In the divided Germany of the 1980s, the greatest crime a citizen of the nation’s East – the Soviet-occupied German Democratic Republic – could commit was defection to the West. Requests for transfers were met with harsh punishment, with their applicants branded as traitors. When East Berlin doctor Barbara (Nina Hoss, Summer Window) asks for an exit visa to join her lover (Mark Waschke, Playoff), she is instead banished to a provincial paediatric hospital near the Baltic Sea, her every movement subjected to humiliating surveillance and scrutiny.
Intensely evoking this Cold War setting, writer/director Christian Petzold (Jerichow) and his co-scribe Harun Farocki (By Comparison) relate the doctor’s experiences in the aptly-titled Barbara. Ever-aware of constant monitoring by her boss, head physician André Reiser (Ronald Zehrfeld, Cracks in the Shell) and spot inspections by Stasi officer Schütz (Rainer Bock, War Horse), Barbara is cautious, but committed to her continued quest to escape from exile; gradually, however – and unexpectedly – she reassesses her surroundings, her troubled patients (such as Alive and Ticking’s Jasna Fritzi Bauer as a work camp inmate) included.
Mirroring her journey, Barbara recalls the restraint and reservation German filmmaking is best known for, though a subtle undercurrent of warmth runs through the feature. The austerity of the exterior – as characterised by Barbara’s icy initial demeanour, her brutal treatment by the state, and the sparse isolation of the locale – never wavers, yet slowly the film yields to internal comfort, with solace found in the protagonist’s hesitant embrace of unlikely bonds as a survival mechanism.
In her fifth film with Petzold (after Something to Remind Me (2001), Wolfsburg (2003), Yella (2007) and Jerichow (2008)) the transfixing Hoss continues her impressive form under his direction, proving as exacting as her character is enigmatic. Every look conveys her character’s fortitude, every exchange demonstrates her conflict, and every decision conveys her inner turmoil, simmering desires and the impossible choice she must make between two equally difficult alternatives.
Accordingly, Petzold is patient and precise in his approach as he delves into the cost of secrets and lies behind the Iron Curtain. His intimate narrative ably explores the cruelty and complexity of the currency of fear; his rich visual style – effortlessly conveyed by the controlled lens of Hans Fromm (a collaborator on 11 of Petzold’s 12 career credits), which lingers in mid-shots of the bucolic scenery – is suitably understated. The final product is tense but tender in its arresting personal and political resonance.
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Barbara
Director: Christian Petzold
Germany, 2012, 105 min
Screening as part of Perth Festival’s Lotterywest film program
25 November – 14 April
www.perthfestival.com.au
In general release: March 8
Distributor: Madman Entertainment
Rated M
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