What a beautiful movie!

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

An Exercise In Nonsense

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

If you have trouble sleeping slip this one in the DVD player, Slow to the point of being dam near static. The acting was generally awful and the story line ridiculous. Avoid at all cost. We will not be watching it again in the future.

From the opening soundtrack on a blank screen, bass and piano, It was just a couple of chords, and I was hooked! The music of Kurt Weill's standard, Speak Low, is threaded throughout the movie. (Words by Ogden Nash). I was so taken by the song that I must have listened to A dozen or so versions, from Billie Holliday to Kiri Te Kanawa. And I kept coming back to Nina Hoss' version and Weill's version. I go on about this tune because it encapsulates so brilliantly all the melancholy of Phoenix. Post WW2 Berlin, a shell of itself, Holocaust survivors looking to repair their broken spirits, Berliners struggling to eke out a living, all played out against a woman searching for her past, for her lost husband. Phoenix, a Berlin nightclub, Phoenix rising from the ashes. It's all there. Thank you Petzold.

One of the international darlings of the New Berlin Film School, Petzold, strikes gold again with Phoenix a twisted Vertigo-ian tale of obsession, identity and a brutal examination of marriage set against the backdrop of bombed out, postwar Berlin. Petzold regular Nina Hoss plays Nelly Lenz, a disfigured concentration camp survivor who is (somewhat) unrecognizable after having her face reconstructed. Once Nelly is well enough she begins a search through the city to find her non-Jewish husband Johnny—played by another Petzold familiar Ronald Zehrfeld—who may or may not have turned Nelly into the Nazis. It is truly a yarn and only grows more complex, bewildering, yet engrossing as the film continues. In terms of plot Petzold has asked the audience to accept a lot…and I mean a lot. Sure. There are a few plot holes along the way, but if the audience makes the stretch to buy the conceit Petzold is selling they will be gratefully rewarded.Quite possibly the most refreshing quality of Phoenix is its melodramatic qualities in a day and age where melodramas just aren't made well. Maybe the term "melodrama" is too strong, but the film certainly does portray some tropes of melodrama. Phoenix visually does bare some resemblance to 1950s Hollywood but the polished, meticulous, "constructed-realism" (which falls just right of the hardcore realism that seems to be the dominant brand of our time) of the interiors and bombed out buildings recalls Fassbinder's melodramas after he fell in love with the films of Douglas Sirk. The color schemes are rich, heightening muted tones and accentuating primary colors, as seen at the Phoenix Club in the American-sector of the city that shines a vibrant, neon blood red. Each color scheme seems to fit every mood to perfection and the wreckage of the city physically and morally works as a perfect mirroring metaphor for the main characters. The performances are perfect. They are rich and refrained. Zehrfeld is wonderful lost in moral ambiguity and at unmasking his demons subtly and with earnest. Hoss and Zehrfeld definitely have a great working chemistry as they worked together in Petzold's last Barbara. As the story progresses the dance the two actors do only deepens. Nelly, who is going by the name Esther, is transforming—at the direction of her unknowing husband—into the Nelly that existed before the war. The obsession comes from Nelly. She will not accept the direction in which all signs are pointing. Johnny only wants to use "Esther" to come back as Nelly so they can receive a survivor's check… I refrain from going to deep and giving away spoilers. What is important is that Petzold is most certainly an artist to keep an eye on, a reputation which he has already established and old perpetuates with the accomplishment of this lush, psychological melodrama that beckons to a time past in film history. In Phoenix he has crafted a complex, flawed, beautiful and heart-wrenching film that makes us question the bounds of love and personal identity and how the foundations of these concepts can be shaken by the larger context of the outside world—in this case WWII and the Holocaust. Though the plot may be a bit much, with some holes here and there, Petzold never lets the story get out of hand, maintaining a very deliberate pace that moves the story along, keeps the complexities of the narrative taut and clear, all the while building tension step by step; tension that reaches the most profound understated crescendo that should leave any viewer stunned.

I have to say that the first act of the film I really loved. I thought the film was going into some really interesting terrain and I have to be honest, when the time came for the actual plot of the film to be revealed and I knew what it would be about, I was disappointed. Not that the storyline was particularly bad, I just thought it would hit even more interesting notes. As it is, the film itself is pretty good. It's poetic and haunting and very elegant, and it has some fine performances. Nina Hoss in particular (who I immediately recognized in her role this season of Homeland) does some captivating work with her eyes, and it is perhaps one of the best leading performances of the year.