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Weekly Archive Film
Reviews
By
Howard Schumann
This weekly column is
dedicated to reviews of classic films, independent films, studio
films, and reviews of films you probably never even heard of.
Feedback is appreciated.
January 28, 2005
 Rosenstrasse
(2003 / PG-13)
"Though
lovers shall die, love shall not. And death shall have no dominion" -
Dylan Thomas
In Rosenstrasse, Margarethe von Trotta blends two stories to
create a vibrant tapestry of love and courage. The film depicts a
family drama of estrangement between a mother and her daughter, and
the story of German women who staged a protest on Rosenstrasse to free
their Jewish husbands from certain extermination. In addition to the
dramatization of historical events, the focus of the film is on the
saving of a child from the Holocaust by a German and the result of the
child's experience of losing her mother. While Ms. von Trotta shows
that the courage of a small number of Germans made a difference, she
does not use it to excuse German society. Indeed, she shows how in the
midst of torture and extermination, the wealthy artists and
intellectuals of German high society went on about their lives and
parties, oblivious to the suffering.
Rosenstrasse
opens in New York as a Jewish widow Ruth Weinstein (Jutta Lampe)
decides to sit Shiva, a seven-day period of mourning that takes place
following a funeral in which Jewish family members devote full
attention to remembering and mourning the deceased. When her daughter
Hannah (Maria Schrader), is forbidden to receive phone calls from her
fiancé Luis (Fedja van Huet), a non-Jew, Hannah questions why her
mother has suddenly decided to follow an Orthodox tradition that she
previously rejected. When Ruth coldly rejects her cousin, Hannah
questions her and learns about a woman named
Lena who took Ruth in as a child when the latter’s
mother was deported and murdered by the Nazis, and she vows to find
Lena and discover the secret of her mother's past.
Her quest takes her to
Berlin
where she finds Lena (Doris Schade), now ninety years old, and
interviews her on the pretext that she is a journalist researching
certain aspects of the Holocaust. With unfailing memory, Lena tells
her story of how, as a young 33-year old woman (Katja Riemann), she
searched for her husband, Jewish pianist Fabian Israel Fischer (Martin
Feifel), who disappeared and was presumed to have been imprisoned
despite the protection normally given Jews in mixed marriages.
Lena,
in a radiant performance by Riemann, discovers that her husband and
other Jews are being held prisoner in a former factory on the
Rosenstrasse.
Standing together in the freezing night, German women whose husband
are missing congregate outside the building, their numbers growing
daily until they reach one thousand shouting "Give us back our
husbands".
Lena finds Ruth (Svea Lohde), a young girl whose
mother is in the building. She takes care of her, protecting her from
the Gestapo and raising her after her mother is killed.
Lena
comes from an aristocratic German family and her brother, recently
returned from Stalingrad, is a Wehrmacht officer. After being
refused help from her father to free Fabian she enlists the aid of her
brother who tells a fellow Officer, “I know what they do to the Jews.
I saw it”. Given his support, she is bold enough to bypass channels
and go to the top where her beauty and charm prove irresistible for
the Minister of Culture, Joseph Goebbels, a known womanizer. While
this fictional part of the film has been criticized as degrading to
the women protestors, it is a historical fact that Goebbels was very
active in making the decisions affecting Rosenstrasse.
The director Margarethe von Trotta, an activist, feminist, and
intellectual, is no stranger to political drama. She directed a film
about Socialist Rosa Luxembourg and Marianne and Julianne,
a story of the relationship between two sisters, one of whom resorts
to political violence to accomplish her liberal objectives. In
Rosenstrasse, a film she worked on for eight years, she had to
make compromises, adding the present day fictional element in order to
have her film produced. That it works so well is a tribute to Ms. von
Trotta's artistry and the beautiful screenplay by Pamela Katz whose
father was a refugee from Leipzig. The events at Rosenstrasse give the
lie to Germans, who say, "there was nothing we could do". Now von
Trotta has shown the opposite to be true, that something could be done
to resist the Nazis. It is tragic that the example did not catch on.
