809 Phoenix

[domino harvey]

Phoenix



This evocative and haunting drama, set in a rubble-strewn Berlin in 1945, is like no other film about post–World War II Jewish identity. After surviving Auschwitz, a former cabaret singer (Nina Hoss, in a dazzling, multilayered performance), her face disfigured and reconstructed, returns to her war-ravaged hometown to seek out the gentile husband who may or may not have betrayed her to the Nazis. Without recognizing her, he enlists her to play his wife in a bizarre hall-of-shattered-mirrors story that's as richly metaphorical as it is preposterously engrossing. Revenge film or tale of romantic reconciliation? One doesn't know until the superb closing scene of this marvel from Christian Petzold, perhaps the most important figure in contemporary German cinema.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 4K digital master, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New conversation between director Christian Petzold and actor Nina Hoss
• New interview with cinematographer Hans Fromm
• New documentary featuring on-set interviews from 2013 with Petzold, Hoss, actors Nina Kunzendorf and Ronald Zehrfeld, and production designer Kade Gruber
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by critic Michael Koresky

[domino harvey]

Petzold has a new film starring Nina Hoss again playing at TIFF this year, a WWII film called Phoenix -- Trailer and poster/stills

IV sez Phoenix is the best film of TIFF so far and one of the best films of the year

[thirtyframesasecond]

Phoenix was excellent. From reading this thread, it seems that Petzold riffs on a lot of movies throughout his own, and though Vertigo is the obvious nod in Phoenix, it doesn't seem a De Palma-esque copy at all. Nina Hoss is tremendous and a huge amount of credit must go to Nina Kunzendorf in her supporting role. I've a lot of viewing to do from this director.

[zedz]

Phoenix was excellent. From reading this thread, it seems that Petzold riffs on a lot of movies throughout his own, and though Vertigo is the obvious nod in Phoenix, it doesn't seem a De Palma-esque copy at all. Nina Hoss is tremendous and a huge amount of credit must go to Nina Kunzendorf in her supporting role. I've a lot of viewing to do from this director.

I found the Vertigo riffing quite witty and erudite, since the film manages to split Jimmy Stewart's actions and motivations between the two main characters. The film is also very beholden to film noir, from its expressionistic lighting to the borderline ridiculousness of the plot. Petzold steers the plot contrivances / ironies right to the brink of preposterous disintegration, then wraps everything up in one of the most perfect endings I've seen in many years.

Petzold seems to be going from strength to strength, and I think he might have found the ideal companion for his muse Nina Hoss in Ronald Zehrfeld. She's always been a formidable ice queen, but he seems to help her access a subtle warmth and vulnerability here and in Barbara.

[repeat]

Yes, absolutely - Petzold tends to distill and mix his sources, instead of quoting directly à la BDP (Jerichow is another good example of how he uses materials - in the end it's anything but a straight remake of Postman...) And Phoenix is indeed a prime exhibit of how little he is concerned with believability (in terms of plot), it's something you can see in almost all his films, especially the melodrama-type ones (Wolfsburg, Beats Being Dead, etc.). I just rewatched all of his work last month and, while trying to describe the devastating ending of Gespenster, it struck me that none of his endings make any sense at all unless you explain the entire film in all its detail; it's amazing really how consistent (and consistently successful) he's been with this method. Similar thing with Kreise, too. (Happy to see my haphazard subs have been downloaded almost 40 times already - anyone here seen it yet?)

BTW Jaimey Fisher's book on Petzold, which I don't think has been mentioned here, is actually very good - definitely recommended reading for anyone interested in his work. Also features a very informative interview with him.

[Numero Trois]

Petzold seems to be going from strength to strength, and I think he might have found the ideal companion for his muse Nina Hoss in Ronald Zehrfeld. She's always been a formidable ice queen, but he seems to help her access a subtle warmth and vulnerability here and in Barbara.

Well if anything, her performance in Phoenix is especially warm and textured. Much moreso than the previous film. Of course she was also fine in Barbara, but the driving force there is the plot. With Phoenix there's a more tricky balancing act that make the performances crucially front & center. No doubt one of the top films of the year. Quite worth the sixty mile drive I had to make to catch it!

