Don't mention Beirut ! I mentioned it once, but I think that I got away with it all right...

This is a (short) review of A Most Wanted Man (2014)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

3 September

This is a (short) review of A Most Wanted Man (2014)

Funding apart, there really is little point in having a film set in a country where all the cast speaks English, but they are supposed to sound as if they speak it with the accent of that country.

To that end, Rachel McAdams (who was not identifiable even as a non-German, despite being the love interest in Midnight in Paris (2012)) was alone worth the sole language coach’s fee, whereas Willem Dafoe desperately drifted, but that was better than the respected Philip Seymour Hoffman, who, despite his German name, sounded most often like the best of Richard Burton than any Günther Bachmann.

What was, McAdams apart, the point of this exercise, where Germans such as Nina Hoss (Irna Frey, and who played the lead in Barbara (2012)) were in no way matched by the non-Germans ? One has no doubt that Hoss could have spoken English with less of an accent than the one that the non-Germans were not picking up…

That apart, however nicely the production was put together, more of the same with the script (maybe to be laid at author John Le Carré’s door) : one big dénouement (perhaps predictable) to account for why a man who, under Russian torture (as Günther observes), confesses to crimes and who anyway fits the visual image of the dodgy muslim fundamentalist (until he trims some hair), can prove to be actually more like Prince Myshkin than a jihadist.

Frankly, if that is what one takes from the film, that a man who admits that the non-organization that he heads has no status will not be done over in seeking to protect this Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin) and that said Karpov needed some love, then that is not worth the price of the ticket.

Ah, but one forgets the original soundtrack ! As Hamburg is the home of a sailing nation and a commercial centre, accordion slowed down so that sea-shanties became unrecognizable, incorporating the sound of also slowed data-transmissions into composition, and otherwise imitating Arvo Pärt’s procedure of tintinnabulation – all of that must have made it worthwhile after all.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Barbara - in two Tweets, and a bit of bloggin'

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

20 November

* Contains spoilers *

@picturehouses Dunno about Barbara - it's recommended if you liked The Lives of Others, but it - Barbara herself apart - doesn't go beyond.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 20, 2012

Barbara - does the film portray the same ruthless, but largely inept, Stasi that The Lives of Others did, basically benign because bungling?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 20, 2012

To my mind, if you've seen Others (2006)*, viewing Barbara is inextricably linked with that experience, although I would, in no way, want to underplay the fact that Nina Hoss plays the title role brilliantly, and that this fact alone serves to distinguish Barbara from the earlier film** (together with the skill and genuineness that Ronald Zehrfeld brings to playing the co-starring part of André).


To keep, for a moment, on this bungling Stasi idea, a few observations (in no particular order) :

* Barbara disappears off on the train and thence to a lakeside restaurant to get cash left for her by her lover in West Germany*** (somehow she knows that it is there, which is never - fair enough - explained)

* She does all this (and stashes the money where, I think, he has suggested) without any more than her hours-long absence being detected

* However, the Stasi seem powerless / unwilling to punish her for her more or less obvious disobedience / suspicious behaviour (even at this stage : Barbara never presents, from the first shot, as someone who will tow the line), except by the humiliation of trashing her flat when looking it over

* Despite these disruptive looks-around her accommodation, they later fail to find the cash at the time when it is hanging from a thread down the flue of her stove

* They humiliate her, at the same time, by intimate strip-searches, but to no avail, as - whatever they think that they are looking for (i.e. they do not question her in any meaningful way, let alone interrogate her) - they never find anything (if I kept looking, and not discovering, when Barbara behaves as she does, I cannot imagine saying Ho hum!)

* She sneaks away and, seemingly undetected, spends (part of) the night with her lover - I recall no visit, no sanctions


Do I need to go on, to suggest that these Stasi agents are not the brightest matches in the box? Fine for a talented and compassionate, as well as highly intelligent, doctor to outwit them, but I got the impression that Minnie Mouse could have, too...

Barbara is no Minnie at all - she is hard to get to know, easier to like, and that is the joy of the film, and of seeing André interested in (and trying to soften) her supiciousness (which is her protective cloak) and her.

That part of the film is perfectly fine, but it is the business with the rude mechanicals that doesn't convince me, and makes the film overall the weaker.


Apologies for a bit of a rushed account of this, which (unless it is something that merits no polishing) may get it later...

Actually, what it's going to get is this Twitter exchange :

'Barbara' a muted mystery timepiece swept international film festival circuit, praised for its take on East German life dw.de/p/179bm
— German Culture (@GermanKultur) December 27, 2012

@germankultur Fine, but a documentary, with re-enactments, could do that, and that isn't what makes a feature film, I believe.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 27, 2012

@theagentapsley Have seen it and must admit, having experience of the country at the time, thought it summed up the emotional conflict.
— German Culture (@GermanKultur) December 27, 2012

@germankultur It's not an inherent criticism that a film depends on one character, but I felt that this one did too much (and inept Stasi).
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 27, 2012

End-notes

* IMDb suggests that there is a The Lives of Others (2013).

** Which is not to criticize Ulrich Mühe, but rather the limitations of his part, or Martina Gedeck, for whom, from Atomized (2000) I have a soft spot / a lot of time for her acting.

*** BRD = Bundesrepublik Deutschland, which we called FRG = Federal Republic of Germany.


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