Post by joekiddlouischama on Apr 1, 2019 8:55:37 GMT
Has anyone else seen Transit, a film from German writer-director Christian Petzold adapted from the famous 1942 novel by German writer Anna Seghers? It debuted in Germany a year ago, but it just made its way to America this month. I do not quite feel that it merits the praise being tossed around by some critics, but after viewing the movie twice, I consider it a "good" film, at once provocative and elegant. Transit transposes Seghers' World War II-era plot to the present day, amounting to an allegory about neo-fascist revivalism around the globe. The movie's opening, in which the protagonist played by Franz Rogowski receives a fateful letter that he can potentially parlay into a passport of sorts—papers, please—and where he then must flee from the police, is chilling in this regard and beautifully shot and edited as well. Indeed, Transit makes excellent use of urban French locations in Bouches-du-Rhône and Marseille, filming from inside windowed restaurants and along sloping streets, in shaded alleys and forlorn hotel rooms, inside lobbies and on sun-drenched plazas. The lighting and compositions are constantly compelling without ever descending into artistic pretentiousness.
After Rogowski's German character, Georg, travels by train to the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, he encounters a similarly imperiled refugee named Melissa, along with her young son, who loves soccer. Like others from refugee and minority communities, she is looking to flee before the "cleansing" begins. In its examination of such issues, which obviously strikes a parallel between current events and those that occurred around eighty years ago, Transit coolly manages to be both poignant and reserved. The director's sympathies are clear, but he does not wear them on his sleeve, either—he opts for observance rather than sentimentality or hysteria.
Increasingly, Georg's journey takes the form of a romantic triangle reminiscent of Casablanca. Seghers wrote her novel without having been able to view Casablanca beforehand, but perhaps she had seen or heard about the American play—Everybody Comes to Rick's—on which the classic movie is based. Otherwise, we are talking about a marvelous coincidence that speaks to common concerns in that intense historical period. The romance—centered around the ethereal Marie, played by Paula Beer—is elegant and compelling, both in terms of the acting and how Petzold frames and sequences it. But the stark political and social tension that had helped define Transit earlier now ebbs. The sociological and geopolitical concerns reappear a couple of times in the dialogue, but only briefly and in a way that feels perfunctory. In short, while Transit is a far more existential and much less sentimental film than Casablanca, it fails to achieve the fully satisfying whole of the earlier movie, in part because it does not quite maintain the tension in the same way. In Casablanca, conversely, the authorities continue to place pressure on the main characters all the way to the film's conclusion.
Transit arguably suffers from some other flaws as well. Although the film is ostensibly set in the present day, the movie also might be conflating present and past. For instance, while the cars and clothes are all modern, no one has cell phones (as I recall, no one uses any kind of telephone) and there is no discussion of travel by flight, only by ship. We also never observe a television, let alone a computer. Additionally, the passport of the writer whose letters and manuscripts Georg comes to possess seems to carry a birth date of 1908. I never noticed these matters during my first viewing, but I did so on my second, and naturally some confusion set in. Perhaps the director's intent was to transcend historical period, and possibly he succeeds, combining a modern feel with Old World elegance, freed from the clutter of cell phones and airports. But one could also argue that the decision creates needless incoherence, especially since the use of clearly North African or Middle Eastern refugees (for instance, Melissa and her son) suggests the present day.
Additionally, Transit combines dialogue with narration in the manner of classic films noir, with the greatest example of this technique perhaps occurring in Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944). But in Transit, not until late in my second viewing did I figure out the identity of the narrator. Petzold may have withheld the identity until fairly late in the movie by design, but one could again argue that he fosters needless confusion, causing the viewer to ponder a technique rather than the main thrust of the movie. Additionally, on my first viewing, I deemed Transit "pretty good" (meaning above-average yet less than a full-fledged "good") in part because the rhythm and pacing seemed inconsistent due to the changes from dialogue to narration and vice versa. On my second viewing, now better acclimated to the film, I found the rhythm and pacing to be more effective and the changes from dialogue to narration to be less distracting, and thus I upgraded my judgment of Transit, having deemed it considerably more engrossing this time around. But I would still argue that the transitions from dialogue to narration and vice versa are not as seamless and easily flowing as in great films noir like Double Indemnity. Perhaps viewing Transit in subtitles, and in unfamiliar languages (German and French), makes the changes feel a little more jagged, but the matter might also have to do with the sheer filmmaking.
