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Marianne & Juliane [VHS]

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This is one of the best films I have ever seen, and I don't say that lightly. Images from this film haunt my sleep even now, and it is a week since I've seen it. That is the kind of impact that director Margarethe von Trotta must have been going for -- she wanted her audience to feel this film viscerally, which was exactly what her protagonists, the Baader-Meinhof group, were also going for -- one should generally feel a firebombing quite viscerally. Von Trotta succeeds. This is the story of two West German sisters during the politcally turbulant late 60's and early 70's. One works within the system to reform it; the other has abandoned all societal values and lives on the fringes as a terrorist (the film is based on real characters). The viewer is dropped into the story as it is already unfolding. Things have already gone downhill, and they're about to get worse. Von Trotta frames her story brilliantly and the inner portion, a series of ongoing tableaus and flashbacks, show how each sister has arrived to her present moral condition. This is not an easy film to watch. It is bleak and it is harrowing. It is simply a tragedy. The German title, "The Time of Lead", is infinitely more fitting than the vapid English title. There are various scenes that must remain with one. It is as tragic as anything Goethe or Shakespeare could have imagined. But -- stick around until the end. Von Trotta had something larger in mind. It is also one of the most life-affirming movies -- not syrupy, mind you (this film did NOT come out of Hollywood -- one must THINK about this one), that is available. "Think" is the key. The only violence one sees in this film is after the fact, at all generational levels. Baader-Meinhof were not the only ones inflicting violence, and bankers were not the only ones who suffered. Watch, and see who really suffers, and you may rethink your entire moral outlook -- as I did, after seeing this remarkable film.

I first saw this video at a writing conference at Skidmore; having been a student in Germany at the time of the events described, I have to say that the film brought back with ferocious emotional impact the ambivalent feelings of an American onlooker to the upheaval then going on in German academic and political circles. The film is one of the most gripping and involving I have ever seen. It deserves a wider public. I use it to show my German language students what the issues at stake were during the student revolt in Germany.

Die Bleierne Zeit (Marianne & Juliane) is a captivating film about two sisters, very different on the surface but forever linked by a common personal and political history. Von Trotta brings German history to life with this film set in the period of the Baader-Mainhof terrorist group's reign in Germany. A suspenseful film with a bit of conspiracy and unsolved mystery thrown in.

This film pulled me into the story virtually immediately --from the first five minutes! In that very first scene, Jan, a quiet child character is introduced from the periphery, his immediate future discussed over the kitchen table by two complex but fundamentally self-centered adults. They view this precious child as a disposable inconvenient roadblock in the progress of their terribly important vocations. They seem oblivious that they hold his very life in their hands. (Soon thereafter, we see Julianne demonstrating on a street corner, urging women to sign a petition in favor of abortion on demand. Interesting consistency of character and a chilling point for those who pay attention.)

For me personally, the movie gripped me not only as a baby boomer who was once a passive believer in the radical cause, as a sister, but even more importantly to me, as a mother who felt compelled to learn the peripheral story of minor character Jan. This masterful film does not disappoint, it will stay with you giving food for thought. With its many facets it will say something a little different to each viewer who gives it their time.

In the early 1980's I lived for art-house films. "Marianne & Juliane" nearly cured me of that: My knees were knocking trying to leave the showing. No other film (for me) better portrays the love/hate bond between siblings or the experience of well-minded individuals slamming up against extablished politcal structures. What I only learned recently from trolling the internet, is that the film is based on real-life sisters and the events that transpired in their lives. The story is a series of horrors that von Troota underplays at each step. No other director could have, or would have made this film. Pair it with Fassbinder's "The Third Generation," and you have a haughting view of radical politics in Germany.

This film won several awards but never reached a wide audience. Sadly, this has been true of much of von Trotta's work until the recent "Rossenstrasse." For me, "Rossenstrasse" is powerful but von Trotta-lite. For the political seek out "Rosa Luxemburg," "Das Versprechen" (1995) [The Promise] and two films made with her then-husband Volker Schlondorf: The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975) [codirector] and "Die Fälschung" (1981) [Circle of Deceit -coauthor] both bear her stamp. For the personal as political, "Schwestern oder Die Balance des Glücks" (1979) [Sisters, or the Balance of Happiness] is a don't miss.