Tatort: Reifezeugnis

Tatort: Reifezeugnis; crime, Germany, 1977; D: Wolfgang Petersen, S: Nastassja Kinski, Christian Quadflieg, Klaus Schwarzkopf, Judy Winter, Markus Boysen

Teenage girl Sina Wolf (17) has a secret love affair with her married high school teacher Helmut Fichte (32). While secretly meeting and kissing at the lake, they are seen by Michael, the classroom student in love with Sina. Michael blackmails Sina, threatening to cause trouble for Helmut unless Sina has sex with Michael. In the forest, while he wanted to force himself on her, Sina takes a rock, hits Michael in the head and kills him. Police Commissioner Finke is on the crime scene, but Sina lies that an unknown man attacked her and killed Michael who tried to protect her. Finke tricks her by presenting the corpse of a recently killed rapist, whom Sina identifies as her attacker, but the man died outside of Germany. When his wife pressures him, Helmut finally ends his relationship with Sina, who writes a letter confessing the murder and tries to kill herself in the lake, but she can swim, so she is found alive and well by Finke, Helmut and his wife.

Before his departure to Hollywood, German director Wolfgang Petersen delivered one of the most popular editions in the long TV-movie series "Tatort", episode #73, "Reifezeugnis" (roughly translated as "Graduation Diploma"), which caused quite a controversy when Nastassja Kinski appeared in two short scenes topless even though she was only 15 years old at the time, making the decision questionable. However, overall it is a clever, quiet, sophisticated and quality made crime TV-movie about the always popular topic of a teenager having an affair with a teacher from school, evenly crossing from crime drama to a romance, and back, whereas Kinski demonstrates a surprisingly strong acting ability. Little details will force the viewers to pay twice as much attention than usual (for instance, the information that Kinski's character Sina found a drawing of a suspected rapist in the newspaper and used his appearance to invent her attacker is presented in only one scene), and the relationship between Sina and teacher Helmut has certain sparks (in one scene, while they are both in bed, Sina recounts how in six years she plans to be a teacher, and to have a baby by the age of 25, thereby looking at Helmut and kissing him before leaving the bed). Unfortunately, the second half loses its energy and interest, dwindling in overstretched sequences of 'empty walk', indicating that the story should have been shorter, until it settles for a conventional second half. Bizarrely, police commissioner Finke has been demoted to practically a supporting character who doesn't get much screen time, and is thus underused. 

Grade:++

Hill 24 Doesn't Answer

Giv'a 24 Eina Ona; historical war drama, Israel, 1955; D: Thorold Dickinson, S: Edward Mulhare, Michael Shillo, Haya Harareet, Michael Wager, Zalman Lebiush, Margalit Oved

Israeli War of Independence. Four soldiers—James Finnegan, Goodman, David and Esther—die securing a Jerusalem hill for Israel. Their stories are told in flashback: during the British Mandate of Palestine, British police officer James was ordered to find Jewish suspects who blew up a radio station. He followed Berger to a house, owned by Miriam. Instead, James fell in love with Miriam, and volunteered for the Jewish army. American Goodman arrived for a tourist visit, but was so fascinated by the Jews he joined them in the war, and when he was wounded, he met Esther. David fought in the Negev desert, and stumbled upon an ex-Nazi who was wounded and died in a cave. The four die, but the UN observers accept the hill as secured for Israel. 

Sometimes regarded as the first film of cinema of Israel, included in the book "1001 Movies You Must See", "Hill 24 Doesn't Answer" is biased and idealized, yet still a surprisingly well made film with more than enough good stylistic ideas by British director Thorold Dickinson. The sole opening is already inventive: the heads of four dead volunteers—James, Goodman, David and Esther—are shown lying on the ground, but as each of their names are read out aloud off screen, this is juxtaposed with sudden cuts to each one of them standing up into the frame, alive, as the movie then goes to a flashback when they were alive and called upon in the office to secure the hill from the title in a daring military expedition. Dickinson has also other cinematic techniques which give the movie spark, even though they are sparse: for instance, 19 minutes into the film, Miriam is inside her house, and then approaches closer to the camera, which is followed by an aesthetic match cut to her same position in frame while in another location, the office, sent for interrogation. 

