freedom, when a stroll across a certain field stopped having existential
stakes, but just a stroll again.
© 2013 Nicholas Nicastro
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