Deutschstunde | The German Lesson (2019) Germany
Directed by Christian Schwochow
Der Passfälscher | The Forger (2022) Germany
Directed by Maggie Peren
There is a huge selection at this year’s German Film Festival including a curation of 5 films across 5 decades sponsored by the Goethe-Institut, featuring well-known classics like Volker Schlöndorff’s superb The Tin Drum (1969) – we actually named our dog Oskar (in part because it’s an great name, but also in part to recall the genius of Schlöndorff in said film). His 2014 two-hander Diplomacy with André Dussollier and Niels Arestrup, about an imagined negotiation to avert the destruction of Paris, was brilliantly acted and immensely engrossing even if the imagined events are a little too close to the truth (those interested should catch this on Google Play or Apple TV if you’ve not already seen it). The 5 films also included one of my favourite recent German films, Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria (2016), shot in a single take and over the course of a night, with brilliant performances by the gorgeous Spanish actor Laia Costa in her first lead role in a film, paired with the extremely prolific German actor Frederick Lau as well as Franz Rogowski, who has been dubbed ‘man of the hour’ currently on mubi.
The festival has also brought with it a slew of new German films, with many of them based on books or are based on real events, as with the two films that are to be reviewed here.
The German Lesson
Let’s start by posing a question: ‘What are the joys of duty?’ If you were to compose an essay on this, how would you start your narrative?
For me, I would say that the key in unlocking this question doesn’t quite revolve around the idea of ‘joy’, and instead becomes reflexive: it is a question of how dutifully one would approach this task in the first place, and secondly, to what extent would our bind to duty exceed human tolerances of amorality. In other words, how do we know what is the right thing to do?
The lesson taught in this masterly film by Christian Schwochow (you should also try to catch his film Je Suis Karl (2021) on Netflix) is none other than a lesson on how to act in good conscience; and in the process, one hopes to learn the difference between duty and humanity. When seen through the eyes of the film’s young protagonist Siggi Jepsen (we find an incredible fresh talent in Levi Eisenblätter who must have been about twelve when he starred in this film) whose formative experiences during the war years would come to shape his own conscience, and subsequently, we find in him an urgent and irrepressible need to recalibrate his loyalties, or at least make sense of his actions, through the writing of this very personal story.
Based on a seminal novel of the same name by Siegfried Lenz; written and published in 1968, this is a book that has remained in circulation and has stayed in the curriculum for Year 6 students in Germany. For the film, Schwochow’s mother Heide Schwochow adapted the screenplay. This is the sixth film that this mother and son pair have worked on together with Heide in the writer’s chair; and clearly, this is a rewarding collaboration. The same goes with Schwochow’s long-time cinematographer, Frank Lamm who has a singular ability to strike a balance between widescreen landscapes, of the untamable wilderness outside, and giving us arresting close-ups, of faces with eyes showing the wilderness within.
The film opens with an unnamed young man sitting at a desk with other classmates, the only tell-tale sign of his identity and location is his shaved head: as an audience, we intuit that he’s in juvenile detention. Then the class is given the essay topic of ‘the joys of duty’. This young man’s inability to write even a single word led him into solitary confinement where he was finally able to pen his narrative. This is where the story of his childhood begins, and with it, our lesson on an uncharted course on the gross deference of humanity. In war, all that we hold dear gets tossed to the winds; and our world is caught in an unending war.
Siggi’s father, Jens Ole Jepsen (Ulrich Noethen), is the solitary and taciturn policeman stationed at their remote German northern coastal community. And without another authoritative figure in the community, Jepsen takes his duties very seriously; he enforces them to the tee. This is his will to power, the power to dominate regardless of consequence, regardless of reason. His neighbour, Max, is an artist, and godfather to Siggi. Max is played by the wonderful actor Tobias Moretti – he was fantastic in the avant-garde Mack the Knife – Brecht’s Threepenny Film (2018) which I had the good fortune to catch on the big screen during the 2019 German Film Festival season. Max’s Expressionist paintings have been labelled ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis and Jepsen took pleasure in ordering his friend to stop painting. When that failed, he engineered his young son to spy on him; not realising that the bond between the two was stronger than his own bond with his son. Feeling humiliated, Jepsen had Max’s works unceremoniously and forcibly confiscated.
