Barbara (2012 film)

Barbara

Film poster
Directed by Christian Petzold
Written by Christian Petzold
Harun Farocki
Starring Nina Hoss
Ronald Zehrfeld
Jasna Fritzi Bauer
Mark Waschke
Rainer Bock
Music by Stefan Will
Cinematography Hans Fromm
Edited by Bettina Böhler
Release dates
  • 11 February 2012 (2012-02-11) (Berlin)
Running time
 105 minutes
Country Germany
Language German
Box office $3.1 million[1]

Barbara is a 2012 German drama film directed by Christian Petzold. The film competed at the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival in February 2012,[2] where Petzold won the Silver Bear for Best Director.[3] The film was selected as the German entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards, but it did not make the final shortlist.[4]

Plot

East Germany in 1980: Barbara (Nina Hoss) is a chain-smoking physician who arrives for her first day at a small rural hospital near the Baltic Sea. She had been at the prestigious Charité hospital in East Berlin but, after she'd filed an "Ausreiseantrag" – an official request to leave East Germany – she had been incarcerated and transferred to the small town where she is still monitored by the Stasi. She is punished - for the hours in which they cannot find her - by searching her house, strip-searching and cavity-searching her.

In her new job, she works in pediatric surgery, a department led by chief physician André Reiser. Reiser eventually tells her a story (whose veracity she questions) of how he too had lost his job at a more prestigious hospital in Berlin – he was responsible for an accident with an incubator that left two premature infants blind. The Stasi had agreed to keep it quiet if he agreed to relocate to the provincial hospital and to work for them. So now Reiser reports on suspected people including Barbara.

Early on, when the police deliver Stella, a young runaway from a labour camp, to the hospital for the fourth time, Reiser thinks Stella is malingering. Barbara intervenes and orders removal of the restraints on the patient, readily diagnosing her with meningitis. During her recovery, Stella develops a strong attachment to Barbara, whose welcome bedside manner includes reading the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to her. Stella is pregnant and wants to raise the child. Wanting to escape from the country and to have her child in a new land, she implores Barbara to take her with her. However, they cannot find grounds for keeping Stella longer and soon she is returned against her will to the labour camp.

Meanwhile, Barbara makes secretive bicycle treks, to a place to stash her secretly received funds for escape, and to the woods where she meets with her West German lover Jörg, who has been supplying her with prized goods and is preparing for her escape. When she meets him for a second rendezvous in an "Interhotel" (an East-German hotel for foreigners), he tells her of his finalised plan for her escape the following weekend: she will be picked up in a small boat in the Baltic Sea and taken the short distance to Denmark.

As the two doctors spend more and more time together, Reiser begins making romantic overtures, which she rebuffs even while she is impressed by Reiser in turn. He has built a laboratory, to test samples on-site, and he has created his own serums with which to treat patients.

One day before her planned departure, with a second critical, suicidal patient, Mario, Barbara discovers while on duty that Mario has not been recovering from his suicide attempt as well as they thought and requires brain surgery; she tracks Reiser down on his day off so as to inform him of the urgency of surgery. She finds him at the home of the Stasi agent who has been overseeing her monitoring, treating his wife who is dying of cancer. Reiser insists her to travel to their hospital - the same night of her planned escape – to perform the surgery and insists she be the anaesthesiologist.

Following her agreement to be there, yet still planning her escape, Barbara accepts Reiser's invitation to let him cook a lunch for her at his home on the same day. When Reiser finally tells Barbara that he is happy to have her living there, she kisses him but then pulls away and returns to her house to continue preparations for the escape.

During this time, Stella flees the labour youth detention programme again and stumbles on to Barbara's doorstep the very night of her intended escape by sea. Barbara takes her to the shore where the escape plan will proceed, writing a note to accompany Stella that is presumably addressed to Jörg, explaining why she has chosen to have Stella replace her. After ushering Stella to the boat she returns to the hospital and joins André at Mario's bedside, suggestive that she will stay on as a partner with Reiser, in more ways than one.

Cast

Critical reception

Currently, the film has a rating of 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 75 reviews and an average score of 7.7/10.[5]

Writing in The Guardian, film critic Peter Bradshaw said of Barbara: "The weird oppression and seediness of the times is elegantly captured, and Hoss coolly conveys Barbara's highly strung desperation." Bradshaw awarded the film four stars out of five.[6] The New York Times designated Barbara a critics' pick. In her review, Manohla Dargis said of the film: "Barbara is a film about the old Germany from one of the best directors working in the new: Christian Petzold. For more than a decade Mr. Petzold has been making his mark on the international cinema scene with smart, tense films that resemble psychological thrillers, but are distinguished by their strange story turns, moral thorns, visual beauty and filmmaking intelligence."[7] Steven Rea wrote that "Christian Petzold's masterfully hushed, suspenseful thriller percolates with dread....Hoss, wearing her blond hair pulled back tight, and wearing an expression of inscrutable melancholy, gives a performance that doesn't feel like a performance at all. Her Barbara is absolutely real, and absolutely trapped. The film is aching, and exquisite."[8]

Film scholar Christina Gerhardt, in her review of Barbara, wrote: "Photographic choices, such as frequent medium-to-long shots, level framing, and long takes, combine to create a slow-moving film, with an emotional reserve, but palpable feelings simmering beneath the surface."[9] On a similar note, in the Chicago Sun-Times, Sheila O'Malley concluded, "This is well-trod ground for Petzold, but never has it been so fully realized, so palpable, as in 'Barbara.'"[10]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Barbara". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2 November 2012.
  2. ↑ "Press Release, 9th Jan". berlinale.de. 9 January 2012. Retrieved 9 January 2012.
  3. ↑ "Prizes of the International Jury 2012". Berlinale. 2012-02-19. Retrieved 2012-02-19.
  4. ↑ "Germany's Oscar entry is Christian Petzold's Barbara". Screendaily. Retrieved 2012-08-31.
  5. ↑ "Barbara Movie Reviews". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved 23 December 2012.
  6. ↑ Bradshaw, Peter (27 September 2012). "'Barbara - review'". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 December 2012.
  7. ↑ Dargis, Manohla (20 December 2012). "'Pushed and Pulled, a Doctor Wants a Way Out'". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 December 2012.
  8. ↑ "'Barbara' portrays life behind Iron Curtain". philly-archives. Retrieved 4 February 2016.
  9. ↑ Gerhardt, Christina (October 2012). "'Winning a (Hi)story out of Places': Christian Petzold's Barbara". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 24 December 2012.
  10. ↑ Sheila O'Malley (6 March 2013). "Barbara". Retrieved 4 February 2016.

External links

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