Customer Reviews

Jerichow

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4 star:		(2)
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"Jerichow" revisits James M. Cain's "The Postman Always Rings Twice" in a rural and economically stressed area of Germany. Writer/director Christian Petzold seems to have been inspired to some degree by both of the famous film adaptations of Cain's novel, the noir classic "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946) and Italy's unauthorized "Ossessione" (1943). But "Jerichow" isn't a remake. It's a German update that looks at commercially successful Turkish immigrants and Germans who are inspired to reckless and secretive behavior, perhaps to recapture some optimism at a point in their lives when they realize things haven't gone as planned.

Thomas (Benno Furmann) is back home after serving in the German army in Afghanistan, now in need of a job to begin renovations on the house his recently deceased mother has left him. Ali Ozkan (Hilmi Sozer), who owns 45 snack bars in the area, asks Thomas to make his daily rounds of deliveries for him when his driver's license is suspended for DUI. In spite of his heavy drinking, Ali is an demanding and perceptive businessman. He seems to want Thomas to learn the business, and he encourages Thomas to get to know his pretty German wife Laura (Nina Hoss). But Thomas and Laura see something of themselves in each other and find the attraction irresistible.

This is old territory, but it usually doesn't feel like it. The characters befit their particular time and place. All are criminal in some sense, and all are sympathetic in some sense. We don't get to know Laura well until late in the film, but the uneasy relationship between the two men develops over course of the film. Their mundane conversations create suspense, as the audience gets the creeping impression that things will turn out badly. Both men are enigmatic, frustrated, and hiding something that will have to give at some point. Kudos to Hilmi Sozer for making Ali a fully realized character, perhaps even more tragic than the rest, even though he is not a protagonist. In German with optional English subtitles.

The DVD (Cinema Guild 2009): Bonus features are a theatrical trailer (2 min), trailers from 3 other Christian Petzold films, and a "Making-of Documentary" (25 min). This includes interviews with the director in which he discusses the characters and the socio-economic milieu in which the film takes place and interviews with actors Benno Furmann and Nina Hoss, who discuss their characters. Petzold's comments are particularly interesting and thoughtful. Bonus features have English subtitles that cannot be turned off. English subtitles are available for the film, and those can be turned off.

Excellent film from German director Christian Petzold, whose portrayal of incomplete lives raises issues about identity and the tyranny of economic systems - not surprisingly set in the former East Germany, where the introduction of capitalism has seemingly created a social void where personal freedom is elusive if not beyond reach. This is maybe over-intellectualizing a fairly straightforward story about a love triangle, but then after listening to Petzold describe his own analysis in the DVD's making-of documentary, abstractions like this seem somehow to take on a life of their own.

His characters - a soldier returning from Afghanistan, a Turkish immigrant, and his German wife - are pretty much all at loose ends. They often show little emotion and keep their intentions well hidden. Their conversations are either shallow, lacking subtext, or they are portentous with potential meaning. The discontinuity generates a level of suspense that keeps you wondering what is really going on. Sparks of passion suddenly burst forth with intensity and are as quickly snuffed out. How much each trusts the other is often unclear. Who is lying? Who is cheating? Can any of them really feel love?

While harking often to "The Postman Always Rings Twice," the points of similarity turn out often to be red herrings. Trusting a film-noir sensibility, we jump to conclusions that turn out to be premature. Each of the characters has traits that elicit sympathy, while behaving in ways that make us dislike them. At the end of it all, one is left with a hollow sense that the debts that accumulate over a lifetime can never be repaid. As a parable about the cost of living, this one has much to provoke thought, with thanks to excellent performances by Benno Fürmann, Nina Hoss, and Hilmi Sözer.

How's that for an odd tag? This movie stays with me and continues to grow on me. I will absolutely see it again, and maybe again. It's a love/sex triangle in the key of darkness and James M. Cain's Postman Always Rings Twice. Each of the three main characters has a dark and brooding story and in the show-don't tell of good film making, we lose ourselves in these stories. For example: Ali the cuckolded husband says: "I am not wanted in this country (he came to Germany from Turkey as a young child 40 years earlier), I bought my wife, and I don't want to die." Each one of those statements has back-story.

In the special features Petzold discusses Cain and in a most interesting way. Petzold uses phrases like "post-Fordism," "wage labor," "class conflict" and you just are not going to find many directors with such a powerfully distinct point of view (except Ken Loach and Mike Leigh to a lesser extent in the UK, and Victor Nunez here in the US). The actors talked about their characters, how they crawled into their minds through the script and what we, the audience, got is a near brilliant piece of film making.

I knew, everyone must know, that it has to end badly, but how badly and what kind of badly and badly for which one or two???? Those unanswered questions creates the suspense. I love noir and I see so much of it and read so much of it, so when I come across a movie or book that shifts the noir axis--this is very exciting for me. Petzold intrigues me and I have just seen an earlier film called Yella. Unlike Jerichow but at the same time his particular classist sensibility is there as well.