[zedz]

Petzold seems to be going from strength to strength, and I think he might have found the ideal companion for his muse Nina Hoss in Ronald Zehrfeld. She's always been a formidable ice queen, but he seems to help her access a subtle warmth and vulnerability here and in Barbara.

Well if anything, her performance in Phoenix is especially warm and textured. Much moreso than the previous film. Of course she was also fine in Barbara, but the driving force there is the plot. With Phoenix there's a more tricky balancing act that make the performances crucially front & center. No doubt one of the top films of the year. Quite worth the sixty mile drive I had to make to catch it!

I happened to watch the film again last night (On Soda's fine BluRay) and was just as impressed as I was the first time. There's not much more to it than a first viewing yielded, but, like the best of Hitchcock, the precision of the filmmaking is a joy to behold, and I was holding my breath through that perfect final scene all over again. Though this time I could appreciate that every change of camera angle, ambient sound, vocal inflection and eye movement was carefully deployed to create that effect.

[domino harvey]

I also watched it last night via Soda's Blu-ray (Black-ray?) and my reaction was colder than most. I think Petzold's a great and talented director, but this never rose to the heights of much of his previous work. Going back ten years or so from this one, Gespenster contains so much dense meaning and stylistic obfuscation that the rather straight-forward and lowkey events of this film seem awfully rote in comparison (and the film feels not quite finished narratively-- sorry zedz, I see nothing "perfect" about the ending, which is a fine conclusion but somewhat lacking in dramatic payoff). We've seen a lot of strong modern noirs in the past year but this wasn't one of them. Great to see Petzold hit a slightly higher profile with the effusive praise this one is garnering, and while it didn't quite work for me, I bear the film no ill will. But I would not have gone sixty miles out of my way for it.

[zedz]

and the film feels not quite finished narratively-- sorry zedz, I see nothing "perfect" about the ending, which is a fine conclusion but somewhat lacking in dramatic payoff

We'll probably have to bandage ourselves up in spoiler tags to discuss this:

Spoiler

The entire dramatic tension of the film revolves around the two poles of
- when will Johnny recognize Nelly?
- when will Nelly come to her senses and 'recognize' Johnny (as a treacherous creep)?

And, in addition to this, at least for me, there's a real dramatic need for Nelly to obtain some kind of victory over Johnny, symbolic, practical, moral or otherwise, and for her to realize her own self worth as being independent of her (ex-)husband. Up until this point, she's a multiply victimised woman with no agency and a seemingly pathetic optimism that a whole series of bells can be unrung, and we have no idea how she could effect a turnaround.

Petzold manages to come up with an ending that delivers all of these things in a single scene, without any dialogue, conveyed solely by the mise en scene and minutiae of performance (Johnny's eyes, Nelly's singing voice).

Nelly pulls off a completely satisfying, and devastating, revenge by simply singing a song. Drops mic, end of film.

I can't imagine a more impressive or satisfying ending.

Stylistically, I think Petzold is aiming for a very stripped-down neoclassicism with his most recent work that's much harder to pull off than it appears. Whether you prefer that mode to his earlier one is a matter of taste, but I'm definitely enjoying the rigour, and I think it's particularly important when the subject matter is as potentially lurid / absurd as this film.

[domino harvey]

Spoiler

To be fair I think I fell victim to Chekov's Gun and kept waiting for a different kind of conclusion than the one we got. Maybe it will play better on rewatch. But I'm not sure revenge is the right word for her final act. She certainly emerges as the victor from a bad situation, but the husband doesn't lose anything he didn't already have (or not have) when they first "met" post-occupation.

[jindianajonz]

Spoiler

To be fair I think I fell victim to Chekov's Gun and kept waiting for a different kind of conclusion than the one we got. Maybe it will play better on rewatch. But I'm not sure revenge is the right word for her final act. She certainly emerges as the victor from a bad situation, but the husband doesn't lose anything he didn't already have (or not have) when they first "met" post-occupation.

Spoiler

That's what I liked about the ending- I think we very much were expecting the ominously shadowed gun to see more use, either to take revenge on Johnny and doom herself to prison, or to follow in the footsteps of her friend and take her own life after finding her "dream" of reuniting with Johnny is a sham. Instead, we get a much more optimistic ending which suggests she has found the inner strength to move on, while still flipping the bird to her husband.

