Barbara (2012) Reviews

• Living and (not) loving in East Germany

  rubenm2012-09-17

  It looks as if the communist rule in former East Germany is a nice source of inspiration for German film makers. First, there was the light-hearted comedy Goodbye, Lenin. Then, the heart wrenching drama Das Leben der Anderen. And now, there's Barbara. Another drama about a human being whose life is ruined by the regime. The film is mainly about trust. Or, about not being able to trust anyone in a police state like East Germany. Barbara is a doctor who is banned from Berlin and put to work in a hospital in a provincial town in the north of the country. Soon enough, we find out why: she has a lover in West Germany and wants to escape from the country. She is bitter and full of resentment, but cares a lot about her patients, especially about a young girl who lives in a nearby labour camp and turns out to be pregnant. Several times, we learn how oppressive this country was. 'No one can be happy here', says Barbara when her lover proposes to come and live with her in the East. 'I want my baby to go away', says the pregnant girl, and she doesn't mean abortion. 'Do you think they will let me go if I marry him?', asks a girl who also has a Western lover. 'No', is Barbara's short and clear answer. The film is very strong in atmosphere, but there is also suspense. There are even some Hitchcock-like moments. One is a scene where Barbara tries to locate a colleague, and finds him in the house of the Stasi-officer who has searched her apartment. It makes you wonder if the doctor, too, is a Stasi-informant. One of the other strong points is the acting. Nina Hoss is very convincing as the bitter, distrustful Barbara, who only really can relax in the company of her Western lover. And there is the cinematography, that adds to the almost claustrophobic atmosphere. The camera hardly moves, the shots are static and show exactly what needs to be showed. The end is quite surprising, and adds a nice and meaningful twist to a beautiful movie.

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• much more accurate than 'Lives of Others'

  Radu_A2012-11-20

  It's a challenging task to depict a bygone era which hasn't yet passed into history, but is a living memory in the minds of many. Distant events may be easily interpreted at will, because no spectator can expect a minute reconstruction of a reality past. Adaptations of recent events, however, fall under close scrutiny of those who were actually there, and any attempt to 'tell the whole story' will invariably meet with criticism from those who feel left out of the picture, or who remember differently. It is therefore the best solution for the film maker to focus on atmosphere rather than events, and a simple story rather than a complex rendition of society as a whole. And that's what director/ screenwriter Christian Petzold does: he tells the story of a doctor, displaced from the capital to the province for an application to leave the country, and confronting an atmosphere of distrust while preparing her escape to the West. This routine of hostility is a little ameliorated by the interest of a male colleague, who may however be an assigned informer, and the friendship to a pregnant patient, who apparently escaped from a juvenile offenders camp only to be recaptured. What makes me consider this film as far superior to the much lauded, Oscar-winning 'The Lives of Others' is that it does not sacrifice atmosphere to film making conventions. For instance, there is no music, because there was no music. 'The Lives of Others' tormented any actual witness of the times it described with a sappy soundtrack. It also did not correspond to my recollections of East Germany because it limited the supervision of ordinary citizens to the Stasi ('State Security') and its collaborators. It did point out that this supervision was omnipresent, but it created a division between good and evil which was slowly eroded from the evil side's end. 'Barbara', however, focuses on the way ordinary citizens, not intellectuals, were treated, and the fact that virtually everyone collaborated in the supervision of the individual, whether they were working with the Stasi or not. Barbara is fully aware of her situation, and tries to make friends with her colleague/informer André Reiser to win him over to her side, while at the same time not giving anything away about herself. Reiser, on the other hand, tries to gain her trust as a person, because he needs her competence at work and may be romantically interested in her, while at the same time fulfilling his obligations to report on her. This constant game of hide and seek illustrates what Socialism was really like - a permanent grey zone in which you had to measure your steps carefully and no clear distinctions between good and evil existed, as 'The Lives of Others' would have you believe; and the young patient side characters show that quite a few cracked under this immense pressure. By focusing on one woman's story, director Petzold delivers an accurate portrait of the realities of life at that time: it did not matter whether you were good at your job or not, and being too good made you automatically suspicious, while being lazy made you the target of accusations of boycotting society; it was dangerous to open up to colleagues, because they would almost certainly be inquired about what you said, but at the same time it was dangerous to distance yourself, because then you'd be suspected of having something to hide. Everything was tactics, nothing was spontaneous, everybody wanted to get out, but chastised those who actually tried. This authenticity has probably prompted this film's selection as the German candidate for the foreign language Oscar 2013, but it may also have hampered its chances to win the Golden Bear upon its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, where Petzold won the director's prize though. Realism makes for an accurate portrayal of the recent past, but for those who have not been there, 'Barbara' may be a bit too stiff and gloomy, because it does not compromise its authenticity to the expectations of (Western) audiences.

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• A Somber and Compelling Film

  doug_park20012013-12-29

  BARBARA may be a little too slow and humorless for many tastes, but it's one of those films that's so real it hardly seems like a film at all. You have to admire the stark realism here. Whether you want to go there or not, this film truly takes you to a secluded province of East Germany, 1980. BARBARA affords an acute look at the inside of a totalitarian state. While it doesn't show a whole lot in this regard, what it does is shown most effectively. The lack of any soundtrack--something I didn't even notice while viewing but that one of the reviews on Amazon pointed out--only adds to BARBARA's immediacy. Quietly immersing, with a real surprise at the end. Excellent cinematography and fine acting by all.

