#TIFF12 Day8: Why Barbara should win an Oscar

Since I have already written about Christian Petzold's now-Oscar-contender Barbara during the Berlinale (see archive), I thought I'd take this TIFF day 8 --with its first Barbara screening tonight-- as an opportunity to add another voice to the discussion. Standing in the packed cafe of the opulent 1000-seater Berliner Festspielhaus between Herzog's latest and the Petzold screening, I met Bastian Heinsohn, who turned out to be a German film professor in the US --and a huge Petzold admirer. There and then we made a date to meet again at TIFF, and here we are. I asked Heinsohn to argue for our German Films @ Canada blog why Barbara should win an Oscar (going up against Austria's Amour) and here is what he sent:


When the lights went on again, and the long applause faded at last after the very first screening of Barbara at the Berlinale festival earlier this year, I could sense that the audience was in complete agreement: Petzold’s Barbara is not only a remarkably beautiful film; it is also a unique cinematic achievement in storytelling and style by a director who probably made his best film to date despite an outstanding oeuvre with works such as The State I am in (2000) and Yella (2007). Set in rural East Germany in 1980, Barbara explores a young doctor’s struggle after being transferred from Berlin to a hospital in the countryside as a punishment following her application for an exit visa from the GDR. Petzold’s film is an atmospheric exploration of desire, freedom, and fear. Several recent German films attempted to recreate daily life in the GDR, often by romanticizing and simplifying the past, but we have never seen such a passionate love story with lovers who are forced to remain emotionally restrained and distant in a political system that spread mistrust and fear among its citizen.

I watched Barbara again the following day and discovered the little details that you usually miss the first time: A number of paintings on the walls capture nature settings very similar to key locations in the film. We see a drawing of trees and an image of a trail by the sea – both important settings later in the film. In contrast to the overused GDR pastiche of washed-out blue and green colors in recent German films, Petzold’s GDR looks refreshingly colorful: the green of the trees and the grass, the blue and the red in clothes and objects, and the brown colors in many interior settings – all wonderfully saturated and in perfect composition. At the second screening, I found myself looking at colors and objects as if it was an Ozu film with a touch of Godard: each single frame is meticulously balanced and beautifully composed to the smallest detail.

The Silver Bear at the Berlinale for best direction will certainly not be the last award for Petzold. Barbara deserves the award for Best Foreign Film at the upcoming Academy Award ceremony on February 24, 2013.

Bastian Heinsohn is an Assistant Professor of German at Bucknell University, Pennsylvania. In his research, he explores the meaning of streetscapes in German films with an emphasis on films set in Berlin. He is currently completing a book manuscript, tentatively entitled “The Language of the Urban Street in German Cinema”.