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Almost every film critic present in Venice
remarked the connection between Christian Petzold’s contribution in
competition Jerichow and
James M. Caines “The Postman always rings twice”. And I feel obliged to join
them in their observations.
It was through a reading a newspaper story whilst directing his former film
YELLA that Petzold got the idea for his JERICHOW screenplay, which focuses
on Germany’s presence, where wage labour is no longer available or has
reached a destructive exploitative status.
Ali, a half bald and slightly overweight self-made man is very guarded and
untrusing of people. He is so paranoid that he’s confined to control anyone
and anything at any time – for example his wife or his employees. The German
with Turkish roots has built up his own business running takeaway street
stands with Asian and Turkish food around Jerichow, a small town in between
the Saxon’s no man’s land. Accidently one night he meets Thomas, a reticent
and silent ex-soldier who has furnished himself impropmtly in his late
mother’s house. After the army dishonourably dismissed him. He worked on a
cucumber farm transitionally, as a so called cucumber - flyer. Lying hidden
in the green harvest with a few other labourers they reap cucumbers all day
long riding up and down the field for only a few Euros. Thomas appears to
have the demenor of a person that Ali could possibly begin to trust. But by
offering him a job in his company Ali unwittingly grants Thomas admission
into his life and thereby Laura’s, Ali’s wife. Bound together through a
chain of pendency and obsession they get tanlged up in their own intricaltey
woven spider web of lies. They are prisoners trying to escape their maze to
build up a nest. Christian Petzold already considered as one of the refined
directors of northern Europe calls it “Homeland-Building”.
Nastily that Homeland-Building at least for Laura - a real ex-prisoner,
desperately lost in debts - seems cruelly linked to money. Which results in
her having to surrender her dreams and settle for a life with Ali.
Petzold believes money to be the films invisible protagonist though
unwillingly, he claims in an interview. “I had the feeling that the money
has slowly crept into the film, through the pictures and between the
characters.” Besides the fact that Jerichow tells a story about betraying -
not only others but also yourself – it is a film about surrender while
contemporarily trying not to give up. Therefore his blues portray a picture
of an almost drowning society with only a few sparks of hope, where life is
asking for continual sacrifices.
01:09:2008 |
di Suzanne TEICHMANN