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• A compelling and riveting film

  howard.schumann2013-03-31

  Set in Communist East Germany in the early 1980s, cold war paranoia is in full view in Christian Petzold's Barbara, winner of the Silver Berlin Bear for Best Director at the Berlinale. In Barbara, Petzold has fashioned not only a superb character study but a film that illuminates the effects of oppression on the human psyche, an oppression that ended in Germany only with the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of East and West many years later. The film shows the East German security apparatus' (Stasi) use of intimidation and disorientation as tools in operating a system of control and surveillance directed at those suspected of opposing the GDR. Portrayed by Nina Hoss in a performance of remarkable nuance and authenticity, Barbara, an East Berlin doctor, has been exiled to a small clinic in the provinces after applying for an exit visa to visit her boyfriend in the West. She is a tall, stately, and attractive woman, yet taciturn and distant, her face filled with an indescribable sadness. Trying to serve her patients as best she can, she knows that she is under surveillance by the Stasi, particularly by Officer Klaus Schutz (Rainer Bock), who does not hesitate to conduct unannounced searches of Barbara's apartment, even her person, and whose presence in her life is all too visible. Not knowing whom to trust, thinking (perhaps rightly so) that her friends and colleagues may be police informants, Barbara's aloofness leads her colleagues to give her the nickname of "Berlin" to describe what they think is her big-city attitude. On the job, however, she does not allow her fears to get in the way of her professional responsibilities and her relationship with her patients shows her hidden warmth. Dr. André Reiser (Ronald Zehrfeld), a soft-looking, slightly heavy-set doctor, solicits her friendship and offers repeatedly to drive her home but she keeps him at arms length, suspicious of his possible connections. In spite of this tense atmosphere, Barbara manages to befriend Stella (Jasna Fritzi Bauer), a young patient who escaped from a work camp at Torgau. Correctly diagnosing her with Meningitis, a diagnosis that the other doctors had overlooked, she reads The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to her in the evening, a story of two people on the run. More tension is added when we see Barbara's surreptitious exchange of black market cigarettes and packets of money with people unknown. In a rapturous meeting with her West German lover Jorg (Mark Waschke) in a secluded forest area, she is given the choice of leaving the country with him, reassured that, because of his circumstances, she would no longer have to work. Barbara and her friend make plans, but her growing relationship with André and ties to young Stella become complicating factors. André's own story of how he ended up in the village only adds to her confusion and uncertainty. Barbara is an understated gem that never hits us over the head with its message but leaves no doubt about its implications. While the film depicts the circumstances in a particular country, it transcends its limitations to become a universal experience. A compelling and riveting film, it begins in resignation and ends in transformation.

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• Definitely Worth It

  JackCerf2013-03-08

  The story is set in East Germany in 1980, when it looked like Communism would last forever. Central character is Dr. Barbara Wolff, played by the classically beautiful blonde Nina Hoss, who I've previously seen in A Woman In Berlin. Dr. Wolff was a fast track young doctor at the Charite, the big teaching hospital in Berlin, before she fell in love with a West German businessman and applied for an exit visa. That got her a short spell in prison for ingratitude to the workers and farmers who paid for her medical education, together with a transfer to a one horse town in Mecklenburg, where she seems to be the second doctor in a two doctor pediatric clinic. We know all this because, as she is getting off the bus, the local Stasi man is going through her file with Andre, the head doctor at the clinic. Andre is what they used to call an Inoffiziale Mitarbeiter, or unofficial cooperator. We find out why later on. He's also an attractive, shambling 30 something bachelor in a kind of teddy bear way, a skilled, dedicated doctor with a good bedside manner, and, notwithstanding his work as an informer, a pretty decent guy by the standards of the time and place. Barbara twigs immediately that Andre's an informer when he offers her a lift home from work on the first day. As they drive through an intersection in his piece of crap Trabant, she says, "you were supposed to ask me which way to turn, but then, you already know where I live." She is resentful, understandably so, and standoffish, which the clinic staff put down to stuck up Berlin attitude. That may have something to do with the open surveillance by the Stasi guy and regular searches of her apartment, complete with strip searches by a female agent. But Barbara is also a first class doctor who takes a real interest in her patients. Andre is quietly smitten -- if you've seen Hoss you'll know why -- and keeps chipping away at her resistance. Despite knowing who else he works for, she can't help responding. What neither Andre nor the Stasi agent know is that Barbara is contriving to meet her Wessi boyfriend when he's in the East on business, and they're scheming to smuggle her out. He's crazy about her, even saying that he'd move East if she wants, but there are slight intimations that life in the West with him might not be exactly as she's dreamed of. In any event, there's a lot of sneaking about, and Hoss has a good line in tense body language and over the shoulder glances. Everybody knows everybody's business in a small town anyway, and in a small town in Mecklenburg, your landlady, your co-workers, or anyone you pass on the street could be an informer. Complications ensue, involving Andre, the escape plan, and Barbara's obligations to two young patients in whom she has taken a special interest. I won't tell you how they play out, except that nothing goes quite as expected. The movie gives you a very good sense of a society in which everyone is compromised in some way, trust and intimacy are not really possible, but life has to go on nevertheless. It's not as showy as The Lives of Others, but it gives a better sense of what everyday life was like in the German Democratic Republic, where it has been estimated that there was one Stasi employee for every 165 citizens and one informer for every 6.5.

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