BERLIN & BEYOND Mar. 2024

[Chris Knipp]

MARGARETHE VON TROTTA: INGEBORG BACHMAN: JOURNEY INTO THE DESERT (2023)


VICKY KRIEPS AND RONALD ZEHRFELD IN INGEBORG BACHMAN: JOURNEY INTO THE DESERTS

Portrait of a major Austrian 20th-century literary figure excels in externals but lacks deep conviction

Letterboxed comment says "Ingeborg Bachmann was one of the most brilliant writers of the 20th century and one of the most important poets in the German language. Hardly any other author has played so radically with language and relentlessly illuminated personal abysses. Margarethe von Trotta degrades the artist to a pale blonde in the midst of a banal jealousy farce.... Krieps, one of the rising stars of European cinema, plays Bachmann with an expressionlessness as if she were rehearsing for a Buster Keaton portrait."

A TLS article on the 50th anniversary of her death in Oct. 2023 says that "Despite her extraordinary fame in the postwar years in Germany, much about [Bachman] remains mysterious."

Nonetheless, recent years have revealed considerably more about her life, particularly with regard to her many intimate relationships. The publication in 2004 of her correspondence with the German composer Hans Werner Henze (Basil Eidenbenz), shed light on her longest and closest friendship, while the publication in 2008 of her letters to and from Paul Celan revealed their love affair in the 1950s as foundational to their growth and later success as poets. Last year’s publication of her correspondence with Max Frisch (reviewed in the TLS, 2023) went even further, revising the standard portrait of Bachmann as a helpless victim of Frisch’s cold-hearted abandonment in 1962 by making clear how she also sabotaged their fitful four-year relationship through other love affairs and constant travel.

This film may be seen as a patchwork built up out of those recent discoveries, with added emphasis on the writer's love of Rome, where she lived much of her life, and her longing for the desert. That she died an alcoholic and barbiturate addict following setting fire to herself and suffering serious burns, at 47, is left out, while the film hihts that she died a Harry Crosby-style "sun death into sun" fading into the heat of the desert. She died in Rome. The main focus holding together the film is her four-year liaison with the Swiss playwright Max Frisch (Andorra, Homo Faber), whom the actor playing him here, an assured, hefty Ronald Zehrfeld, closely resembles; but his role here is what turns the film into what the Letterboxd reviewer calls a "banal jealousy farce."

It's not just that. There was the trouble of two ambitious and famous writers consuming too much oxygen in the room for the other to survive and be creative. Here the clatter of the one-finger typing by Frisch on his olivetti typewriter drives Bachman nuts; then after she burns his diary full of observations about her, which she feels turns her into a laboratory specimen, destroyed his freedom to write. Meanwhile she was constantly traveling and involved with other men, such as the Italian war poet and literary star Giuseppe Ungaretti (Renato Carpentieri) in Rome, and the composer and collaborator Heinz Werner Henze (Basil Eidenbenz) and the wwriter Adoph Opel (Tobias Resch), the young Viennese writer and filmmaker with whom she traveled to Egypt and to the desert and shared at least one scene of group polyamory with two beautiful young Arab men (Sallar Othman, Abudy Ary).

As Bachman Vicky Krieps may look right. She's certainly well dressed. But it's hard to conceive her as the kind of intellectual Ingeborg Bachman was, and apart from that, comments that people adored Bachman's voice at readings and recitations of her work sound odd when we hear Krieps' thin, reedy tones. Reports are the real Bachman's vocal equipment was strong and resonant, and doubtless her reading technique dramatic, rhythmic, compelling. The dramatized public readings that occur periodically in the film fall flat and one is surprised when the end with standing ovations.

Some not-too-critical viewers looking for the dramatization of famous European midcentury cultural figures may be satisfied by this film. The flats people live, meet, and squabble in are truly inviting - as are the costumes, especially Ingeborg's handsome frocks and necklaces; even the rotary telephones are fun and nostalgic to look at. There are scenes of driving through a lovely Swiss landscape in a black VW Bug; Roman interiors are grand and worthy.

The editing of the film applies a chronological cut-up technique: events are presented out of order, rearranged. Intriguing at first, this structure winds up dampening the tension. Superficial aspects of the film are fine. It's the deep underpinning that seems lacking, and this explains why some well-informed local critics expressed profound disappointment. So the jury is dubious about this one.

Ingeborg Bachman: Journey into the Desert/Ingeborg Bachman: Reise in die Wüste , 111 mins., debuted at the Berlinale Feb. 19, 2023; also showed at HongKong, Istanbul, Beijing, Seattle, Shanghai, Zurich, and other international festivals. Screened for this review as part of the 28th Berlin & Beyond Film Festival, presented by the Goethe-Institut San Francisco, will run April 18-20, 2024 at the historic Roxie Theater in San Francisco's Mission District, and April 21-22, 2024 at Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley.
Showtimes:
Apr. 20, 2024 at 6:30 PM – Roxie Theater, San Francisco
April 22, 2024 at 7:45 PM – Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, Berkeley

[Chris Knipp]

CHARLY HÜBNER: SOPHIA, DEATH AND ME/SOPHIA, DER TOD UND ICH (2023)


DIMITRI SCHAAD, MARC HOSEMANN, AND ANNA MARIA MüHE IN SOPHIA, DEATH AND ME[/U]

Complications when Death comes calling, and gets delayed

After a restless night, Reiner (Dimitrij Schaad), a thirty-something caregiver who lives alone, is surprised by Morten de Sarg (Marc Hosemann), his own death sent down from on high to take him away, and no stalling. But Rainer can't believe it, the three-minute time limit passes, and Morten lingers on for the moment useless, awaiting further orders one supposes, with Rainer still alive. Soon after, Sophia (Anna Maria Mühe), Rainer's ex, comes to take him to visit his mother Lore (Johanna Gastdorf) for her birthday. From now on Morten, Rainer's death, must stay within 300 meters at all times, or Sophia will die, because they have inadvertently touched, and Morten must not let Rainer out of his sight.