Film Grade: A-
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January 21, 2005
 Legend
of 1900, The
(1998 / Rated R)
On the first day of the twentieth century, an infant is discovered
in the coal room aboard a luxury liner. The worker (Bill Nunn) who
discovers the child on The Virginian names him 1900 or more accurately
Danny Boodmann T.D. Lemon Nineteen-Hundred. Eight years later the boy
loses his "father" in a ship accident but discovers an amazing ability
to play the piano and a legend is born. It is indeed
The Legend of 1900, a fable by Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema
Paradiso) based on a dramatic monologue by Italian novelist
Alessandro Baricco. The story is about a musical prodigy who spends
his life aboard a ship, sailing back and forth between the U.S. and
Europe, entertaining the passengers with his unique talent but never
sharing it with the rest of the world.
The film is narrated by Max (Pruitt Taylor Vince), an American
saxophone player whom we meet at the beginning as he tries to pawn his
trumpet. On leaving the shop, however, he hears the only recording
1900 ever made, a master that he had broken into pieces but that was
later restored. When he finds out that the master came from a ship
about to be demolished, he rushes to save 1900 whom he is sure is
still aboard. In the process, he tells his story to convince others
that 1900 exists. Through flashbacks we learn about 1900 and how he
navigated his life from stem to stern. The question throughout the
film is whether or not 1900 will abandon the ship and set foot on
land? There is a hint that he might do so after he meets a beautiful
young woman (Melanie Theirry). She inspires him to compose a
beautifully expressive love song while gazing at her through a window,
but the only thing that remains is the last copy of the record and an
enduring memory.
The
Legend of 1900
creates its own world and I confess it is one that I got lost in. This
is a lovely film that has a heart. It is sentimental without question
but is redeemed by the glorious music by Ennio Morricone, beautiful
cinematography by Lajos Koltai, and a terrific jazz piano duel between
the adult 1900 (Tim Roth) and Jelly Roll Morton played by Clarence
Williams III. 1900's world has clearly defined limits and he is
fearful of venturing beyond. Land represents for him a place without
boundaries, where people can get lost, a place without beginning or
end. To me, The Legend of 1900 may be a metaphor for people who
find a comfortable niche for themselves in life and are afraid to take
risks to see what the possibilities are. In many cases, as with 1900,
the world will never know the contribution they might have made.
Film Grade: B+
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January 7, 2005
 Crimson
Gold
(2003 / Not Rated)
Winner of the Jury Award at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival but sadly
banned in
Iran,
Jafar Panahi's Crimson Gold shows the growing chasm in
Iran between rich and poor and the psychological effects of living
under a regime based on fundamentalist religion. Written by famous
Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, it is based on a newspaper account
of a similar incident that took place several years ago in Tehran. The
film opens inside a jewelry store where a robbery is taking place. As
a crowd gathers, the robber is trapped when the security system is
released and the bars close over the front door. Flashbacks then show
the events that led up to the crime and the film speculates as to what
might have led to this act of desperation.
Hussein (Hossain Emadeddin), an alienated man who hides his
emotions, is a pizza deliveryman in
Tehran
who takes cortisone shots to relieve the pain of injuries sustained in
the Iran-Iraq War. He is engaged to be married to his friend Ali's (Kamyar
Sheissi) sister but they communicate little. Ali is a thief who
snatches women's purses but is an amateur bungler who rarely scores a
big take. On examining the contents of a purse with Hussein at a
restaurant, they discover the receipt for an expensive necklace and
their fascination leads them to visit the jewelry store where it was
purchased. When the owner refuses to let them in the store because of
their dress, resentment boils.
Another incident reinforces this hurt. Hussein is forced by
security police to wait outside a building as they arrest people
attending a party for allegedly violating the social code of the
regime that prohibits men and women from dancing together. Though he
good-naturedly hands out pizzas to the police and the detainees
waiting outside the building, he is upset at the manner in which he is
treated. A bizarre final sequence raises Hussein's anger to the
breaking point. He delivers a pizza to a lavish penthouse apartment
where he is invited in by the wealthy tenant (Pourang Nakaheal), a
young man who recently returned to
Iran
after staying with his parents in the U.S. The man, who appears to be
lonely, talks incessantly, complaining about the "city of lunatics" he
has returned to. As the young man chats on the cell phone, Hussein
wanders through the house amazed at its affluence. He finds a rooftop
swimming pool and jumps in fully clothed, then sits on the roof simply
gazing at the city below. Fuming inwardly, the very next day he walks
into the jewelry store with a loaded gun.
