Wendine
Director: Christian Petzold
Screenwriter: Christian Petzold
Starring: Paula Bell, Franz Rogowski, Marianne Zary
Genre: Drama / Romance
Release date: 2020-02-23 (Berlin Film Festival)/2020-06-11 (Germany)
It can be said that the German director Christian Petzold has become the representative and leading figure of the "Berlin School" of contemporary German film thought. His latest work, "Wendini," which premiered at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival, sparked an immediate rapturous response, and ultimately brought heroine Paula Bell her first-ever film." Best Actress" trophy. This is also the first part of Petzold's "Elemental Elf Trilogy". The next two will involve the air elf Sylph and the earth elf Norm respectively.
"Wendini" tells a wonderful and sad love story in modern Berlin - the love and death of a water elf. In the final analysis, the film tells the story of a "love triangle", but through the narration of German director Christian Petzold and the spiritual interpretation of the heroine Paula Bell, this seemingly bloody love The story is given a fantasy and romantic look, which makes people addicted.
When myth meets the 21st century
"Wendini" is based on the story of Wendini, a water elf in European mythology.
Undine is the name of the "water" element mentioned by the medieval European alchemist Paracelsus in his alchemy theory. According to Paracelsus' theory, Undine is the female elf of water, or goddess, who is the master of all water elements.
In some European folklore, it is impossible for Wendine to acquire a real soul if they cannot be associated with a mortal man. But if the man who married Wendini had an affair and betrayed Wendini's love, Wendini would kill her husband and return to the water to live again; the legend also said that if Wendini's husband was in the water While scolding Wendini, she would jump back into the water because she was sad and scared and disappeared. However, Wentini, who returns to the water, will also lose the soul conferred by her marriage.
And when Petzold placed such a mythical figure in today's Berlin city, it gave an extra layer of color to the character in this myth.
Paula Bell played Wendini, a scholar who studies the urban development of Berlin. She specially explains the city's history and changes to tourists in Berlin. And her boyfriend Jonas has another new love and wants to break up with Wendini. Wentini was quite sad, and even said something like: "If you leave me, I can only kill you, you know".
And the end of a relationship just became the beginning of another unforgettable love. When Wentini, who was in a state of despair, returned to the cafe and wanted to have a chat with Jonas, the other party had already left. Unwilling to give up, she looked around in the cafe, but suddenly she seemed to be "inspired by fate". Under the huge water tank with the statue of a diver, Wentini meets the "destined" man, Christopher.
The romance of "Wendini" is that the condition for Wendini to survive on land is to have a love, and when the love ends, it means that her life, or soul will go to the end, she She must kill the lover who betrayed her and return to the water.
As a result, love has become a necessity for Wendini, like breathing. But this also means a kind of tragic ending that seems to be doomed. Wentini must rely on this symbiotic emotion to survive, and this symbiotic emotion is precisely the most elusive and incomprehensible thing in the world. .
In this film, the "love triangle" brings a trace of tragic and decisiveness to the story on top of the doomed tragedy. When Wentini was in love with Christopher, an unintentional eye contact with her ex-boyfriend Jonas made Wendini's heart stop for a moment.
When confronted with the questioning of the mysterious phone call from "Christopher", Wentini had no choice but to tell the truth, but then she found out that her lover had already suffered an accident and was pronounced brain dead by the doctor. In order to save her most beloved man, Wentini could no longer avoid her fate. She quietly dived into the water in the middle of the night, killed Jonas with the power of water, and returned to the water again.
As if a reincarnation had ended, Christopher, who was in a coma, suddenly woke up, only to find that Wentini had completely disappeared from her life, from the city of Berlin.
The curse of fate
In fact, for viewers who don't particularly understand European mythology, the film "Wendini" will cause great confusion to a certain extent. Why can killing an unfaithful ex-boyfriend save your lover? Why did she have to go back to the water after killing her ex-boyfriend?
But for me, what I love most about this movie is the last half hour. When the love suddenly shatters, when the accident suddenly comes, you have a choice, you can choose to sacrifice everything you have to save another person, will you do the same? And when you choose to sacrifice, do you think that your sacrifice will leave a severe and indelible wound on the person you love?