Later the four of them, Rainer, Sophia, his mother, and his death, go north on a road trip to see Reiner's seven-year-old son Johnny (Mateo Kanngießer), whom he hasn't seen for a long time, though he sends him a postcard every day with a cartoon drawing and a P.s. at the end: "Johnny be good." And this becomes a road picture about family reunion and love's renewal.

Forces from above send a tougher, grimmer archangel, Mork Mortius (Carlo Ljubek) to deliver Rainer's death. But Morten won't have his power usurped, and a battle of the titans (more petty than godly) occurs - thus giving Rainer another reprieve. This debut feature by Charly Hubner, which is based on a novel by musician Thees Uhlmann, in one way makes one think of Hollywood films of the thirties and forties, and on the other hand with its deadpan humor and confidently drab surroundings - perhaps the Northern German too - seems the most German thing included in this year's San Francisco Berlin & Beyond festival. And yet the film also makes one think a little of the Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki. Anyway, the humor is presumably subtly deadpan, with a risk of things being lost in translation sometimes.

The film lacks Aki Kaurismäki's sweet sentimentality, except that when the odd foursome stop at a rural hotel whose tall, deadpan proprietor is none other than director Charly Hübner, Sophia and Rainer feel a reawakening of their former flame and take the honeymoon suite for some loving, while Rainer's still around.

The northern German dialect throughout reportedly adds dry humor to the situation comedy and wordplay, while the songs by Swiss duo Steiner & Madlaina with their harmonious voices and rich Western guitar sound round off the road movie.

A part of the humorous ultimate paraphernalia is Erzengel Michaela (Lina Beckmann) who assigns other like endowed creatures to announce their deaths to people; and, above her, a big blowsy Harold Bloom type known as G. (Josef Ostendorf). They are on earth for a while too: G. insists he could drive the car, because he can do anything, but he just doesn't want to. The memory that will linger is the brief encounter with the boy Johnny - though it is kept teasingly vague whether they do meet or Rainer just imagines over and over how they will and what he will say. The gesture of the daily postcards is especially touching in this era of snapchat and test messages.

Sophia, Death and Me/Sophia, der Tod und ich, 98 mins., debuted in Germany Aug. 31, 2023. Screened for this review as part of the 28th Berlin & Beyond Film Festival, presented by the Goethe-Institut San Francisco, will run April 18-20, 2024 at the historic Roxie Theater in San Francisco's Mission District, and April 21-22, 2024 at Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley. Showtime
Saturday,
April 20, 2024
9:00 PM
Roxie, San Francisco

[Chris Knipp]

DIEU HAO DO: HAO ARE YOU (2023)


DIEU HAO DO (CENTER) TALKING TO RELATIVES, LOOKING AT FAMILY PHOTO, ETC. IN HAO ARE YOU

Chasing a diaspora

In this documentary the filmmaker, Dieu Hao Do, who was born and makes his mome in in Germany, presents the fruits of extensive travels and researches into seven members, and hence branches, of his family, whose members fled from Vietnam where they lived as part of the Chinese minority, in 1975, when the south fell to the communists. Do's explorations take him from Germany to Hong Kong, Los Angeles, and back to Vietnam, where family members remain. They all seem to squabble and complain. Largely out of contact with each other now, relations having broken down, they remain angry, nearly a half century later.

His mother blames communism, his uncle an inheritance dispute, the others fall silent. How have traumas from persecution and violence inscribed themselves on the bodies and souls of the survivors and their children? After the Fall of Saigon on April 30 in 1975, more than 1.5 million people fled the communist regime. (Quoting from the blurb.)

Do has noted at the outset that "Germans don't like family stories." The reason: the war. His own family story may not like being told. The Germans he meets "are completely one-dimensional beings who chatter about today, about (…) having children, about designer furniture, the techno hype and the new Vietnamese restaurant around the corner. But they are obviously not interested in yesterday, they do not see themselves as a chain, they do not see themselves as torchbearers of a tradition that goes back in a fascinating way into the past." He seeks to take a different path.

One cannot but admire the alacrity and determination with which the filmmaker, who uses German, Chinese, and English to communicate with relatives, has pursued his researches over three continents with such evidently unenthusiastic interlocutors. But the interviews sometimes are fragmentary, or drastically edited, and after a while, being not very good at keeping family relationships straight at the best of times, inn this overlapping jumble of far flung and disjointed uncles and aunts and cousins, my mind began to glaze over; I lost track, and stopped caring. They became angry loners. Do needed color coding, chapters, or a number system - anything to keep people straight. A diagram would have helped.

Patrick Kittler, a German reviewer, on Kino Zeit, comments of this film: "It is permeated too much by an almost pedagogical distance, and one would have wished that the author's passionate voice could be felt more strongly here. As in the plot of the documentary itself, Do tries so hard to unite all family poles in such an unbiased way that it is not really clear what he actually wants to tell. At some point you lose track of who is at odds with whom, until the documentary becomes almost luridly private." One feels that he needed to connect more closely to any relatives who would let him in, and that he is approachig each one in the same way, like an interviewer, rather than a blood relative. Does he ever find a connection, or is he still seeking it?

The film poster, depicting the filmmaker dyed blue with family members pouring out of his head, is striking and handsome. Do exercises admirable caution in dealing with his older relatives.

Do also contributed to a humorous 2018 web comedy series about the miscellaneous English-speaking Berlin expat population, called "Just Push Abuba."