[zedz]

Spoiler

To be fair I think I fell victim to Chekov's Gun and kept waiting for a different kind of conclusion than the one we got. Maybe it will play better on rewatch. But I'm not sure revenge is the right word for her final act. She certainly emerges as the victor from a bad situation, but the husband doesn't lose anything he didn't already have (or not have) when they first "met" post-occupation.

Spoiler

I think one of the elegant things about the ending is that Johnny is naturally going to assume (even though we know this is not really the case) that Nelly has been playing him all along, so his humiliation is absolutely complete.

I think it's also reasonable to assume that Nelly's marriage had been abusive to some extent, and that this closing victory / realization of hers encompasses the entirety of their relationship, not just the wartime betrayal. Remember that when she follows the 'false Johnny' into the shadows earlier in the film, she observes him beat and rape a woman and yet still believes him to be her Johnny, and still longs to be reunited with him.

Another important angle on the ending is that one aspect of Nelly's realization is that all her suffering has meaning. When she pushes back against Johnny's plan, it's consistently about "a woman returning from the camps would not look / behave like that", and the last straw is Johnny's insistence that she 'remove' the concentration camp number on her arm (which he assumes doesn't exist). Instead, she wears it as a mark of pride and wields it as the decisive weapon against her former husband in the final scene. This is another powerful reversal in her character. Earlier in the film, her experiences of abuse had crippled her (she simply freezes in terror when the false Johnny orders her to stop, and passively submits to his abuse), but by the end they're incorporated into her strong new identity. And under the pulpy trappings, this is a pretty sophisticated and complex film about identity.

[hangman]

Spoiler

To be fair I think I fell victim to Chekov's Gun and kept waiting for a different kind of conclusion than the one we got. Maybe it will play better on rewatch. But I'm not sure revenge is the right word for her final act. She certainly emerges as the victor from a bad situation, but the husband doesn't lose anything he didn't already have (or not have) when they first "met" post-occupation.

Spoiler

Perhaps, rather than revenge it is better call it 'liberation' then, since more or less she seems to free herself of whatever idealism or hope she had about her husband at that point. I wouldn't say the husband didn't lose out on anything important by the end, losing his wife once more is a pretty devastating thing.

I think losing his wife once again by deliberate choice on his end -- so he can't blame extreme circumstances (as Nelly tried to comfort him about his betrayal) -- just made him all the more a loser. That by the end what little he had, of perhaps self-worth or pride or lingering affections, was lost even further upon the realization.

As for the ending I think the above posts more or less sum it up but only thing I could add is that I think what is so lovely about the ending is it allows Nelly to have her identity unfold in the most natural way, her singing the one thing we've not heard in the course of the film is the one thing I think can't exactly be faked (it is her talent/profession so her habits so familiar to her husband and friends should naturally shine through). So she's able to make her identity, which she had been struggling with through out the film, known in the most effortless manner -- all while accomplishing everything else mentioned above.

[zedz]

Spoiler

Perhaps, rather than revenge it is better call it 'liberation' then, since more or less she seems to free herself of whatever idealism or hope she had about her husband at that point. I wouldn't say the husband didn't lose out on anything important by the end, losing his wife once more is a pretty devastating thing.

I think losing his wife once again by deliberate choice on his end -- so he can't blame extreme circumstances (as Nelly tried to comfort him about his betrayal) -- just made him all the more a loser. That by the end what little he had, of perhaps self-worth or pride or lingering affections, was lost even further upon the realization.

As for the ending I think the above posts more or less sum it up but only thing I could add is that I think what is so lovely about the ending is it allows Nelly to have her identity unfold in the most natural way, her singing the one thing we've not heard in the course of the film is the one thing I think can't exactly be faked (it is her talent/profession so her habits so familiar to her husband and friends should naturally shine through). So she's able to make her identity, which she had been struggling with through out the film, known in the most effortless manner -- all while accomplishing everything else mentioned above.

Spoiler

The singing, which is only manifested in that final scene, also, in miniature, echoes the whole movement from denial to acceptance that characterizes Nelly's triumphant reforging of her identity at the end of the film. At the beginning of the scene, her attitude is "I am not a singer", and this is how she performs, but by the end of it, at the same moment that every other of her denied identities (betrayed wife, Holocaust victim, Jew) is defiantly embraced and synthesized into a new persona, she also transforms before our eyes into a great singer. The song is Petzold's ingenious and economic (and fabulously melodramatic) way of showing the character's transformation happen on screen in real time.