Other, "proper" ideas are also well done, such as when a British official, dressed as a civilian, is secretly spying on Miriam, but she just jokingly turns his newspaper upside down, since he cannot read Hebrew script. The story has a lot of sympathy for Jews, even making a parallel with an exodus when the wounded Jewish soldiers have to leave East Jerusalem after the Arabs captured it in the battle, which somewhat strays from the objective point of view at several instances. A major omission is that three of the four protagonists were shown in the flashback, except for Esther who is sadly neglected and doesn't get her own story or a more in-depth character development. The most bizarre flashback involves David, who fought in the Negev desert and captured a man in a cave who turns out to be an ex-Nazi, who admits: "I just want to fight. Anybody... anything! I did not learn anything else!" Despite some banalities, the movie is much more competent than expected, and is honest in its depiction of the rarely talked about creation of Israel, as well as the British Mandate of Palestine which preceded it.

Grade:++

The Castle

The Castle; comedy, Australia, 1997; D: Rob Sitch, S: Michael Caton, Anne Tenney, Stephen Curry, Sophie Lee, Anthony Simcoe, Tiriel Mora, Bud Tingwell, Eric Bana

Darryl Kerrigan, the father of a family living in a house in a suburb of Melbourne, is informed by the government authorities that he has to leave his home since the nearby airport is planned to be expanded on his land. Darryl protests and hires a friend, a freelance lawyer, Dennis, to represent him in court, but the judge rejects his complaint. Unknown thugs come at night to pressure Darryl to accept the offer, and then his car windshield is smashed. Upon hearing about his plight, a retired lawyer, Hammill, accepts to represent him for free and files an appeal at the High Court of Australia in Canberra. The case is ruled in Darryl's favor, who gets to keep his house, and his kids and wife rejoice.

One of the most popular Australian films domestically, "The Castle" works due to the fact that it is able to appeal both towards the specific local cultural mentality—the attempted eviction of a family from their house is reminiscent of the Australian dispossession of the native Aborigines, thereby imbibed in historical subconsciousness—and universal audience—since anyone in any country can identify with a father who would protect his home. Written in a rather thin, too rudimentary and overstretched way, where the director Rob Sitch and screenwriters seemingly cannot agree upon if they should present this story in the form of a legal court battle or "practical battle" on the field, the film is still fun to watch and appeals thanks to its likeable characters, with Michael Caton standing out as dad Darryl. Too much of the time is focused on "off-topic" moments which don't have anything to do with the eviction threat, yet they are still amusing (dad complimenting mom's cooking, saying to the kids that they don't need to waste their money on restaurants when they can get such good food at home; dad jokingly trying to help his now-grown up daughter to make it in show business by saying how he should send a tape of her when she was a two-year old to the Home Videos). The highlight is the "serious" court battle led by veteran lawyer Hammill (excellent Bud Tingwell) who gives an outstanding speech in front of the judges. Later on, during a break, the moved Darryl looks at Hammill and says: "I wish I had your words". More humor and inspiration would have been welcomed, yet overall this is still a charming little film about the fight for your own rights.

Grade:++

The Zone of Interest

The Zone of Interest; war drama / art-film, USA / UK / Poland, 2023; D: Jonathan Glazer, S: Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller, Ralph Herforth, Daniel Holzberg

Auschwitz concentration camp, World War II. Nazi commander Rudolf Höss lives in his private house situated right next to the camp, separated by a wall and barbed wire. Rudolf and his wife Hedwig take care of their five children, their garden, and chat with visitors dropping by for a drink. Sometimes, they go for a picnic in the nearby forest and swim in the river. Rudolf is angry that his superiors want to move him away to Oranienburg for another job, because he wants to stay in the house. At a Nazi confference, a new asignment of deportation of Jews to Auschwitz is ordered, and Rudolf is happy he can return back to his home. He walks downstairs and almost vomits.