Most problematic is that as soon as the narrative proper ends, Petzold plays a Talking Heads song ("Road to Nowhere") over the closing credits. It may well be another sign of Petzold's historical pastiche (or 'mashup,' to borrow a contemporary colloquialism), but its insertion suggests parody as much as postmodernism, and Transit has played as a very serious, somber, sober, and sobering movie with a wistful jazz-piano score.
Still, for all these flaws, Transit is a rather haunting film. Its combination of geopolitical resonance, humanistic searching, European location shooting, and nuanced, naturalistic lighting make for a genuine experience. Whether it is set in 1942, 2018, or somewhere in between, the result is classical as much as postmodern.
After Rogowski's German character, Georg, travels by train to the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, he encounters a similarly imperiled refugee named Melissa, along with her young son, who loves soccer. Like others from refugee and minority communities, she is looking to flee before the "cleansing" begins. In its examination of such issues, which obviously strikes a parallel between current events and those that occurred around eighty years ago, Transit coolly manages to be both poignant and reserved. The director's sympathies are clear, but he does not wear them on his sleeve, either—he opts for observance rather than sentimentality or hysteria.
Increasingly, Georg's journey takes the form of a romantic triangle reminiscent of Casablanca. Seghers wrote her novel without having been able to view Casablanca beforehand, but perhaps she had seen or heard about the American play—Everybody Comes to Rick's—on which the classic movie is based. Otherwise, we are talking about a marvelous coincidence that speaks to common concerns in that intense historical period. The romance—centered around the ethereal Marie, played by Paula Beer—is elegant and compelling, both in terms of the acting and how Petzold frames and sequences it. But the stark political and social tension that had helped define Transit earlier now ebbs. The sociological and geopolitical concerns reappear a couple of times in the dialogue, but only briefly and in a way that feels perfunctory. In short, while Transit is a far more existential and much less sentimental film than Casablanca, it fails to achieve the fully satisfying whole of the earlier movie, in part because it does not quite maintain the tension in the same way. In Casablanca, conversely, the authorities continue to place pressure on the main characters all the way to the film's conclusion.
Transit arguably suffers from some other flaws as well. Although the film is ostensibly set in the present day, the movie also might be conflating present and past. For instance, while the cars and clothes are all modern, no one has cell phones (as I recall, no one uses any kind of telephone) and there is no discussion of travel by flight, only by ship. We also never observe a television, let alone a computer. Additionally, the passport of the writer whose letters and manuscripts Georg comes to possess seems to carry a birth date of 1908. I never noticed these matters during my first viewing, but I did so on my second, and naturally some confusion set in. Perhaps the director's intent was to transcend historical period, and possibly he succeeds, combining a modern feel with Old World elegance, freed from the clutter of cell phones and airports. But one could also argue that the decision creates needless incoherence, especially since the use of clearly North African or Middle Eastern refugees (for instance, Melissa and her son) suggests the present day.
Additionally, Transit combines dialogue with narration in the manner of classic films noir, with the greatest example of this technique perhaps occurring in Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944). But in Transit, not until late in my second viewing did I figure out the identity of the narrator. Petzold may have withheld the identity until fairly late in the movie by design, but one could again argue that he fosters needless confusion, causing the viewer to ponder a technique rather than the main thrust of the movie. Additionally, on my first viewing, I deemed Transit "pretty good" (meaning above-average yet less than a full-fledged "good") in part because the rhythm and pacing seemed inconsistent due to the changes from dialogue to narration and vice versa. On my second viewing, now better acclimated to the film, I found the rhythm and pacing to be more effective and the changes from dialogue to narration to be less distracting, and thus I upgraded my judgment of Transit, having deemed it considerably more engrossing this time around. But I would still argue that the transitions from dialogue to narration and vice versa are not as seamless and easily flowing as in great films noir like Double Indemnity. Perhaps viewing Transit in subtitles, and in unfamiliar languages (German and French), makes the changes feel a little more jagged, but the matter might also have to do with the sheer filmmaking.
Most problematic is that as soon as the narrative proper ends, Petzold plays a Talking Heads song ("Road to Nowhere") over the closing credits. It may well be another sign of Petzold's historical pastiche (or 'mashup,' to borrow a contemporary colloquialism), but its insertion suggests parody as much as postmodernism, and Transit has played as a very serious, somber, sober, and sobering movie with a wistful jazz-piano score.
Still, for all these flaws, Transit is a rather haunting film. Its combination of geopolitical resonance, humanistic searching, European location shooting, and nuanced, naturalistic lighting make for a genuine experience. Whether it is set in 1942, 2018, or somewhere in between, the result is classical as much as postmodern.