Christopher, who woke up from a coma, started frantically looking for Wentini. He went to her house, only to find that it was already occupied by new tenants; he went to the museum, but found Wentini's The position has already been replaced by another person; when he came to the cafe where the two met, he asked her former colleague Wendine where she was, but he could only get a cold response. Wentini seemed to have disappeared from this world. If it wasn't for the red wine stain on the wall that was always there, the love between Wendini and Christopher seemed to be a dream.
But a love, no matter how unforgettable it is, will eventually usher in a goodbye. At the end of the film, two years later, Christopher has married his female colleague and began to conceive a new life. Christopher once again returned to the lake where the two used to dive together, here He saw Wendine again. Although the camera didn't capture anything, he was sure in his heart that the lover he was thinking of, Wendini was there.
So he left without saying goodbye, left his wife in the early morning and returned to the lake. But the wife who had a premonition chased after him at this time, with the child in her belly, shouting her husband's name on the bridge, at this moment we saw another "love triangle", but this time, Christopher stood in the middle.
I think Christopher at that time wanted to follow Wentini. He finally glanced at his wife and gradually sank into the water. Wentini appeared in front of him and winked at him as if Saying "I know". Then she took his hand, brought him to the surface, and brought him back to his wife.
This is Wentini's last farewell, and Wentini's blessing to Christopher. When Christopher returned to his wife, he held Wentini's diver statue in his hand, as if to silently explain that Wentini would completely walk out of his life from now on, and Christopher's fate would depend on him from now on. in their own hands. In the end, the camera looked at the two people walking hand in hand from the water, and gradually sank to the bottom of the water.
Including the mysterious phone call, many "warnings" from fate have already been inserted in the film. When the two were diving underwater together, Christopher was about to express his love to Wentini under the name of Wentini underwater, when Wentini was suddenly taken away by a huge catfish and almost drowned, as if It was already fate's warning to Wendini, but when Christopher rescued her and rescued her with artificial respiration, she asked, "Can you give me another artificial respiration?" I think this time , what she really wanted to ask was: "Can you really save me from the hands of fate?"
And when Wentini missed the diver sculpture and fell to the ground, the diver sculpture's right leg was broken, and in the end Christopher's accident was that the turbine suddenly operated, jamming his leg, causing him to lack oxygen. for 12 minutes and eventually lead to brain death.
A love, a city
In fact, the film has never emphasized Wentini's identity, her past is a mystery, but under Paula Bell's interpretation, Wentini in the film is full of mysterious charm, she seems to be really walking in a high-rise building The elves in the city have lived for a long time, just to find a soul mate in the city.
While showing Wendine's story, the film shows us another important role in the film, the city of Berlin, with her constant wandering and viewing.
Director Christian Petzold also borrowed Wentini's mouth to describe to the audience Berlin that has undergone historical vicissitudes. And its origin is actually a swamp. From the past to now, even the long academic lines seem to have a different kind of romance in Wendini's mouth.
Especially when Wentini spoke about the historical evolution of the Berlin Palace that night, these academic statements seemed to bring the director's own thinking, "Berlin Palace is a reference for this city". Historically, the people of the two Germanys had different views on the remains of the Berlin Palace and the open space after it was demolished. After the reunification of the two Germanys, the Berlin Palace was rebuilt again, which was a kind of "lost and found" for the people of Berlin.
This is why Petzold et al. are called the "Berlin School". The title of the Berlin School first appeared in 2003. Most of the directors in this "small group" live in Berlin, and they all started from the Berlin Film Festival to the world. At the same time, their film industry mostly pursues a concise and restrained, realistic style. Most of their stories are thinking about a question, that is, "What is Germany today?", full of reflections on German history and modernity. Therefore, most of these stories take place in today's Berlin or Germany.
These directors and their works also happen to represent the revival of a new generation of German films after the reunification of the two Germanys, and also symbolize the revival and prosperity of the German film industry in recent years. "Goodbye Lenin", "The Destruction of the Empire", "Eavesdropping Storm" and "Bader and Meinhof Group", including Petzold's previous works "Barbara", "Phoenix", etc. are all of the Berlin School important representative works.
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