AFIRE: the summer of his discontent

Thomas Schubert and Paula Beer in AFIRE. Courtesy of Janus Films.

Christian Petzold’s Afire is an agreeable slow burn that builds to a revelatory conclusion. The lumpy, dour Leon (Thomas Schubert) needs to polish off his second novel. He and his friend Felix (Langston Uibel) head off for a week at the woodsy vacation cottage owned by Felix’s family, a short walk to the beach on the Baltic Sea. They are seeking artistic inspiration, Leon for his novel and Felix for his photography portfolio. But they’re not even there yet when things start going off the rails.

Felix’s car breaks down and they have to hoof it through the forest. Upon arrival, they learn that Felix’s mother has also invited another guest, Nadja, and the guys will need to share the remaining room. They go to bed without meeting Nadja, but she returns late with company, and the guys are kept awake by the boisterous lovemaking in her room next door.

Focused on their own situation, Felix and Leon are vaguely aware that wildfires are raging inland, but they’re a few meters from the sea and the ocean winds are blowing across them toward the fire, As people at the nearby seaside resort town go about their holidays, faraway sirens and the fire-fighting aircraft overhead are ominous.

Felix rolls with the punches, but each setback makes the grumpy Leon more aggrieved. Each annoyance makes Leon harrumph, roll his eyes and stalk off complaining about the distraction to his work. Leon is creatively blocked, but is it from the distractions?

He’s really afraid that his manuscript is shitty, and his day of reckoning, a meeting with his kind publisher (Matthias Brandt), is this week. Self-absorbed in the best of times, Leon’s insecurities are making him beat himself up and mask it all with offended self-importance.

Leon and Felix meet Nadja (Paul Beer), who turns out to be charming. Felix befriends the handsome lifeguard Devid (Enno Trebs), who has been Nadja’s nocturnal playmate, and soon the four are hanging out together – Leon grudgingly.

Thomas Schubert, Paula Beer, Langston Uibel and Enno Trebs in AFIRE. Courtesy of Janus Films.

As we watch Leon stumble around in his behavioral misfires, it seems that we are watching a comedy of manners. But Afire evolves into a study of creative self-sabotage until a heartbreaking tragedy, a moment of redemption, and a final hopeful glimmer of personal fulfillment. It’s the best final fifteen minutes of any film this year, unpredictable but grounded in reality and humanity, and emotionally powerful.

Afire works because the protagonist doesn’t alienate the audience, even though he is irritable and irritating. Petzold’s writing and Schubert’s performance is such that we don’t give up on this unlovable loser. As much as his thoughtlessness vexes the others, his behavior is really only mean-spirited once. Clearly, he must be talented because his first novel was good enough to get him an advance on his second, and he seems to be a decent person underneath all his fussiness. He just needs to learn how to get out of his own way.

Petzold has also written some segments of novels-within-the-movie, one that is extraordinarily moving and one that is just awful, awful, awful.

Beer, the star of Petzold’s Transit and Undine, is irresistible here as Nadja. Her Nadja teaches Leon that a woman can be sunny and fun-loving without being a ditz.

Petzold is one of cinema’s most significant contemporary auteurs. I loved and admired his simmering paranoid thriller Barbara and his Phoenix, a riveting psychodrama with a wowzer ending. He followed those with the more aspirational but, IMO, less successful Transit and Undine. Afire is his most intimate and funniest film, and I think, his most subtle and his best. Afire won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 2023 Berlinale.

Afire opens this weekend in theaters, including the Roxie in San Francisco. It’s one of the Best Movies of 2023 – So Far.

Stream of the week: PHOENIX – riveting psychodrama, wowzer ending

Ronald Zehfeld and nina Hoss in PHOENIX
Ronald Zehfeld and Nina Hoss in PHOENIX

In the German psychological drama Phoenix, Nina Hoss plays Nelly, an Auschwitz survivor whose face has been destroyed by a Nazi gunshot; her sister has arranged for plastic surgery to reconstruct her face. When Nelly gets her new face, we accompany her on an intense quest.

Writer-director Christian Petzhold is an economical story-teller, respectful of the audience’s intelligence. Watching a border guard’s reaction to her disfigurement and hearing snippets from the sister and the plastic surgeon, we gradually piece together her back story. The doctor asks what seems like a very good question – Why would a Jewish woman successfully rooted in London return to Germany in 1938? The answer to that question involves a Woman Loving Too Much.

The sister plans to re-settle both of them in Israel, but Nelly is obsessed with finding her husband. She does find her husband, who firmly believes that Nelly is dead. But he notes that the post-surgery Nelly resembles his pre-war wife, and he has a reason to have her impersonate the real Nelly. So he has the real Nelly (who he doesn’t think IS the real Nelly) pretending to be herself. It’s kind of a reverse version of The Return of Martin Guerre.

It’s the ultimate masquerade. How would you feel while listening to your spouse describe you in detail to a stranger?

Nina Hoss is an uncommonly gifted actress. Here she acts with her face fully bandaged for the first third of the film. We ache for her Nelly’s obsessive need for her husband – and when she finally finds him, she still doesn’t really have him.

