Absolutely brilliant

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Christian Petzold's Jerichow tells a familiar tale but is well-crafted and involves refreshing elements that make it distinct from the others. Personally I am not a fan of affair stories and there was a point in the film where it was slowly losing my attention but masterful Petzold hooked me back and held me until the end. To say it is a complicated situation is also nothing new, but this involves people who, unlike similar films of the same nature, are not well-off or privileged in their country. I loved the character Ali and the very 3-dimensional construction of his character, never forgetting the struggles of an immigrant in their new country (among other aspects).

This is really a movie which didn't need to be made. I watched it because I greatly admire Benno Fuhrmann's work in North Face and in Joyeux Noel (a wonderful film, BTW).Enough folks here have done the comparisons with Double Indemnity, etc. etc. The acting and cinematography and realism of this film are all perfectly adequate. However, there isn't much character development, and therefore, not nearly enough to make me care about the 3 main characters. In fact, the one we get to know best is actually the Turkish husband, and I had more sympathy for him in a way that for the two protagonists, largely because we don't really know them. The movie isn't full of a bunch of intriguing plot twists, and the action is relatively slow-moving. The aspect of this film which most interested us was the setting in a part of Germany which none of us have seen. My husband is German, and the part we know is the extreme southwest, nothing northeast. We were also interested to see contemporary Germany actually being depicted. But, I'm sorry, this just isn't enough to justify the amount of time.Producers and directors need to be reminded that people today have a host of other entertainment options available to them and any movie they make should be MORE interesting than say, watching a ballgame on TV, surfing the internet, playing video games, sex with spouse, camping in the woods, going out to dinner with friends, watching YouTube, etc. etc. In other words, having an interesting, entrancing story is, at least in my mind, a good half the value of a film. Unfortunately, so many movies today just don't seem to be aware of the demand for a decent story, and I don't get that. I read a lot of thriller novels, excellently written, all of which would make fantastic films, and furthermore, I know from the authors themselves that they have sold the rights to make a movie from the books. So, I ask myself, why aren't THESE stories becoming movies, instead of a lot of the ho-hum stuff that does become film?

The allusions to "The Postman Always Rings Twice" are obvious and don't need to be discussed. What interested me was the political allegory of this movie. It reminded me of Fassbinder. In the same way that "The Marriage of Maria Braun" is an allegory of Germany up to Unification, this is too, only in a more abstract way.Spoiler:One character = East GermanyOne character = West GermanyOne character = The United States.Watch the movie and fill in the blanks.The American character is clearest—generous but inept, suspicious of his charges, unappreciated, cheated, ultimately beside the point.The ending isn't Fassbinder, but it's close.

This isn't about the movie, it's about the comment above that asserts that Jerichow is an area in east Germany that faces the North Atlantic.East Germany has a coast line on the Baltic sea.The rest of Germany has borders with Poland, West Germany and the Czech RepublicBefore you get to the north Atlantic you have to go through the north sea, and maybe the English channel (if you go that way).So Jerichow is no where near the North Atlantic.The rest of that comment should, therefore, be ignored in it's entirety.