Crimson Gold
bravely depicts the powerlessness of the individual in an
authoritarian society, yet Hussein's emotional repressiveness and the
telegraphing of the final outcome dilutes the film's tension, almost
to the point of lethargy. To his credit, Panahi makes a strong
statement but does not wallow in polemics, making it clear that the
crime results from a combination of both social and psychological
factors. Hussein is not an ordinary individual beaten down by the
system but a walking time bomb, a man physically and mentally damaged
by the war, uncommunicative, and humiliated by each slight, no matter
how minor. Like Hussein, Panahi knows something about the feeling of
being trapped and humiliated and his experience lends immediacy to the
film. In 2001, the director was detained, then chained to a bench for
ten hours because he refused to be fingerprinted and photographed by
US authorities at JFK airport, a reminder that assaults upon human
dignity are not limited to a single country.
Film Grade: B+
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January 14, 2005
 The
Return
(2003 / Not Rated)
In Russian director
Andrey Zvyaginstev's The Return, a father (Konstantin
Lavronenko) revisits his family after an unexplained absence of
twelve years to take his teenage sons on a fishing trip. Winner of the
grand prize at the Venice Film Festival, The Return is a film
of rare beauty and authenticity about the complex bonds between a
father and his two sons and the need to discover one's self. First
time director Zvyaginstev leaves much unexplained and the film, while
a simple story on the surface, has suggestions of Greek mythology,
political allegory, and religious parable. The film takes place in
seven days, separated into segments. The two boys, Andrei
(Vladimir Garin), who is about 13, and Vanya (Ivan Dobronravov), a
year or two younger, are very different but have become attached to
each other as a result of their father's absence.
As the film opens,
Vanya is being taunted by a group of friends and called "chicken"
because he is afraid to climb up a huge tower and dive from a pier.
When the boys return home, they are astonished to discover their
father sleeping on a bed as if posing for a religious painting of the
dead Christ. At dinner, the father (who is not named) is cold and
uncommunicative except to tell the boys that they will go fishing the
next morning and to pass out wine to everyone. To confirm their
father's identity, the boys find an old photograph of their father in
a Bible adjacent to a drawing of the scene of Abraham about to
sacrifice his son Isaac. As they drive through the brooding, isolated
Russian countryside on their way to a rendezvous at a remote island,
the boys confront their most longed for expectations and also their
most dreaded fears.
Andrei openly seeks
his father's approval but Vanya is rebellious, convinced that he is
being kidnapped by a gangster. It is clear that the boys need their
father but are baffled by his tough love. On one occasion, the father
makes Vanya get out of the car in a heavy rainstorm then drives off
only to pick him up soaking wet a short time later. When the boys fail
to return from fishing on time, he slaps Andrei so hard that Vanya
steals his knife and threatens to kill him. Though the mood is
ominous, the father's motives remain unclear. The puzzle is deepened
when he uncovers a strong box dug up from the floor of an old ruined
house on the island. Is this the payoff from a criminal activity? Is
it a treasure the father had buried to give to his sons? One can only
speculate.
In spite of their
anxiety, the boys seem to grow under their father's tutelage and, when
Vanya must climb a tower once again, it is clear how far he has come
in his journey to adulthood. His father's inability to reach his sons
on an emotional level, however, is the ingredient for a tragedy that
takes the film to an unexpected conclusion. The director has said that
the film is about "the metaphysical incarnation of the soul's movement
from the Mother to the Father." I'm not sure exactly what that means
but the film taps into the universal need to love and be cared for,
and the hurt that results when the need to be sustained and protected
is thwarted. The film rekindled sad memories for me of what it felt
like to be a child trying to reach a cold and distant father. Together
with knowing that the young actor who played Andrei died in a swimming
accident after the film was completed, made The Return a moving
and painful experience.
Film Grade: A-
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