As the husband, Ronald Zehfeld shows us the magnetism that attracts Nina, along with the brusque purposefulness that he thinks he needs to survive and flourish in the post-war Germany.

Christian Petzold and Nina Hoss collaborated on the recent film Barbara (he won the Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear for his work). About Barbara, I wrote

“Given that’s it difficult to imagine how anyone else could have improved Barbara, I’ll be looking for Petzold’s next movie.”

Well, here it is, and it’s gripping.

The ending of the film is both surprising and satisfying. Several people in my audience let out an audible “Wow!” at the same time.

Phoenix was one of my Best Movies of 2015. It is available to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon Video, YouTube and Google Play.

Stream of the week: PHOENIX – riveting psychodrama, wowzer ending

Ronald Zehfeld and nina Hoss in PHOENIX
Ronald Zehfeld and Nina Hoss in PHOENIX

In the German psychological drama Phoenix, Nina Hoss plays Nelly, an Auschwitz survivor whose face has been destroyed by a Nazi gunshot; her sister has arranged for plastic surgery to reconstruct her face. When Nelly gets her new face, we accompany her on an intense quest.

Writer-director Christian Petzhold is an economical story-teller, respectful of the audience’s intelligence. Watching a border guard’s reaction to her disfigurement and hearing snippets from the sister and the plastic surgeon, we gradually piece together her back story. The doctor asks what seems like a very good question – Why would a Jewish woman successfully rooted in London return to Germany in 1938? The answer to that question involves a Woman Loving Too Much.

The sister plans to re-settle both of them in Israel, but Nelly is obsessed with finding her husband. She does find her husband, who firmly believes that Nelly is dead. But he notes that the post-surgery Nelly resembles his pre-war wife, and he has a reason to have her impersonate the real Nelly. So he has the real Nelly (who he doesn’t think IS the real Nelly) pretending to be herself. It’s kind of a reverse version of The Return of Martin Guerre.

It’s the ultimate masquerade. How would you feel while listening to your spouse describe you in detail to a stranger?

Nina Hoss is an uncommonly gifted actress. Here she acts with her face fully bandaged for the first third of the film. We ache for her Nelly’s obsessive need for her husband – and when she finally finds him, she still doesn’t really have him.

As the husband, Ronald Zehfeld shows us the magnetism that attracts Nina, along with the brusque purposefulness that he thinks he needs to survive and flourish in the post-war Germany.

Christian Petzold and Nina Hoss collaborated on the recent film Barbara (he won the Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear for his work). About Barbara, I wrote

“Given that’s it difficult to imagine how anyone else could have improved Barbara, I’ll be looking for Petzold’s next movie.”

Well, here it is, and it’s gripping.

The ending of the film is both surprising and satisfying. Several people in my audience let out an audible “Wow!” at the same time.

Phoenix is one of my Best Movies of 2015.  It is available to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon Video, YouTube and Google Play.

PHOENIX: riveting psychodrama, wowzer ending

Ronald Zehfeld and nina Hoss in PHOENIX
Ronald Zehfeld and nina Hoss in PHOENIX

In the German psychological drama Phoenix, Nina Hoss plays Nelly, an Auschwitz survivor whose face has been destroyed by a Nazi gunshot; her sister has arranged for plastic surgery to reconstruct her face.  When Nelly gets her new face, we accompany her on an intense quest.

Writer-director Christian Petzhold is an economical story-teller, respectful of the audience’s intelligence.  Watching a border guard’s reaction to her disfigurement and hearing snippets from the sister and the plastic surgeon, we gradually piece together her back story.  The doctor asks what seems like a very good question – Why would a Jewish woman successfully rooted in London return to Germany in 1938?  The answer to that question involves a Woman Loving Too Much.

The sister plans to re-settle both of them in Israel, but Nelly is obsessed with finding her husband.  She does find her husband, who firmly believes that Nelly is dead.  But he notes  that the post-surgery Nelly resembles his pre-war wife, and he has a reason to have her impersonate the real Nelly.  So he has the real Nelly (who he doesn’t think IS the real Nelly) pretending to be herself.  It’s kind of a reverse version of The Return of Martin Guerre.

It’s the ultimate masquerade.  How would you feel while listening to your spouse describe you in detail to a stranger?

Nina Hoss is an uncommonly gifted actress.  Here she acts with her face fully bandaged for the first third of the film.  We ache for her Nelly’s obsessive need for her husband – and when she finally finds him, but she still doesn’t really have him.

As the husband, Ronald Zehfeld shows us the magnetism that attracts Nina, along with the brusque purposefulness that he thinks he needs to survive and flourish in the post-war Germany.

Christian Petzold and Nina Hoss collaborated on the recent film Barbara  (he won the Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear for his work).  About Barbara, I wrote

“Given that’s it difficult to imagine how anyone else could have improved Barbara, I’ll be looking for Petzold’s next movie.”

Well, here it is, and it’s gripping.

The ending of the film is both surprising and satisfying.  Several people in my audience let out an audible “Wow!” at the same time.