Barbara (2012)

There are few filmmakers working today who truly deserve to be mentioned as a true auteurs in modern cinema and in my books Christian Petzold is one of the most interesting of them. He is a director who has not compromised once and an artist who has stayed true to his own art for his whole career.

In his earlier works, like Gespenter and Yella, he brought us complex stories which had the rare haunting quality to stay in our minds for a long time. He has always been a rich storyteller and a director who does not spoonfed audiences with easy answers or closures. Stylistically he is also one of those rare directors who gives enough time and space for his images. He is not one of those flashy filmmakers who rely on fast cuts and style over content. For Petzold there is no need to use any unnecessary camera tricks or fast paced editing and why should there be. He is such a gifted storyteller that he can fully count on his stories and characters. Still his films has recurring use of certain colours, especially colour red, and he has fantastic capability to use sound and especially silence and elements from nature, birds, wind, water, to gain more hypnotic tension or emotion to his films. In these days when too many films are relying on bigger pyrotechnics and heavy use of CGI, it is amazing to see film this confident of it's plain visual style.

One of Petzold's biggest strenghts as a director has also been his strenght with actors and Barbara is no different in that department. Nina Hoss who seems to become regular face in Petzold's films give us one of her greatest and most complex performances so far. Hoss's Barbara is a character who is forced to live in constant fear and atmosphere of paranoia at 80's German Democratic Rebublic. In the time of stasi-agents and constant socialist tyranny Barbara is planning her escape to Denmark where her lover waits, but things get complicated when warm and charming local doctor walks into her life and start mixing things up in Barbara's own heart. From these elements Petzold cooks up an elegant thriller which builds it's tension little by little and for me the final 15-minutes were truly edge of your seat suspenseful to watch. Stakes at that point are very high because Petzold has made his main character a person we feel can truly root and feel for. That makes it all even more suspenseful to watch. There is no need for pointless chases or action. It all comes in the end to possible choices which Barbara are going to make for her own future.

What Christian Petzold has achieved with his Barbara is nothing short of remarkable. Here is a film which has every most of it's elements in their right place and when the film's solution finally came i could not have been more satisfied of how brilliantly it all comes together. Sure, the pace seems to be a bit too slow slow for it's own good but overall it also brought something special into the atmosphere of this film. Barbara is complex, thoughtful, suspenseful and heartfelt film about a woman in a crossroad in her life.

Extra credit must be given for the brilliant use of Chic's classic song At Last I Am Free at the end credits. Like in that great song, whatever the consequences might be for Barbara for her decision in the finale, at least she is free of making decisions anymore.