The worst was still to come. The family fractures: Siggi’s sister Hilke (Maria Dragus), a mostly absent family member to whom he was the closest; continues to leave despite her love for him. His older brother Klaus (played by the handsome Louis Hofmann, star of the hit Netflix series Dark, and The Forger (2022)) deserts the army and is disavowed by his father; Max was the only one sympathetic to Klaus’ predicament.
The enormous tension between the two father figures tears Siggi apart; his love and trust for Max was evident and his growing disloyalty to his own father meant that Siggi’s conscience is split between the two different ideas of duty.
A duty which is more a ‘calling’ fuels Max’s drive; and his ability to see beyond the dull and swampy mud flats, where from its cesspool, lush paintings of light and colour emerge; with this inner vision, he’s able to steer Siggi into a bearable if not better presence of mind. And the other, a constructed form of duty which would only exist should one blindly obey its orders.
The contrast between the monochromatic tones of dead seafaring birds, small house rodents, sun-worn bleached skeletons, as well as bits of wings and feathers that Siggi amassed in a decomposing shrine, acts as a counterpoint to the stylised and colourful paintings by Max: the amassed tomb stationed by the opened windows, the paintings glued and taped back together are stuck onto the barren walls of an abandoned house. This is Siggi’s paradise. The mood of this film is reminiscent of Louis Malle’s beloved and very personal film Au revoir les enfants (1987), where the tidal instincts of what constitutes the right thing to do is clearly visible in the tender faces of the young school boys. Siggi is no different here despite their somewhat different circumstances.
The landscape of Schleswig-Holstein is wind-swept and bleak; this is where the mud sticks. In this infernal place, which idea of duty can be learnt?
The Forger
Based on Cioma Schönhaus’s memoirs, The Forger: An Extraordinary Story of Survival in Wartime Berlin, is indeed the extraordinary account of a young Jewish man’s means of survival during the second world war in Berlin.
The contrast between this film and Schwochow’s The German Lesson could not be more starkly different. A far cry from the sombre lesson of Schwochow’s film, instead, there is a kind of effervescence in Louis Hoffman’s portrayal of Cioma, and if not for it being a non-fictional account, one would find this tale to be a highly dubious one.
The lightness of fingers that is often associated with trickery or forgery is a character that imbues the film throughout. There is an almost blatant disregard for the serious nature or the dangers of war in Cioma’s world – nor did he seem to be too concerned about the ‘disappearance’ of his family. I have read reviews of the book which described it to be an ‘enjoyable’ affair, again (at least to me) this description rubbed against the grain of reality. Nonetheless, Hoffman’s delivery of the central character, as a brash twenty year old living off his charms by day and wits by night, who had a steady hand and a love of graphic design, was however, well acted. Jonathan Berlin who played his best friend Det, a tailor by trade was also nicely cast; they were kind with each other, and there was something delicate in their friendship that made their relationship believable – perhaps especially when seen through the lens of memory. They were well supported by a strong ensemble cast, with Nina Gummich (I last saw her in Babylon Berlin) as the landlady and Luna Wedler (fantastic in the Netflix series Biohacker and The Story of My Wife (2021)) as Cioma’s love interest, Gerda.
Cioma continued to outsmart friends, acquaintances, his landlady, inspectors, the Gestapo; skipping from one abode to another; living day-to-day on ration stamps, he was however able to dine at expensive restaurants and clubs, even dressing in uniform as a German naval officer in order to seduce a love interest. His brazen attitude meant that his work as a self-taught forger suited him well; and in this vein, he was able to help forge hundreds of IDs and papers for Jews in hiding, and thus saving their lives. Eventually he too had to flee to Switzerland, first by bicycle and then by swimming across a bitingly cold lake to cross the border, where he remained working as a graphic artist until his death in 2015. He published his memoirs at the age of eighty-two in 2004.
#german film festival is currently playing at selected Palace cinemas around Australia, finishing on the 19th June in Sydney, Byron Bay, Melbourne and Canberra; and 22nd June in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.
#filmfestivaleveryday #filmoftheday #jandnfilmfestival
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