The ghosts of World War II continue to haunt the streets of Berlin. You find them in memorials, packed in libraries, and in the stories of those who survived. Like with several German filmmakers, they have seeped into the cinema of auteur Christian Petzold as well. His last film, Phoenix (2014) is the story of an Auschwitz concentration camp survivor, who gets a face reconstructive surgery after being disfigured by a gunshot. His latest, Transit , based on Anna Seghers’ 1942 novel, follows a concentration camp survivor who tries to flee Nazi-occupied France and enter North America by taking the identity of a dead writer.
Transit had its world première at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival last month as part of the competition section. Amidst his packed schedule at the Berlinale, the filmmaker sat down for a quick tête-à-tête.
Skipping the period
If you go by Seghers’ book, Transit would have been Petzold’s third consecutive period film after Barbara (2012) and Phoenix . But in a daring move, the director takes the narrative out of its period setting and places it in an incongruous, contemporary world, while not reinterpreting the story. The outcome is much in tandem with his long-standing fascination with ghostly figures and his penchant for melodrama. “I have no power any more after Phoenix to make a period picture because it cost me too much energy,” he says. “When I make one, I have to fight against other period pictures because we are surrounded by s**t period pictures.”
Beyond an apparent exhaustion with the genre, there are more reasons for transporting the setting from mid-20th century to the present day. The most pivotal, and probably the most evident one, is to establish a subtle — yet politically-charged — parallel between WWII and the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe, along with rise of neo-Nazis in Germany. “When you make a period picture, you assume your contemporary position is better than your past,” he says. But for Petzold, that is clearly not the case as the world stands today. “When you have the past and the contemporary moment in the same room, in the same place, then you start thinking,” he adds.
It is, therefore, inevitable to ask: who would Petzold count as the ghosts of the present? “All these racist guys, and all these fascists,” he responds promptly. “For me, they are zombies. Like the walking dead, they are coming out of the graves.”
In the middle
Petzold informs me that his mentor and long-term collaborator, avant-garde German filmmaker Harun Farocki — who recommended Seghers’ novel — wasn’t too comfortable with adapting the book as a period film either. They were writing the film together, when in 2014, a week after Germany won the FIFA World Cup, Farocki passed away. “So the project was put away because it hurt me too much and then I got the idea two years later to not make it a period picture,” he shares.
The film is set in Marseilles, where the protagonist, Georg, is taking temporary shelter and making his escape plan. But the transit space Petzold is more keen on exploring is the metaphorical and metaphysical one — the liminal state of time, geography and even literature. He believes that Seghers’ novel is also in a state of transit: between European and American literature. It’s this state of in-betweenness — which he refers to as “suspense era” — that fascinates him the most. “I wanted to show that you find real passion and real love in this era and not in the homes you had to leave or in the paradise that you will never reach,” he explains.
Transit certainly is a conceptually bold film, but Petzold isn’t afraid of losing his audience. “A film has to be self-confident,” he says. “The audience would either love it or hate it, but they have a position, and they are respected.” He compares a film low on confidence to a kid seeking attention from his parents. “There’s no one who likes a crying child,” he concludes.
kennith.rosario@thehindu.co.in