At this year's Berlin Film Festival, the most sought-after film for the Golden Bear was Christian Petzold's Transit.
Christian Petzold, one of the members of the Berlin Film Festival's "straight line", won the Golden Bear for the World War II film "Barbara" as early as six years ago.
This year, "Transit", with its hilarious plot, missed out on the Golden Bear, and the best picture award went to Romanian female director Adina Pintile's first full-length feature "Don't Touch Me". The failure of "Transit" can be said that "success is also history, and defeat is also history". The film "Transit" is adapted from the novel of the same name by the famous German exiled writer Anna Seggs. To escape trial by the Nazi regime, Anna Seggs left Germany in 1933 and went into exile. While in exile, Anna Seggs wrote highly critical novels such as The Bounty on the Head, Salvation, and The Seventh Cross, which brought her worldwide fame.
"Transit" is a work with a strong prose flavor, depicting the life of the exiles at that time and the difficulties they encountered. It can be said that none of the exile novels depicts the situation of the group of exiles who stayed in Marseille, France in the winter of 1940 and 1941 as in-depth and detailed as "Transit". Ana Seggs uses precise expression and artistic expression of real life to show the despair and hope of the fugitives who were waiting for the ship in nuanced detail. Christian Petzold, the director of World War II films such as "Barbara" and "The Phoenix," certainly doesn't want to repeat himself. In "Transit," he revealed his new narrative style to fans. First, he transplanted a story that took place during World War II into the present.
The confusion of time and space makes people travel back to the past in a trance. When many modern objects appear, they will suddenly find that the so-called Nazis and World War II happened in the present, just replaced the form and content, and evolved into European immigrants. The problem sparked neo-Nazism. The story of the film just uses the character structure and general experience in the novel, telling that the German army is approaching Paris, air raids may destroy the entire city at any time, and the large-scale cleansing movement within the city is one after another. The protagonist, German Gerol, escaped from Paris to the port city of Marseille as one of the refugees. By accident, he obtained the handwritten letters of the well-known writer at the time, Weedon, and the original manuscript of the unpublished novel.
Whedon committed suicide alone in the hotel, the body was secretly disposed of, and almost no one knew of his death. So Georg, who fled to Marseille, half-heartedly "acted" as Vuitton. He successfully got the escape ticket at the embassy. After more than ten days, he could escape the war, go to Mexico, and live a peaceful and comfortable life. But he was concerned with the "family affection" of his dead companion's son,
The "love" entanglement with the writer Weedon's wife Mary,
Let him struggle between "go or stay". During World War II, the German army occupied the mighty France in just a few months. As early as a few years before the occupation, native German Jews or writers and scientists with discordant political orientations began to flee. Marseille, a port city in France, is a gathering place for a large number of exiles.
As one of them, Anna Seggs rewrote what she saw with her own eyes into novels with artistic techniques during those turbulent years. At a time when neo-Nazism, a far-right organization triggered by the refugee issue in Europe, is on the rise, Christian Petzold boldly connects the two. Shifting the story of World War II into the current European setting, the anachronism feels uncomfortable at first,
However, with the development of the plot, a lot of allegory about the current world political situation and European social problems can be seen from it. The director's experimental method of dislocating the time and space background is clever and effective. The interchange of the signifier and the signified between the two eras makes the theme self-evident: the war and the Nazis could come back at any time, and the ghosts of the past have not slipped away in the bright sunlight of the modern day.
Through the hero Georg's brief exile experience in Marseille, "Transit" shows the influence and repression of neo-Nazis on people's lives through his eyes. All exiles face a crisis of identity, and a lack of belonging leads to a lack of security. Georg replaced his identity as a novelist, but this favorable identity tormented his heart. He helped the child of a dead compatriot to repair the radio, but Geor, who was about to leave his hometown, could not provide long-term companionship, and the child did not want to eat it. Marie intervenes in Georg's life again and again, wearing a red dress and a shadow, making Georg a heartbeat.
But when it was revealed that Mary was looking for her husband, the writer Weedon who was replaced by Georg, Georg's conscience was hit again. He first possessed Mary, but he was tormented by the issue of identity, and the time of departure was getting closer and closer. This love is destined to be short-lived. And the nagging fugitive conductor, the taciturn woman who strays with her dog, and Georg's mute wife who lost her compatriot, together they make for a fantastic modern ukiyo-e.
They are well-dressed, but they are all miserable in their hearts. The doctor set foot on a distant cruise ship, but did not want to end up hitting an iceberg of history. See, no one can escape, or, only body, soul and heart, are always in exile.
"Transit" carries the legacy of history, empathizing with today, allowing the doubts of World War II and the horror of the Nazis to travel through time and space to the present. The scary thing is that everything is not the lie and simulacrum of the movie, they are actually happening in the European continent now, stinging one uneasy heart after another. Transit borrows history to double the anxiety of modern people. The confusion of time and space in the film increases the text thickness of the film and reduces the cumbersome narrative for closing the theme, but the overly loose structure and the deliberately sought "breaks" and "distances" between film elements make ordinary Fans find it lackluster. The novelty brought about by the chaos of time and space was quickly exhausted by the love entanglement between the hero and heroine, and turned into a pity to abandon, and turned into a gimmick. In addition, Georg employs third-person narration when dealing with textual translations of novels and films.
A large section of narration reveals the character's heart, and at the same time is responsible for interpreting the subtext, and sometimes even advancing the plot. This kind of detached narrative method is debatable. Although the psychological distance between the audience and the characters has been widened, neutrality is maintained, and the rational collapse brought by empathy is avoided with a bystander attitude, which provides space for the audience to better think about the core of the film; but the cold narration is diluted. The concentration of the story reduces the dramatic conflict to a minimum, which affects the look and feel of the film, making it feel like a "play". The narration almost completely deconstructs the existence of the subtext, making the characters lose the inner world that needs to be hidden, and completely lose the intellectual curiosity and emotional resonance that the narration should provide.
This kind of spoken lines, along with the actors' performances, is bold and rebellious. Although it is novel, it will definitely attract the discomfort of a large number of audiences and the disdain of traditional filmmakers. Transit is a challenging and meaningful art film that invites audiences to follow the characters and make connections between the original novel and the rise of contemporary neo-Nazism, anti-refugee sentiment. Societal issues from decades ago are still not outdated. It's just that today we generally suffer from amnesia , or choose to remain silent for self-protection. But the ending must be that everyone is a victim, just like the reunion in the restaurant, the narration interpreted the onlookers full of jealousy, the hero and heroine embraced affectionately, but in the end they couldn't resist the tricks of fate and the torture of conscience, destined only to be Can part ways, yin and yang separated.
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