"The Zone of Interest" is one of the most atypical movies about Auschwitz—most of Holocaust films go for showing the direct horrors of it, while this one sets its framework to only imply it. Not a single murder or crime from within the concentration camp is shown, as its main focus is to just show the 'detached' mentality of its perpetrators, the Nazi commander and his family living peacefully in their house right outside the camp. The ever-growing contradiction of such scenes as his wife Hedwig showing sunflowers, pumpkins and cabbage in the garden to a visitor, who calls it a "dream garden", while the walls with barbed-wire of the concentration camp is seen in the background reaches grotesque levels, thereby dwelling on such issues as ostrich effect and cognitive dissonance, as people living in a totalitarian dictatorship tend to utterly deny inconvenient truth and just shut themselves out in their own ideological world of state propaganda which tells them that everything is ideal. While the director's Jonathan Glazer's previous film "Under the Skin" was an art-film gone wrong, "The Zone of Interest" is an art-film done right. He uses wide and medium shots, and mostly static camera to give a distanced, deliberately cold approach towards these people, refusing a single close-up shot, which works congruently since they are not three-dimensional characters—they are narrowed-down pawns of a dictatorship. It is incredible how such a disturbing story is told in such a calm, tranquil way: Glazer shows an almost underserved subtlety in approachng this theme, resisting to directly attack this ideology, yet everything is clear, maybe precisely because of such a restrained vision where evil is implied only in what is outside the frame. Two unusual sequences stand out stylistically from the rest of the story, yet one can understand why Glazer included them. A nutritional, cultured and elevated art-film about the normalization of evil.

Grade:+++

Captain Phillips

Captain Phillips; thriller-drama, USA, 2013; D: Paul Greengrass, S: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed, Michael Chernus, David Warshofsky, Catherine Keener

Captain Richard Phillips says farewell to his wife in Massachusetts and takes a plane to a port in Oman, from where he will navigate Maersk Alabama container ship to Mombasa. During the journey, a boat with four armed Somali pirates led by Abduwali Muse boards the ship. Phillips orders all the crew to hide in the engine room, while he and his associates are taken hostages. The crew takes Muse hostage, but he and his men manage to escape and take Phillips with them on a lifeboat, trying to bring him to the Somali territory in order to demand a 10 million $ ransom. The lifeboat is surrounded by the US Navy which ostensibly takes Muse in for negotiations, yet the snipers use this opportunity to kill the other three Somali pirates and free Phillips.

A gripping and intense film depiction of the Maersk Alabama hijacking, "Captain Phillips" is another valuable contribution to the director Paul Greengrass' opus, who uses nervous, dynamic, shaky, hand-held camera to create an almost documentary outlook of these events, and in this case, it works fully. The cinematography delivers gorgeous images of the ocean and the container ship, as well as the port which gives the viewers the idea of a scale of the international transportation business in modern economy, under pressure by their bosses to deliver luxurious shipments in time, contrasting it with ugly, "dirty" images of the Somali village where the poor rural inhabitants, including Abduwali Muse, are pressured by their boss to engage in piracy and hijacking in order to pay him his warlord tax. Some of the details are sharp (the container ship uses two dozen hoses to spray water all around itself and try to chase the pirate boat away; Phillips talks to Muse while holding the pressed button of the walkie-talkie so that his ship crew, which is hiding, can hear where the pirates intend to search for them; one of the pirates is barefoot, so the crew puts broken glass on the floor in the dark, to incapacitate him) and all contribute to the three-dimensional reconstruction of the event. The second half, where Phillips is held hostage with the four pirates on a lifeboat in the ocean, is weaker, though, since the movie ends up feeling too 'raw': everything is done right, yet it is all too simplistic and schematic, as if the movie stops just at being sufficiently entertaining, without trying to pursue some deeper layers. At best, we only find out something more about the characters when Phillips and Muse have this philosophical exchange: "There's gotta be something other than being a fisherman and kidnapping people." - "Maybe in America, Irish." Despite routine, banal dialogue, "Captain Phillips" still exceeds in its visual feel and gripping events.

