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Barbara, is a fairly strong film about (dis)trust and powerlessness in the former East Germany.
I was impressed with Nina Hoss who carries the film as Barbara, with her portrayal of a tightly wound professional trying to maintain her dignity in a quietly brutal system. Looks like Hoss is director Christian Petzhold's muse, having starred in 4 or 5 of his films. He certainly trusts her to make Barbara work.

There's a good moment where the head doctor confesses something from his past which would seem to put him on Barbara's side against the authorities, and she pauses and simply asks him if his story is true. Trust doesn't come easily in a spyocracy.
The rebellious girl patient Barbara befriends/helps seemed like a counterpart of Mona from Agnes Varda's Vagabond, transplanted to the unforgiving East German regime.
Good film. I'll try to hunt down more Petzold.

Nice new review of Barbara by Mr. Vishnevetsky, who sums up much better what I was trying to say above: "Like Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Petzold is a genre director whose work eschews conventional devices and techniques; his films, essentially thrillers, operate by never giving a viewer cues—visual, musical, or tonal—as to what sort of film they're watching. His plots read like pulp but play like natural, logical developments of the setting and characters". Interesting interview about Barbara there too...

I wouldn't judge Petzold by Yella, which comes off as a pretentious arthouse remake of

Spoiler

Carnival of Souls

- and I was shocked and disappointed when that's exactly what it turned out to be, because that's a terrible idea for a film. You still get to appreciate Petzold's cool eye for chic, alienated images, but that almost adds insult to injury in this instance.

Barbara is a far more successful showcase for Petzold's (and Hoss's) strengths.

I think YELLA is great. Perhaps not as great as JERICHOW or BARBARA, but it should be judged on its own terms. Also, don't think Petzold intended the reveal at the end to be an actual shock to the audience. He pretty much mentioned his inspiration for this film in every interview he gave. I think he wanted people to apply the ghost story elements of

Spoiler

CARNIVAL OF SOULS

to the state of commerce and capitalism in West Germany - his favorite themes.

Also, STATE I AM IN and GHOSTS are excellent as is BEATS BEING DEAD.

The entire Dreileben trilogy is screening tomorrow evening (Thursday the 18th) at the IFC Center: NYC cinephiles, Petzold fans or not, don't sleep on this rare opportunity!

Here's Dennis Lim's excellent essay for Cinema Scope. There are serious epiphanies in store here - miss it at your peril, but don't say you weren't told!

Reverse Shot has another good article on Dreileben (be warned though, HEAVY spoiler on Beats Being Dead): rare one-off screening of this masterpiece in NYC tonight.

Just wanted to bump this - I'll stop spamming now, I promise

Lorber's releasing Barbara stateside on Blu-ray on November 12th!

I'd completely forgotten about that film. Glad to be reminded in the most pleasant way possible.

I am trying to find out if the DVD for Toter Mann has English subtitles? Thanks for the response.

Barbara is now streaming on Netflix!

micmac wrote:I am trying to find out if the DVD for Toter Mann has English subtitles? Thanks for the response.

If you refer to the German DVD, it does not.

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Some may find this/him rather "confused" but for me its quite clear that he really tries to be precise and feels uncomfortable in a foreign language. (side note: its very difficult to argue/discuss topics on a supposed international forum where language gets attacked in the first place. I think this impatience of the english speaking majority (not all of course!) frightens off others).

I meant to say, for those who enjoyed Hoss's impeccable Kurt Weill interpretations, she sang on the last Manic Street Preachers album!

https://youtu.be/iZJx7kV6XoE" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Petzold's latest work Kreise (Circles) was aired in Germany last Sunday, it's available for viewing online with German subs (wait, see below) until next Sunday. It's a part of the long-running Polizeiruf 110 cop series, but is for all intents and purposes a stand-alone Petzold film - maybe not a major one, but with all familiar obsessions present and accounted for: work, love and money, forests, cars (the central one, of course, a red one), surveillance cameras - and even a new one: model railways! Killer needle drops (diegetic as always) too, as per usual. Also his funniest dialogue so far.

The story and dialogue is fairly easy follow with the German subs for anyone with any grasp of the language, but for those interested, I'm four-fifths through with translating the subtitles into English, should have them online tomorrow (unless they start debating Heidegger in the last 20 minutes, that is).

There's a good German-language interview in epd-Film, where he also mentions that he's already written a sequel, and mentions the reference films for both Kreise (Le Petit lieutenant, Claude Miller's Garde à vue, and Journey to Italy) and the sequel (Klute, Ferrara's Dangerous Game and Creature from the Black Lagoon - now THIS should be something to look forward to!)

(Forgot to mention above that the viewing link only works between 8pm and 8am German time, so as to protect impressionable children)

repeat wrote:(Forgot to mention above that the viewing link only works between 8pm and 8am German time, so as to protect impressionable children)

And just when I think no country can rival the UK as the ultimate nanny state.

Yeah, it's a pretty silly restriction, although having said that, the first scene is actually sexually quite explicit (at least for Petzold)! FWIW, English subs are now online, the best I could do from one foreign language to another - I hope someone finds them useful.

Having watched it several times now I have to say it's actually no trifle but a very good film, a lot of stuff in it that gets more poignant on rewatching. I'd put it up there with, say, Jerichow and Wolfsburg (still haven't seen the early TV films so can't compare with those).

We learn in the first scene of Barbara that her incarceration was long enough to have occasioned the disintegration of her circle of friends. Various reviews of this film state her offense had been applying for a visa.

Does anyone who lived in the GDR in that era know whether this would have resulted in lengthy incarceration in 1980s EGR?

TheDriver wrote:We learn in the first scene of Barbara that her incarceration was long enough to have occasioned the disintegration of her circle of friends. Various reviews of this film state her offense had been applying for a visa.

Does anyone who lived in the GDR in that era know whether this would have resulted in lengthy incarceration in 1980s EGR?

Officially it was within any GDR citizen's right to apply for an Aussreiseantrag (a request to leave the country) but as soon as they did that they would be marked as an enemy of the state. They wouldn't get directly sent to prison but their life would be systematically destroyed and as a result of that they would end up in prison. For instance their passport would be taken when they applied and then they wouldn't get it back. As it was against the law not to carry your passport everywhere to be able to present it for inspection on request, they could then be sent to prison for that. Anybody who applied to leave the country for good would also immediately lose their job and from there it wouldn't take much to get into a situation where one ends up in prison. Prison sentences could be severe even for minor offences.

Oh no! Manchester by the Sea is on his list. Sigh

It's no great film, but honestly, it's not what you see in it but what he does. I'm never going to be a Doors fan, but plenty of artists that I really like have cited them or Jim Morrison as a major influence. That still hasn't swayed me into liking their music, but it's edifying to see what they get from their work.

I’m sure that’s true. But still...it’s disappointing.

Why is it disappointing that he would like a film beloved by many people, including much of this forum?