Phoenix

What a movie. Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, and Nina Kunzendorf star in "Phoenix," a 2014 film based on the French novel "Return from the Ashes". There was a previous film made from this novel, actually called Return from the Ashes in 1965. I remembered seeing that movie as a kid and finally found it again. It's very good, but this film is better. Nina Hoss plays Nelly, a concentration camp survivor who was shot in the face. A government worker, Lena (Kunzendorf) in charge of helping victims, brings her to a plastic surgeon. Nelly is adamant that she wants to look exactly as she did before. The doctor can only promise to try. When she asks Lena who is paying for all this, Lena tells her that her entire family is dead and she has come into quite a bit of money. When Nelly sees herself, the face is foreign to her and she says, "I don't exist." She stays in an apartment with Lena. Lena has found an apartment for her in Palestine, where Lena is also moving. Nelly wants to find her husband Johnny (Zehrfeld), a non-Jew, but Lena cautions her that he betrayed her to the Nazis. She was a singer and he a pianist, so she goes to various clubs, but finally finds him working in a club called Phoenix as a dishwasher. Johnny doesn't recognize her, but he asks her if she wants some work. He explains to her that he can't get his hands on his wife's money. He wants her to impersonate Nelly, show up alive, claim her inheritance, and in return, he will pay her. At first, Nelly refuses, then relents. He shows her a photo of Hedy Lamar and says his wife modeled herself on that. Nelly returns to Lena and tells her that she's going to do the impersonation and not go to Palestine. She will stay with Johnny. She knows he would never have betrayed her. Director Christian Pezold has woven noirish tapestry about survival, love, betrayal, and guilt. It is reminiscent of Vertigo but with the specter of the Holocaust, much deeper and intense. Nina Hoss is beyond perfection as Nelly, desperate for her old life, her old face, her husband, to wipe out all she has suffered. Like Zehrfeld, she says more with her expressions than with dialogue. Zehrfeld as Johnny presents a disturbing puzzle of denial and horrific guilt, so unbearable that he tries to recreate Nelly. The last scene in this film, in its simplicity, is stunning and powerful. A brilliant film, which you may want to view more than once to pick up details along the way.

You do have to suspend a bit of disbelief to get there on the haunting journey, but the movie's final scene will stay with you forever. Amazing performances by the two leads and assured, understated directing that only intensifies the climax. Absolutely not to be missed, even (or particularly) if you think you've seen every possible treatment of the toll of the Holocaust on individual lives.

While it can be a tense and involving watch, Phoenix is, beneath the craft, a short film expanded into ninety-plus minutes. That is, at thirty minutes we'd have the effect as we have at ninety. The film first establishes its premise, which is intriguing and deep: a woman, coming out of a Nazi concentration camp, has a face transplant due to injury. She is unrecognizable to her husband, but similar enough that, when the two reunite, he asks her to imitate his old wife (actually the protagonist) in order to inherit her property. Her motivation in not telling him who she really is is not always clear, but is justified enough by her apparent want to be identified without having to explain herself. The allegorical connection to history this plot establishes the viewer can fairly easily deduce. What follows is, save for the provocative last scene, repetition and insistence on drawling out this plot without deepening it or taking it to new heights. So, for example, there is a sequence of events where she attempts to prove her identity to her husband by first imitating her signature and then wearing her old shoes, which fit perfectly. Each of these events, which at the film's slow pace stretch about five minutes each, say the same thing. Each deems the other unnecessary since both are to the same effect. This goes on and on, where the viewer is invested solely for the moment when he may finally recognize her. Repetitive also are the glances and gazes between the the protagonist and her husband. The acting in combination with the editing leads to brilliant minimal drama at times, but when we're seeing the same silent facial acting towards the end of the film that we also saw in the beginning attempting to create the same effect, well, it makes you question the film's integrity. I think the film's integrity is this: It plays it safe. It establishes an interesting metaphor, and doesn't roll with it as much as it could have. It shrinks the surrounding historical events into the evocative faces of its two leads. Artful sure, but compelling only for a while. And the bottom line is that it didn't move me. The film wanted to be devastating but I wasn't devastated. The film wanted to be subtly heart-wrenching but my heart wasn't wrenched. I felt at the end, "Alright, that was it. There it was." In other words I didn't feel much besides the mild and consistent tension throughout. There's only so much you can accomplish in a film with these parameters. This review is not primarily negative because the film was bad but because the critic consensus is overwhelmingly positive. An excellent short film, but only a good film.

This was truly one of the most disappointing movies that I can remember seeing in a long while. The set-up was rather paltry, but then when the plot kicked in, it became pretty preposterous almost straight away. The whole narrative arc was poor, the plotting was terrible, and the acting was as hammy as a leg of pig. We saw this a month ago and when I said to her that I was writing a review and what did she think, she couldn't even remember it. It was really that poor. I can't really think of much good to say about this film, it didn't seem to represent Berlin or anything else for that matter. Even the big reveal was deflationary. Not one for me I'm afraid.

