BARBARA: SECRETS AND LIES IN EAST GERMANY

Chrisitan Petzold's (Yella, Jerichow) Barbara reunites him with his frequent leading actor Nina Hoss for a tense, but quietly measured, look at one woman's life in 1980s East Germany.  Hoss plays Barbara, a doctor whose incarceration for an unnamed crime forces her to be assigned to a small provincial hospital.  By day, she works under the authority of André (Ronald Zehrfeld), another doctor whose own reasons for toiling in this understaffed, poorly supplied facility eventually come to light.  In her evenings, Barbara is under constant threat of having her body and apartment searched by the secret police, whose suspicions are not unfounded, even if their methods are questionable.

As the film unfolds, we see Barbara meeting with a secret lover.  She's also stashing money, both at her apartment and under rocks.  Petzold is careful to not let many secrets shake loose too early in his story, preferring a slow, suspenseful intrigue to build.  We watch as Barbara lives her double life, bristling against André's attempts to connect with her at work while planning something in her time away from the hospital.  What ends up being most revealing about these characters is the reactions they have to the patients who come under their care. 

Barbara is Petzold's best film to date.  It contains multiple small revelations, each one shifting our understanding of Barbara and André situations and their inner lives.  It's astonishing, for instance, when Barbara has a second visit with her lover, how Petzold is able to completely redefine the relationship without leaning on needless exposition.  Most of the film pulls off this trick, offering up depth of character sans confessional pronouncements.  It's a film that requires a patient commitment in order to keep engaged with the slow changes in its story, but it's very much worth the time and effort.

Highly recommended.

Barbara screens at the NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium (in the Portland Art Museum) as a part of their Kinofest PDX: New German Cinema series on Friday , October 5th at 7:30pm.  More info available here.

 
Remember to find and "like" us on our Facebook page.
Subscribe to the blog's feed here. 

THE MAKING OF THE SHINING: A METHOD TO HIS MADNESS?

Stanley Kubrick was famous for putting his actors through the hell of endless takes.  On the set of The Shining, a good deal of that hell reportedly fell on the head of Shelley Duvall.  The short documentary Making The Shining, directed by Kubrick's daughter Vivian, certainly adds credence to those rumors.  It's hard to argue with Kubrick's end result--The Shining IS phenomenal--but it sure looks mighty terrible to be Duvall in this revealing 1/2 hour, behind the scenes documentary.

Take a look.  It's pretty fascinating stuff, especially for Kubrick fans:

The Shining returns to the Hollywood Theatre on Friday, October 5th.  More info available here.


Remember to find and "like" us on our Facebook page.
Subscribe to the blog's feed here.

THE SHINING: SEE, IT'S OKAY. HE SAW IT ON THE TELEVISION

While many cinephiles out there would insist that Jack Nicholson's best performances can be found either within Chinatown or the more naturalistic and off-the-cuff aesthetic of New American Cinema gems like Five Easy Pieces and Easy Rider, the majority of movie fans remember the Jack-man best for his over the top rendition of axe-happy, madman Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining.  I saw it for the first time late at night on tv as a kid and Jack (and the film) certainly made an impression, scaring the living bejeezus out of me

Kubrick took King's text as a mere jumping off point for the story he wanted to tell; in his hands, it's a chronicle of a man whose ego and vision of himself are way out of check with the reality of his family and social position.  Cognitive dissonance, ain't it a bitch?  Well, something's gotta give and, in The Shining, it's Jack's mind and soul that takes on most of the damage (even if it's Shelly Duvall, Danny Lloyd, and Scatman Crother's characters who are most directly terrorized by Jack's actions).

Kubrick's intentions seem to go a bit deeper than what resides on the surface of the story, though.  Over time, many interpretations have arisen surrounding the meaning of the film, ranging from The Shining as a Holocaust metaphor, commentary on the genocide of Native American peoples, etc.  When taking a horror genre film course at school, I was drawn to view the film through an ecological feminist lens, one that incorporated the obvious patriarchal aspects promoted within a surface reading and mingled them with issues of race, dominance over natural landscapes, and, truly, the uncontainable desire to exert control over all things (aka Manifest Destiny).  Basically, there's a lot going on here and, if interested, one can spin all kinds of theories that arguably fit within the film's narrative framework.  Or you can just choose to sit back and enjoy a damn fine and frightening film.

But on to the main point at hand: the Hollywood Theatre's got a 35mm print of The Shining to share with the Portland public.  It starts tomorrow.  You should definitely go.

And, yeah, though it's been way overplayed since going viral way back in 2005, this recut trailer still makes me laugh:

The Shining returns to the Hollywood Theatre on Friday, October 5th.  More info available here.


Remember to find and "like" us on our Facebook page.
Subscribe to the blog's feed here.