Francis’ world is upside down, in flight. The young African is submerged in the Mediterranean, his girlfriend Ida drowned. The water is red and black, ominously hinting at darker, bloodier depths that will resurface later in mashed up flashbacks of ritual, violence, and love. A visually stunning, bold, life-and-death beginning for Burhan Qurbani’s much anticipated retelling of Alfred Döblin’s classic Berlin Alexanderplatz, a kind of Ulysses of modern German literature, famously interpreted by Fassbinder and his lead Günter Lamprecht. Qurbani, in the Berlinale competition for the second time after his invitation for Shahada ten years ago, vehemently rejects RWF’s 1980 mini-series as a reference point, his work “loosely based” on the late Weimar novel of poverty, hardship, and despair. You might remember Qurbani's hard-hitting and precise refugee and neo-Nazi drama We are Young. We are Strong (Goethe Films Toronto 2016). The Berlin filmmaker, with a slew of Berlin-set films to his name, opened the press conference by saying that he feels he failed the book Berlin Alexanderplatz in his high school literature class, but gladly he doesn’t fail Döblin in his latest drama (trailer).
Wednesday, October 6. 2021
Berlinale 2020: BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ #review
Francis’ world is upside down, in flight. The young African is submerged in the Mediterranean, his girlfriend Ida drowned. The water is red and black, ominously hinting at darker, bloodier depths that will resurface later in mashed up flashbacks of ritual, violence, and love. A visually stunning, bold, life-and-death beginning for Burhan Qurbani’s much anticipated retelling of Alfred Döblin’s classic Berlin Alexanderplatz, a kind of Ulysses of modern German literature, famously interpreted by Fassbinder and his lead Günter Lamprecht. Qurbani, in the Berlinale competition for the second time after his invitation for Shahada ten years ago, vehemently rejects RWF’s 1980 mini-series as a reference point, his work “loosely based” on the late Weimar novel of poverty, hardship, and despair. You might remember Qurbani's hard-hitting and precise refugee and neo-Nazi drama We are Young. We are Strong (Goethe Films Toronto 2016). The Berlin filmmaker, with a slew of Berlin-set films to his name, opened the press conference by saying that he feels he failed the book Berlin Alexanderplatz in his high school literature class, but gladly he doesn’t fail Döblin in his latest drama (trailer).
Francis comes to Berlin and tries to be a decent person. He fails and constantly starts over again, until the city finally breaks him, and he is reborn as a new person. As the 30-year-old gets washed up on the shores of Southern Europe he swears an oath to God: from now on he wants to be a new, a better, a decent man. Soon after he finds himself in Berlin, realizing how hard it is to be righteous when you are an illegal immigrant in Germany. When he receives an enticing offer from the charismatic Reinhold (System Crasher’s and Bad Banks’ impressive Albert Schuch) to earn easy money, Franz initially resists the temptation and stays away from Reinhold‘s shady dealings. Eventually, he is sucked into Berlin‘s underworld and his life spirals out of control. We are circling a man who wants to be good, but life and circumstance won't let him, leading him to make a new, Faustian pact.
Jella Haase (also at Berlinale 2020 in queer coming-of-age drama Cocoon) is vitally present from the start, as the observing, contextualizing narrator, long before she appears on screen as (now “Germanized") Franz’ prostitute-girlfriend Mieze — a storytelling device that beautifully subverts gender stereotypes intrinsic in the 1929 original work and gives Mieze the voice and space she (and the excellent Haase) deserve.
Surviving is a grace period across the film’s five parts, we are told early. Part one introduces the devil in the form of Reinhold. Döblin’s German word play is deliciously ironic and tongue-in-cheek, the name Reinhold meaning “beloved ruler”, an antonym to the German word Unhold, monster, evil-doer — our Reinhold is both to Franz. Drug lord Reinhold, like the the Pied Piper of Hamlin, lures Francis into the underworld — Francis’ “first fall.” In part two, Franz struggles to be good, needs second and third chances. “You want to be something you can’t be -- good in a bad world.”
At the Berlinale press conference, much was being made of the film being set in today’s Berlin and the fact that the protagonist is a refugee (“a blind spot of society -- he is here but not present,” expands Qurbani). In the film though, Franz works against that notion and declares “I am not a refugee, I’m not going anywhere.” And, towards the end, loudly proclaims, "I am Germany!” This is what Qurbani rightly calls “the narrative key". While both decisions —shifting temporal setting and protagonist— absolutely work here, realized by a filmmaker of colour who himself is the son of refugees, I found neither outstandingly surprising or unusual, in the current cinematic context of Petzold’s Transit or Ladj Ly's Les Miserables and other on-screen temporal shifts and gender or ethnic cross-casting. Perhaps because Döblin’s story is already modern and timeless and open enough to allow Franz to be any outsider. As a filmmaker, Qurbani has the formal and storytelling skills to create a new, worthwhile literary montage of Döblin’s themes, questions, and motifs: faith, loyalty, chance, destiny, jealousy, envy, doubt, and the demons inside of us that corrupt our dreams, dignity, and relationships.
One thing that is jarring, as opposed to the book, is that Franz in the film is too good too often and Reinhard too in-your-face psychopathic, a caricature (however well acted), for there to be an honest tension within the “wanting to be good in a bad world” polarity and room for questions of responsibility, complicity, guilt. Where Döblin deals in shades of grey, Qurbani gives us too much black or white. His script-writing notes on the relationship shine a light on the two men’s relationship though, “bound together by a cynical fate and destructive magnetism, friendship and betrayal, hatred and dark eroticism, as well as by love and the abuse of this love."
Franz, after initially refusing to peddle drugs, joins the dark side and starts to enjoy the game, trying to move up to management. "No fear, no respect," is the dangerous leadership style in the gang who inhabit Berlin Hasenheide Park (as the film should be called), he quickly learns, as he becomes the enforcer. Berlin is portrayed outside and inside, among others its clubs, with whores and self-proclaimed “freak shows”. Like (nearly) everyone else Franz steps on and over others to survive, bending himself out of shape in the process. All to achieve his end goal: to get a German passport. That, he hopes, will allow him to arrive, to belong, to end the cycle of dependency and petty crime, just like the original Franz Biberkopf hoped.
But again, Franz is being tricked, Mieze explains in her voiceover; in part three, loses a limb but not his life, his second fall and the end of grace. In part four, he surrenders: If the world wants you to be bad, be bad. Destiny or misguided choice? Of course nothing is resolved, the hammer comes swinging back at Franz, another chance at betterment lost. What is worse than the physical violence he survives is the final humiliation at the hands of Reinhold, the Joker, who, as the German saying goes, literally makes an ape out of him at a dress-up party (to Reinhold’s colonial sun helmet outfit). Who’s the king of the jungle, he seems to mockingly ask. So in part five, Francis is destroyed, Mieze is destroyed. “How much can a person survive? You have to break his heart for it to end.” The subject matter's transfer works on a content-level, but is, even at 183 minutes, not always fully realized (and perhaps not realizable in its intricate entirety, even at Fassbinder’s 931 minutes).
Qurbani ends with his epilogue where Döblin began, with Franz leaving prison. He is “free”, with the promise of "a new life, a new world". And perhaps a Best Actor award for Welket Bungué, who sells us on the story’s moral ambiguity every step of the way.
Having finished this four-year project, Qurbani has just announced to Screen that he is planning "a German counterpart to Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours Trilogy. 'In the same way I ripped off Fassbinder, I am going to Kieslowski now,' the director joked." Hopefully, we'll see Qurbani's sure to be political black, red and gold films on “unity, justice and freedom” at future Berlinales.
by Jutta Brendemühl
image courtesy Berlinale
Jella Haase (also at Berlinale 2020 in queer coming-of-age drama Cocoon) is vitally present from the start, as the observing, contextualizing narrator, long before she appears on screen as (now “Germanized") Franz’ prostitute-girlfriend Mieze — a storytelling device that beautifully subverts gender stereotypes intrinsic in the 1929 original work and gives Mieze the voice and space she (and the excellent Haase) deserve.
Surviving is a grace period across the film’s five parts, we are told early. Part one introduces the devil in the form of Reinhold. Döblin’s German word play is deliciously ironic and tongue-in-cheek, the name Reinhold meaning “beloved ruler”, an antonym to the German word Unhold, monster, evil-doer — our Reinhold is both to Franz. Drug lord Reinhold, like the the Pied Piper of Hamlin, lures Francis into the underworld — Francis’ “first fall.” In part two, Franz struggles to be good, needs second and third chances. “You want to be something you can’t be -- good in a bad world.”
At the Berlinale press conference, much was being made of the film being set in today’s Berlin and the fact that the protagonist is a refugee (“a blind spot of society -- he is here but not present,” expands Qurbani). In the film though, Franz works against that notion and declares “I am not a refugee, I’m not going anywhere.” And, towards the end, loudly proclaims, "I am Germany!” This is what Qurbani rightly calls “the narrative key". While both decisions —shifting temporal setting and protagonist— absolutely work here, realized by a filmmaker of colour who himself is the son of refugees, I found neither outstandingly surprising or unusual, in the current cinematic context of Petzold’s Transit or Ladj Ly's Les Miserables and other on-screen temporal shifts and gender or ethnic cross-casting. Perhaps because Döblin’s story is already modern and timeless and open enough to allow Franz to be any outsider. As a filmmaker, Qurbani has the formal and storytelling skills to create a new, worthwhile literary montage of Döblin’s themes, questions, and motifs: faith, loyalty, chance, destiny, jealousy, envy, doubt, and the demons inside of us that corrupt our dreams, dignity, and relationships.
One thing that is jarring, as opposed to the book, is that Franz in the film is too good too often and Reinhard too in-your-face psychopathic, a caricature (however well acted), for there to be an honest tension within the “wanting to be good in a bad world” polarity and room for questions of responsibility, complicity, guilt. Where Döblin deals in shades of grey, Qurbani gives us too much black or white. His script-writing notes on the relationship shine a light on the two men’s relationship though, “bound together by a cynical fate and destructive magnetism, friendship and betrayal, hatred and dark eroticism, as well as by love and the abuse of this love."
Franz, after initially refusing to peddle drugs, joins the dark side and starts to enjoy the game, trying to move up to management. "No fear, no respect," is the dangerous leadership style in the gang who inhabit Berlin Hasenheide Park (as the film should be called), he quickly learns, as he becomes the enforcer. Berlin is portrayed outside and inside, among others its clubs, with whores and self-proclaimed “freak shows”. Like (nearly) everyone else Franz steps on and over others to survive, bending himself out of shape in the process. All to achieve his end goal: to get a German passport. That, he hopes, will allow him to arrive, to belong, to end the cycle of dependency and petty crime, just like the original Franz Biberkopf hoped.
But again, Franz is being tricked, Mieze explains in her voiceover; in part three, loses a limb but not his life, his second fall and the end of grace. In part four, he surrenders: If the world wants you to be bad, be bad. Destiny or misguided choice? Of course nothing is resolved, the hammer comes swinging back at Franz, another chance at betterment lost. What is worse than the physical violence he survives is the final humiliation at the hands of Reinhold, the Joker, who, as the German saying goes, literally makes an ape out of him at a dress-up party (to Reinhold’s colonial sun helmet outfit). Who’s the king of the jungle, he seems to mockingly ask. So in part five, Francis is destroyed, Mieze is destroyed. “How much can a person survive? You have to break his heart for it to end.” The subject matter's transfer works on a content-level, but is, even at 183 minutes, not always fully realized (and perhaps not realizable in its intricate entirety, even at Fassbinder’s 931 minutes).
Qurbani ends with his epilogue where Döblin began, with Franz leaving prison. He is “free”, with the promise of "a new life, a new world". And perhaps a Best Actor award for Welket Bungué, who sells us on the story’s moral ambiguity every step of the way.
Having finished this four-year project, Qurbani has just announced to Screen that he is planning "a German counterpart to Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours Trilogy. 'In the same way I ripped off Fassbinder, I am going to Kieslowski now,' the director joked." Hopefully, we'll see Qurbani's sure to be political black, red and gold films on “unity, justice and freedom” at future Berlinales.
by Jutta Brendemühl
image courtesy Berlinale
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