Director Christian Petzold and actress Nina Hoss have worked on several projects together in the past. It is one of the most notable duos in German cinema right now and as she was the female lead in his last three films, you could probably even call her his muse. Generally, Petzold is a guy who seems to like working with the same people. Others he frequently cast are Benno Fürmann, Julia Hummer or Ronald Zehrfeld, who also is the male lead in "Phoenix" and has been very prolific in German cinema recently. Petzold wrote the film with the recently deceased Harun Farocki, also not a first-timer. The two went way back. Hoss plays a woman who survived Nazi death camp in the 1940s and is now looking for her husband who possibly betrayed her and told the Nazis where to find her in order to save his own life and career. When she does, he does not recognize her due to facial surgery, but sees the resemblance and tries to start an fraud in order to get his wife's inheritance. It's a good movie with a very strong performance by Hoss, a decent effort from Zehrfeld and good work by the talented supporting players who you may only know if you're really interested in German cinema, although they have won several awards already here. The true highlight is the ending. I'm not too fond of the film's title. You could probably find some metaphoric resemblance, but mostly it is just the name of the club where the two met again. They could have come up with something better here. Obviously Petzold loves one-word titles. You may want to watch this if you like German cinema or just World-War-II related movies although this one is really much more about the characters, especially the lead character, than really about historic significance. Recommended.

Hubert Monteilhet's novel has been filmed three times I saw two of them. The 1960's Return From The Ashes and this one, Phoenix (2014) - the one I haven't seen is a TV version from the 1980's Le retour d'Elisabeth Wolff, but now I really want to see it. Phoenix is a moody, painful journey to a rebirth. Nina Hoss is lovely as the survivor, Ronald Zehofeld plays the husband, object of her obsession. He's an interesting actor, a mix between Benicio del Toro and the young Orson Welles. Their scenes together have a realistic, tangible suspense. But Christian Petzold, the director of Jerichow (2008), gives the whole film a severe pace and tone, the 1964 version has a sharp, sophisticated script by Julius J Epstein with titles like Casablanca to his credit and J Lee Thompson at the helm, Thompson directed films like The Guns Of Navarone, Cape Fear and What A Way To Go. So his version, Return From The Ashes, is a whole other experience, at time it's even funny. With a superlative international cast cast, Maximilian Schell, Ingrid Thulin and Samantha Eggar - So one can see both films as it they weren't even related.

The plot rests on the impossible premise that a friend would not fully disclose one's husband's betrayal. This makes absolutely no sense. I don't want to see you be hurt further by chasing after a lying scumbag of a husband, so I tell you that he betrayed you. I also tell you that he is after your family's money. It seems to me that this is the most difficult reveal, causing pain of course, but necessary pain. Why in the world wouldn't I ALSO show you the proof that he divorced you? The movie inches tediously ahead for hours dependent on this ridiculous plot. One moment of unintentional comic relief: Nelly walks like a depressed Frankenstein for the first half of the movie - one assumes she sustained an injury in the camps that explains her flat footed gait. But, tada! All it takes is one comment from her husband and suddenly she's cured! Even the title is irritating - nothing is redemptive in this movie - what waste of acting talent here.

Phoenix: Ziemlich großes Kino! Phoenix is a simple film with complicated themes of identity, survival, and loss. It is not your normal post WWII film, nor is it your typical concentration camp survivor story. The main character, Nelly, was in a camp and her trauma is reflected in the desperation of a divided Berlin. Her interactions with others are clearly influenced by her time in the camps, and Nina Hoss wonderfully portrays the protagonist. Unfortunately, the actor who plays the lead male, Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld) is relatively ineffective compared to the stunning Hoss. I am not sure whether is is the script or the acting, but he clearly isn't up to her level. Nelly's best friend, Lena, is performed with skill by Nina Kunzendorf. While not as remarkable as Hoss, she holds her own in their scenes together. The look of the film is lovely, but it is clearly made on a budget. The music is appropriate for the mood and the era, though a couple of times too loud and overly dramatic. The pace is deliberate and effective. It is a good film that offers us no answers to the questions it poses: how do we survive after everything is taken away, how do we return to a life that no longer exists, whom do we trust now when many of our old friends were Nazi or collaborators during the war, how do we react to someone who returns who we thought was dead, and where do we go when nothing is left of our former life. In the film, like life, there are no easy answers. That only strengthens the film's appeal. Rating: Pay full price. I don't want to say to much for fear of giving too much away. The film, while not shocking, is not predicable. Peace, Tex Shelters

There is a plethora of films dealing with the second world war and the holocaust, but relatively few dealing with Germany after the war and the plight of people returning from concentration or prison camps. So I was happy go see Phoenix. The film successfully captures the period, with brusque American occupation soldiers, Berlin reduced to rubble, and people struggling to survive and adapt to new realities. Unfortunately, the story gets bogged down in one implausible plot contrivance after another, which saps it of any dramatic strength despite fine acting. I won't say what these are in the chance that you may see the film. But consider yourself warned.

Not taking the public serious is the worst crime an author can commit: Christian Petzold's post-Holocaust drama is based around an incredulous premise: why wouldn't a husband recognize beautiful Nina Hoss if we, the audience, recognize her in the very first seconds of her appearance? Has vanity prevailed against the lessons taught by Charlize Theron in her believable ugliness in "Monster"? And: if Jews lived in luxury in postwar Germany having ordinary Germans as there servants do we really see a compelling reason for emigration to Israel ? Her diminished condition remains abstract. "I no longer exist," she laments, adding, "I'm really jealous of me." Bearing witness to a world that has moved on without her, she epitomizes the identity crisis of Holocaust survivors in the immediate aftermath of the war. The whole film, costing millions, would have been much less of an insult if the team had invested some money in a decent mask, worth maybe 50.000 Euros.