Jerichow (2008)
Directed by: Christian
Petzold.
Written by: Christian
Petzold.
Starring: Benno Fürmann (Thomas),
Nina Hoss (Laura), Hilmi Sözer (Ali Özkan).
Christian
Petzold’s Jerichow isn’t an official adaptation of James M. Cain’s The Postman
Always Rings Twice – but it’s clear that it is one anyway. Petzold is smart
enough to realize that if he was going to, once again, redo a story that has
been told many times already, he had to come with a new angle. For the most
part, he succeeds. While this is a shorter film than either of the official
adaptations of the novel, he actually spends more time getting to the point
where the novel turns – and then Petzold (as he does often) just ends the film
there – leaving the audience to pick up the pieces, and figure out what comes
next. What’s even more impressive is even if you know the story he’s telling,
Petzold still surprises you.
The film
takes place in the small German town of the title. Thomas (Benno Fürmann) has
just returned from Afghanistan – having received a dishonorable discharge, for
reasons not explained – and has just buried his mother. He’s broke, he has no
job, and some tough guys have beaten him up to get the money he owes them –
money he was going to use to rebuild his life. By chance, he meets Ali (Hilmi
Sözer) along the road, when Ali, drunk, drives his car into a ditch. Thomas
helps him out of the jam with the cops – and Ali ends up offering him a job as
his driver. He doesn’t own a roadside diner this time around – but a string of
snack bars all over the place, and he spends most of his driving around,
checking up on them, making deliveries, etc. Ali’s beautiful, younger wife
Laura (Petzold favorite Nina Hoss) does the books. It’s clear to the audience
when Thomas and Laura lock eyes what is going to happen.
The key
difference in Jerichow, compared to the other films, is in the depiction of
Ali. The husband in these adaptations is most often painted as dim and pathetic
– a man who doesn’t realize what is happening, until it is too late. That isn’t
Ali. He is a Turk, who has come to Germany and made something of himself. He
believes everyone is always cheating him – and while that isn’t an attractive
feature in most people, in this case, he isn’t wrong. Ali is the most
complicated character in the film – he can be both a brute – physically and
verbally abusive, but also sympathetic. He is keenly aware that he is a
foreigner in a country who doesn’t like him, who has a beautiful wife, but only
because he paid off her debts, and that she has never, and will never, love
him.
Hoss is,
as always, great as Laura. This is more akin to the Lana Turner performance in
the 1946 version – a woman who has been beaten down by life, who is exhausted
and miserable, but sees no way out. Hoss is, of course, a beautiful woman – but
mainly what she plays here is just tired. She keeps her feelings for Thomas
more enigmatic that other versions – perhaps she is just using him to get what
she wants. Fürmann is the weakest link in the cast – he is tall and good
looking – but kind of a blank slate. This works for those earlier scenes, but
when the ending comes, you want a little bit more than what Fürmann can, or at
least will, give you.
Petzold
has always specialized in endings – for knocking you out in the final scene,
and then getting out quickly. His best film, Phoenix, has one of the best final
scenes of the last decade. And here, it’s the best scene in the film as well.
For the first 85 minutes of Jerichow, it is a very good film – tweaking the
original story, twisting it into something slightly different, more modern,
more German, etc. And then there comes the final scene – and it elevates the
whole movie, puts everything we’ve seen into a different light. Petzold knows
how to end the film – and Jerichow is a great example.
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