It may seem quite arbitrary to say this, but the story in the film, the city in the film, the buildings in the film, the characters in the film, and even the way they speak, really feels very close to our real life. Such a story can only happen in such a country, in such a system. To borrow the words of Ms. Zhang Ailing, in such a system, "it seems that the sky is covered with patches".
Barbara is a young doctor who was sent from the capital Berlin to Rostock, a small East German town on the Baltic Sea. From the brief account of the film, the audience can know that Barbara was just released from prison. After coming to this small town, she was still under the jurisdiction of the local police department. They often came to her house to search without warning, and even Every time I called the policewoman to let her strip and search her body. She lives in the apartment that the police have arranged for her, which is familiar to older audiences, a typical Soviet-style apartment, with a dirty and mottled floor. What's more, her neighbor is a revolutionary aunt, who, like the little foot aunt of the Chinese neighborhood committee, is watching her life at any time.
We don't know what Barbara was in prison for, she's been silent in the film. But we do know that in a society like East Germany, she could go to jail for any reason. As the plot progresses, we learn that she has a boyfriend from West Germany who sometimes comes here to quietly tryst with her. From her series of words and deeds, it can be seen that she is somewhat out of tune with the current situation, and belongs to the dissidents that this system does not like. In the small town hospital she was in, there was another person with a similar experience to her, and that was the hero Leizer in the film. He was once a doctor who could have entered the capital, but a medical accident, he also was sent to this small hospital. This is a doctor with a great sense of professional honor and has his own standards. However, he promised the security services to report the situation to them regularly. He also longed to go abroad, his goal was The Hague, and Rembrandt's paintings attracted him. There is also a key character in the film, the girl Stella who escaped from the youth labor camp. She is pregnant and does not want her child to be born in this damn country, so she also tries her best to escape.
The three main characters gather in a small hospital in this small town. Everyone, like the local environment, has a depressing and gloomy experience, and there is a kind of alienation from the surrounding crowd. It was fate that threw them into this little place, this little hospital. Yet they all share the hope of leaving the country and finding their own happiness. This is rather ironic. In a country with such a system, one's happy life is always described as a paradise, and people's patriotic enthusiasm is always emphasized. However, in such a paradise, the gray in reality replaces the rosy color in dreams, and everyone is thinking of getting out of here as soon as possible. It is also a strong smell of socialism that can be smelled in every country that identifies itself as a socialist.
Both Barbara and Lazer have superb medical skills and compassionate hearts. Leizer has a good impression of Barbara, it can even be said to be a kind of admiration. Because Barbara wants to meet her boyfriend as soon as possible, her love for Leizer is first resistance, then wandering and hesitation. On one side is a boyfriend who has been in love for a long time, and there is freedom to come, but there is little hatred for each other; on the other side, they are with each other every day and have the same career and interests, but choosing him means giving up freedom. Stella seems to be more like Barbara in the past. Barbara saw her tragic life from her, so her sympathy for her multiplied, and Stella also felt Barbara's kindness to her. It creates a trust or even a dependency. She is also an important weight for Barbara to go east or west. With her, Barbara completed her choice of love, and at the same time achieved a kind of moral fulfillment.
We can see from the movie that Barbara's love for her boyfriend should be relatively firm. They risk a sweet rendezvous in the woods, tacitly and secretly planning their future. At this time, from her boyfriend, Barbara not only enjoys the sweetness of love, but also maintains her hope for freedom. Indeed, in such a system, in order to leave such a country, marriage with a foreigner is the best channel, as in East Germany, as in China. We can also see from the film that Barbara's boyfriend's friend also found a girlfriend in East Germany, and her love for her West German boyfriend is based on material things and going abroad. However, Barbara's reflection on her love with her boyfriend also came from this girl. Barbara is a person with an obsession with moral cleanliness. The chance encounter with her in the hotel may make Barbara reflect on the fact that she is also a materialistic woman, just to be able to live a better life in West Germany. I just fell in love with my boyfriend. Her love for her boyfriend should have started to hesitate at that time. When he went to West Germany, his boyfriend was a businessman, and he told her that he had made enough money to support her and didn't need her to go out to work. But Barbara clearly has a high sense of honor for her profession. Staying at home like a golden bird might not be what she wanted. Lazer's pursuit caused a conflict in her heart. And Stella's escape made Barbara's balance begin to tilt.
Leizer started his love journey in silence, and gradually formed a huge pulling force for Barbara. He gets along with Barbara day and night, and can show his care and love for Barbara in subtle ways. He and Barbara are the same doctors, the same doctors who are at fault and even guilty under the socialist system, and their fates are similar. At the same time, they both have good medical skills and a professional sense of morality, which inevitably makes them cherish each other in that gloomy environment, and even lean on each other to keep warm. And that's something Barbara's boyfriend will never have. They all wanted to leave the country and go to a free place. However, Barbara wanted to smuggle out of West Germany with the help of her boyfriend, while Leizer wanted to go to The Hague on her own. He told Barbara about the Rembrandt painting "Professor Dupp's Anatomy Lesson" in his laboratory, thereby showing her his heart and reminding Barbara not to feel sorry for herself, but Pay more attention to the "victim". The interpretation of this painting undoubtedly left the seeds of love in Barbara's heart. And he lent Barbara a book, and by telling the story in the book, he clearly expressed his love to Barbara. In the end, Barbara gave up her long-time boyfriend and the chance to escape from East Germany, returned to the hospital, and returned to Dr. Leizer. Did Leizer's love triumph over Barbara's quest for freedom?
The East German secret policeman Klaus in the movie is also a very socialist character. His face was calm and gloomy, and his eyes were firm and fierce. It was indeed the face of a typical secret police officer. He is quite conscientious about his profession, and his eyes are naturally full of distrust towards a prisoner like Barbara. He doubted everything, and without hesitation, violently interfered in Barbara's life. However, he is again a grieving husband in the film, her wife suffering from cancer, suffering great pain and waiting to die. He was worried about his wife's health, and in order to relieve his wife's pain, he called Dr. Leizer to inject her with morphine. His expression at that time, what he did, was that of an ordinary person, completely missing the face of officials in the system. In the eyes of the audience, he is undoubtedly a bad guy, but his badness is not due to his own morals, he is just doing his duty. Just as in his eyes, Barbara is a bad person, but the audience is very clear about what kind of person Barbara is. Here, good and bad are not what people normally understand. The evil of Cross is actually the evil of the system.
Barbara asked Stella to take her place on a motorboat and escaped from East Germany, but she chose to stay. Perhaps, she thought that Stella needed to flee more. After all, she had escaped from the labor camp many times, and going back would definitely be a dead end, not to mention that she was pregnant and dreamed of letting her unborn child enjoy freedom. Perhaps it was Leizer's love that made her take a photo. Compared with her former boyfriend, Leviz may be more realistic, and her love for him is purer. After all, they are like-minded. In the movie, with her courage, Barbara gave up her freedom, flashed the brilliance of her human nature, achieved her greatness of personality, and will also reap sweet love.
However, I wonder if she has already thought about how to face the future life? It is not something that can be overcome by a moment of courage, but it takes a long life to spend. Her past with Leizer had made them dissidents of this system, and they were already branded, unable to integrate into this system. And they have to live in a dark and suffocating society, have to constantly deal with the entanglement of secret police like Klaus, and face the humiliation of human dignity and the threat of human life. A painful and long life. We know that this system ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990. Is Barbara ready?
Here, freedom is more like a smooth road, while love is full of thorns.
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