PHOENIX directed by Christian Petzold, written by Petzold and Harun Farocki, from a novel by Hubert Monteilhet, with Nina Hoss and Ronald Zehrfeld. A Films We Like release. 98 minutes. Subtitles. Opens Friday (May 8). For venues and times, see Movies.
Do not refer to Nina Hoss as Christian Petzold’s muse. You may be tempted – she’s appeared in four of his films, including Barbara and the post-Holocaust drama Phoenix, opening this week. But Petzold warns against it.
“She’s aggressive against [being] directed,” says Petzold in his stilted English during last year’s TIFF, where Phoenix premiered. “She’s a fighter. She has a wall around her. I like that. She’s not a muse for male subjectivity, but she appreciates that there’s a male subject who wants to create.
“Directing must be a dance of hiding and opening up, and it’s fantastic with her. She’s a really good dancer.”
The luminous Hoss laughs when I tell her about my conversation with her director.
“Only in recent years has he said I was not his muse,” she says. “I used to say, ‘Let’s keep that image of me as muse – I don’t mind,’ but actually ours is a collaboration.”
It’s a hugely productive one this time around. Phoenix tells the story of a woman who returns from a Nazi concentration camp to her hometown. Hoss plays Nelly with such authenticity – her eyes have a haunted look, and she seems to carry the terror in her body – that you feel she’s had the experience of the trauma.
Hoss says her single most important research resource was Claude Lanzmann’s landmark film Shoah, especially the testimony of victims.
“The way they talked about what they’d seen – they tried to keep it together,” she recalls. “But there’s always one moment when the horror comes back, and you can see it in their eyes. Something is breaking down. It’s more than just sadness.”
But she still insists that the much more difficult role is Ronald Zehrfeld’s as Nelly’s husband, the man who may have turned her in to the Nazis.
“I always said my character is the victim, and the victim’s always easier to understand than he is. I am a wounded deer who’s looking for answers. He’s destroyed by guilt and carrying that weight. For him life is over, and he has shut down.”
Petzold says he wanted to tackle the story because, although Germany is trying to come to grips with its Nazi past, it hasn’t made a movie with a storyline like this.
“We have a fantastic memorial ground and museum, but no one’s given the ghosts the chance to materialize so they can come back to become human beings.”
“Is it too late?” I wonder.
“Yes, but cinema’s always in places where it’s too late.”
See our review of Phoenix here.
susanc@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole
