Paula Beer (Marie) and Franz Rogowski (Georg) find themselves falling in love in all the wrong circumstances in Transit.
Transit
Director Christian Petzold is among the most significant and accomplished filmmakers in modern German cinema, adept at weaving mysterious, swooning romantic dramas into the traumas and trials of history, as in his stellar Phoenix (2014) and Barbara (2012). His latest, the elusive and slippery Transit (rated M), bears
the hallmarks of his earlier films - a doomed romance, a wartime setting and a tightly controlled sense of simmering emotion that never quite comes to boil.
Adapted from Anna Seghers' novel of the same name, written in 1942, Transit tells the story of Georg (Franz Rogowski, bearing a startling resemblance to a young Joaquin Phoenix), a refugee fleeing oppressive forces occupying Europe in World War II. The only twist? This film takes place in the modern day. It's a beguiling, deliberately obfuscating choice, Petzold retaining all the trappings of Nazi occupation in France (as Georg finds himself trapped in Marseilles, awaiting a transit visa to Mexico), but the oppressive forces wear combat armour and drive armoured trucks, rather than goosestep and roll tanks through French streets.
It's a bracing, at times clumsy decision, drawing direct parallels between Nazi Germany and the modern global refugee crisis which, while entirely apt, can take some time to gel within the framework of the story. Nevertheless, the film remains sumptuous and powerful, weaving a sense of inevitable tragedy into the strange romantic entanglement Georg finds himself falling into while in hiding. Petzold has lost none of his ability for earth-shattering, perfectly pitched final scenes and, much like his two previous films, Transit ends in an ellipsis, a drawn-in breath, never to be exhaled.
Rating: Four stars
All three of Petzold's films of the 2010s - Barbara, Phoenix and Transit - are being shown at Academy Cinemas this weekend as part of their Director Spotlight series. You'll be hard-pressed to find better, more vital modern film-making on the big screen this weekend, particularly Phoenix, which is undoubtedly one of the finest films of the decade.
