Barbara (2012)
Country: GER
Technical: col 105m
Director: Christian Petzold
Cast: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Rainer Bock
Synopsis:
Barbara is a doctor on the official watchlist since she requested an exit visa from the GDR. Now she is posted to a provincial clinic where she is seen as aloof by her co-workers but has a special rapport with the patients which does not escape the notice of her male colleague. Meanwhile her lover in the West makes arrangements for her escape.
Review:
As in other films, Petzold takes a story structure and turns it into something rich and strange; in this case, as in Transit, it would seem to be Casablanca, with our heroine having to choose between a vague but comfortable life with her dashing paramour in the West, and remaining where she can really make a difference with her gentle doctor. However, instead of the romance, comedy and suspense we have a slow-burn aesthetic as precise as a Swiss watch: the camera rarely moves beyond a pan, selecting its compositions with care, and a more poised attention is paid to setting and mise-en-scène. There is a revealing emphasis, for example, on transportation: Barbara fits up a bicycle, and is often offered a lift; while the doctor drives an East German model car, the Stasi officer is identified with another, even more gutturally on its last legs, and the lover rides in a Mercedes which attracts the unwelcome attention of a local old enough to remember them; the fugitive, Stella, meanwhile makes her escape perched precariously on a rubber dinghy. A familiar story is thus used to throw light on a very particular time and place, illuminating a character who is for the most part deceptively expressionless.
Country: GER
Technical: col 105m
Director: Christian Petzold
Cast: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Rainer Bock
Synopsis:
Barbara is a doctor on the official watchlist since she requested an exit visa from the GDR. Now she is posted to a provincial clinic where she is seen as aloof by her co-workers but has a special rapport with the patients which does not escape the notice of her male colleague. Meanwhile her lover in the West makes arrangements for her escape.
Review:
As in other films, Petzold takes a story structure and turns it into something rich and strange; in this case, as in Transit, it would seem to be Casablanca, with our heroine having to choose between a vague but comfortable life with her dashing paramour in the West, and remaining where she can really make a difference with her gentle doctor. However, instead of the romance, comedy and suspense we have a slow-burn aesthetic as precise as a Swiss watch: the camera rarely moves beyond a pan, selecting its compositions with care, and a more poised attention is paid to setting and mise-en-scène. There is a revealing emphasis, for example, on transportation: Barbara fits up a bicycle, and is often offered a lift; while the doctor drives an East German model car, the Stasi officer is identified with another, even more gutturally on its last legs, and the lover rides in a Mercedes which attracts the unwelcome attention of a local old enough to remember them; the fugitive, Stella, meanwhile makes her escape perched precariously on a rubber dinghy. A familiar story is thus used to throw light on a very particular time and place, illuminating a character who is for the most part deceptively expressionless.
Country: GER
Technical: col 105m
Director: Christian Petzold
Cast: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Rainer Bock
Synopsis:
Barbara is a doctor on the official watchlist since she requested an exit visa from the GDR. Now she is posted to a provincial clinic where she is seen as aloof by her co-workers but has a special rapport with the patients which does not escape the notice of her male colleague. Meanwhile her lover in the West makes arrangements for her escape.
Review:
As in other films, Petzold takes a story structure and turns it into something rich and strange; in this case, as in Transit, it would seem to be Casablanca, with our heroine having to choose between a vague but comfortable life with her dashing paramour in the West, and remaining where she can really make a difference with her gentle doctor. However, instead of the romance, comedy and suspense we have a slow-burn aesthetic as precise as a Swiss watch: the camera rarely moves beyond a pan, selecting its compositions with care, and a more poised attention is paid to setting and mise-en-scène. There is a revealing emphasis, for example, on transportation: Barbara fits up a bicycle, and is often offered a lift; while the doctor drives an East German model car, the Stasi officer is identified with another, even more gutturally on its last legs, and the lover rides in a Mercedes which attracts the unwelcome attention of a local old enough to remember them; the fugitive, Stella, meanwhile makes her escape perched precariously on a rubber dinghy. A familiar story is thus used to throw light on a very particular time and place, illuminating a character who is for the most part deceptively expressionless.