Grade:+++

The Diary of Diana B

Dnevnik Diane Budisavljević; documentary-drama, Croatia, 2019; D: Dana Budisavljević, S: Alma Prica, Biserka Ipsa, Igor Samobor, Tesa Litvan, Jelena Puzić, Mirjana Karanović, Krešimir Mikić, Vili Matula

Zagreb, World War II. Austrian nurse Diana Budisavljevic, married to Serb doctor Julije Budisavljević, hears of thousands of Serb children being held in concentration camps by the Ustasha and Nazi dictatorships. While the Jewish inmates receive help from the Jewish community, the Serb children receive nothing. Diana thus decides to establish her own association to give food, medicine and clothing to Serb children in the Lobor-Grad camp. Various people give donations in her apartment. She organizes that 10,000 malnourished children are relocated from the concentration camp to Zagreb, where they are temporarily adopted by families, and she keeps a record of all the names so that the children can be reunited with their parents after the war. However, after the war, the new Communist dictatorship despises her because she is an Austrian, and confiscates her records with the names, which were never found afterwards.

Docudrama "The Diary of Diana B" is an intruiging film adaptation of the "rediscovered" diary of the forgotten humanitarian Diana Budisavljevic who saved 10,000 Serb children from the concentration camps during World War II, and the director Dana Budisavljevic (related to her through Diana's husband Julije Budisavljevic) crafts an honest, noble, respectful, emotional, yet also objective depiction of this historical episode. The movie is divided in two parts: one half is a narrative film with actors playing these roles; the other is a documentary interviewing four child survivors from the concentration camps, now old people. This blend works somewhat, though the narrative part feels strangely routine, schematic, bland and mechanical, almost as a PowerPoint presentation, lacking some drama or passion. The testimonies of the survivors have some harrowing moments: for instance, a woman recalls how she and another kid would routinely receive five or six beans in their bowl for lunch, and would argue if one of them got one bean more than the other one. Another survivor recalls how he never found out when or where he was born, nor who his parents were. A lot is done to depict how Diana not only had to go through political, but also through bureaucratic obstacles as none of the institutions could fathom that someone was willing to help these Serb children, yet it also slyly implies how all dictatorships are rotten and detrimental to humankind (during World War II, Diana was despised by the Nazis for being a humanitarian, while after the war she was depised by the Communists for being an Austrian). "The Diary of Diana B" is more relevant humanistically-thematically than cinematically, yet it still offers a valuable reconstruction of an altruistic deed.

Grade:++

Anatomy of a Fall

Anatomie d'une chute; legal drama, France, 2023; D: Justine Triet, S: Sandra Hüller, Swan Arlaud, Milo Machado Graner, Antoine Reinartz, Samuel Theis

Sandra Voyter is a German writer married to Samuel, a French writer, and they live with their visually impaired son Daniel and his guide dog Snoop in a mountain house in the Alps. One day, Samuel is found dead on the ground, and the police assume he fell from the third floor and hit his head on the ground. Due to suspicious circumstances, the prosecutor indicts Sandra for murder. She is defended by lawyer Vincent in court. Details emerge that Sandra and Samuel would often argue, and that she had affairs. However, Daniel testifies that Samuel implied of committing suicide months ago, and thus the court acquits Sandra, ruling Samuel's death as suicide.