[ianungstad]

https://www.criterion.com/people/123597 ... an-petzold" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Criterion added a phantom page today for Christian Petzold. I assume this means that they are going to release Phoenix (via IFC) in the near future? Might even be a February title.

[DarkImbecile]

https://www.criterion.com/people/123597 ... an-petzold

Criterion added a phantom page today for Christian Petzold. I assume this means that they are going to release Phoenix (via IFC) in the near future? Might even be a February title.

That's very exciting... my second favorite of the year so far. I hope they can include some earlier work, as Phoenix is the only film of his I've seen so far.

[swo17]

Announced for April

[domino harvey]

Disappointed that there aren't any non-Phoenix-specific Petzold-related extras, what a missed opportunity

[Rupert Pupkin]

The existential question from an early morning at 5:59 AM : now when I go to Criterion web page to see the new releases there's written in red "you have to log in to see this page". I didn't log in but I can still see it. I have a Criterion "account" but never use it.

I really like the cover.
I saw it in theatrical in France, twice. I was even more mesmerized the second time when I learned that Nina Hoss sung "Speak Low" (I was in the same state when I discovered this for Susie and the Bakerboys but that's not exactly the same kind of movie)
There's a very interesting long interview of Nina Hoss and Christian Petzold in French magazine "Positif" were they discussed the "Speak Low" scene.

yes the extras could have been more """extended""". A "Christian Petzold" box set with Barbara would have been great.
I have to admit that I used to have a big crush for Nina Hoss since I discovered her as a brunette in "Yella".
This movie is fascinating, and I really liked to see it in HD. So far, I don't see that "Yella" is available in Blu-Ray (I've searched in various countries).
"Yella" has a really strange atmosphere almost as if this was a kind of remake of Carnival of Sounds with acouphenes like in Blondie's song "Fan Mail" (or..... Kim Wilde's "Water on Glass")...

[JabbaTheSlut]

Spoiler

Chekhov's gun is used offscreen by Lene

Spoiler

Spoiler

To be fair I think I fell victim to Chekov's Gun and kept waiting for a different kind of conclusion than the one we got. Maybe it will play better on rewatch. But I'm not sure revenge is the right word for her final act. She certainly emerges as the victor from a bad situation, but the husband doesn't lose anything he didn't already have (or not have) when they first "met" post-occupation.

Spoiler

Perhaps, rather than revenge it is better call it 'liberation' then, since more or less she seems to free herself of whatever idealism or hope she had about her husband at that point. I wouldn't say the husband didn't lose out on anything important by the end, losing his wife once more is a pretty devastating thing.

I think losing his wife once again by deliberate choice on his end -- so he can't blame extreme circumstances (as Nelly tried to comfort him about his betrayal) -- just made him all the more a loser. That by the end what little he had, of perhaps self-worth or pride or lingering affections, was lost even further upon the realization.

As for the ending I think the above posts more or less sum it up but only thing I could add is that I think what is so lovely about the ending is it allows Nelly to have her identity unfold in the most natural way, her singing the one thing we've not heard in the course of the film is the one thing I think can't exactly be faked (it is her talent/profession so her habits so familiar to her husband and friends should naturally shine through). So she's able to make her identity, which she had been struggling with through out the film, known in the most effortless manner -- all while accomplishing everything else mentioned above.

[How rude!]

Love, love, love the cover! If anyone finds the image without text, could you please post a link here.

[mfunk9786]

I was pretty amazed by this, and I owe that mostly to Nina Hoss' astonishingly great performance, easily the best of the release year 2015 by any actor/actress, and one that carries the build to what is one of the perfect final moments I've seen in any film with aplomb. Really, this is all about the payoff [despite excellent and wisely economical plotting] but when the payoff is this rich, I don't know that I can offer anything but glee in response. I'm really speechless. Go up and read what zedz has to say (spoilertagged though much of it is) and I'll lend effusive agreement.

[sir_luke]

Blu-ray.com

[sir_luke]

And DVDBeaver

[Close The Door, Raymond]

There's a mistake in the credits on the back cover. Instead listing actors Ronald Zehrfeld and Nina Kunzendorf, it combines the two: RONALD KUNZENDORF