Court drama "Anatomy of a Fall" gained a somewhat disproportionate critical acclaim during its time of release—everything here is done just right, proper and correct, and yet, it's all too conventional and standard to enthuse on a higher level. It's somewhat of a testament that modern movies need to have something unique and unusual to offer to stand out from the rest. The first hour of the story is the best: "Anatomy of a Fall" starts, appropriately, with a tennis ball falling down the stairs, creating an engaging 'whodunnit' investigation story in which the police and investigators try to figure out how Samuel died outside of his house, trying out several experiments (they throw a puppet tied to a rope from the third floor of the house to see if it will bounce the same way Samuel's corpse did; they have Samuel's wife Sandra talk a written dialogue inside the house, playing loud music, and having the son Daniel try to hear what she is saying...) to review, deduct and reconstruct what happened. The second hour plays out inside the courtroom, yet here the story becomes somewhat routine—while it is still interesting listening to the prosecutor and defense giving their arguments in front of the judge, it cannot have a permanent value and effect on the second viewing experience. Only once does the director Justine Triet offer some more creative directorial intervention to give it a higher dimension: in the scene where the court plays the audio tape of Sandra's and Samuel's argument in the house, and as the camera observes the faces of the people in court, it suddenly "cuts" to said scene of argument in a flashback. The bizarre moment in which Daniel gives 8-10 aspirin pills to his dog Snoop, almost killing him, makes no sense. The last half an hour needed some better plot twist or idea than we got. "Anatomy of a Fall" is a polished, aesthetic and fluent courtdrama, yet it would have been much more effective if it had been released thirty years ago.

Grade:++ 

The Grey Zone

The Grey Zone; war drama, USA, 2001; D: Tim Blake Nelson, S: David Arquette, Allan Corduner, David Chandler, Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi, Daniel Benzali, Mira Sorvino, Natasha Lyonne, Michael Stuhlbarg

Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, World War II. Hungarian-Jewish Dr. Miklós Nyiszli works for the Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele dissecting corpses in the hopes that his own family will be spared from death. Jews and other prisoners are being brought to the camp, killed in gas chambers, and then the Jewish Sonderkommando throws their corpses in the crematoria and removes the ash. Tired of this complicity, several Sonderkommando members, including Hoffman, Abramowics and Max, secretly smuggle gunpowder and weapons to start a rebellion, but this plan is stalled when they cannot agree upon if they only want to blow up a crematoria or try to escape. In the end, the start a rebellion to just blow up parts of the camp, but are arrested and executed by the Nazis.

Just like most of Holocaust movies, "The Grey Zone", included in Roger Ebert's list of Great Movies, is an appropriately dark, depressive and disturbing film which shows a fall of a civilization, a dictatorship creating a hell on Earth, based on the eyewitness account of Dr. Miklos Nyiszli who worked in Auschwitz. Its main theme is, obviously, the contemplation about pure evil and the search for good, but there is also another one: how far would people go in their conformity, how much of their own integrity would they be willing to sacrifice, just to save their own life? This is illustrated in a (negatively) unforgettable sequence, where Hoffman recounts a story of a man in Auschwitz who became a Sonderkommando member, and helped push the naked corpses of his wife, his daughter, and even his own grandchildren into the fire of the crematorium, only to save his own skin and continue living in the concentration camp. The whole movie is a slow-burning rebellion of these Sonderkommando members, Jews who helped kill other Jews just to postpone their own ineviateble death for a few more months, who awaken against their own pliability, show bravery, and decide to at least try to make a difference. 

The director Tim Blake Nelson crafts several traumatic sequences, all the more harrowing when one has in mind that they were not invented, but actually happened: Hoffman, a Sonderkommando member, lies to the newly arrived inmates that they will only have a "shower", that "one lice can be fatal to them", to "remember the number where they hanged their coat", and that they will see their family members as soon as they are cleaned, only for all these naked people to enter the gas chamber, the Sonderkommando close the door, lock it—and from there onwards only screams from the inside are heard—parallel with Hoffman sitting outside the door, ashamed. In another electrifying sequence, a Nazi official lines up a hundred women out in the field, and starts shooting them one by one, unless the two women who smuggled gunpowder reveal their plan to him—in order to stop these shootings, the two women commit suicide, one by jumping on the electric fence, the other aiming the machine-gun of the Nazi and shooting herself. Harvey Keitel is great as the SS officer Muhsfeldt, who uses the power of his command just as a prosthesis of his own ego and narcissism, as well as Steve Buscemi as inmate Abramowics. There is no optimism here. Everything in the story is depressive from start to finish, and just becomes more and more depressive. All the inmates who arrive at this concentration camp will not escape it alive. "The Grey Zone" is an unpleasant, but essential cinema that gives a three-dimensional depiction of a horrible historical event—and a meditation on passivity, servility and forced choice. 

Grade:+++