GOETHE FILMS: BERLIN WALL: 25 YEARS October 2 to 9 at TIFF Bell Lightbox (350 King West). $10 (available at box office on day of screening). See listings. Rating: NNNNN
A quarter-century after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, its legacy still echoes through German cinema. Toronto’s Goethe-Institut has organized a screening series at the TIFF Bell Lightbox subtitled Before The Fall, assembling three films that examine the divided nation at its chilliest.
Christian Petzold’s 2012 film Barbara, screening Thursday (October 2) at 6:30 pm with an introduction by yours truly, is the most recent and reaches back the furthest. Set in the early 80s, it follows the eponymous doctor (Petzold’s frequent collaborator Nina Hoss), newly arrived at a hospital in a small East German town and clearly not happy about it. As the story unfolds, we come to understand why.
Shot while the Wall was still up, Wim Wenders’s 1987 masterpiece Wings Of Desire – Tuesday (October 7) at 6:30 pm – follows a pair of angels (Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander) through a divided Berlin as they listen in on the thoughts of humans and yearn for a depth of feeling they cannot experience themselves. The result is a transcendent, deeply felt meditation on humanity from a genuine screen artist, right down to the cameo by Nick Cave.
Finally, there’s Andreas Dresen’s 1992 Silent Country (October 9, 6:30 pm), which uses the last weeks of Soviet reign as the backdrop to a modest story about a theatre director (Thorsten Merten) preparing to mount Waiting For Godot in an indifferent East German village.
The stakes are small in comparison to what’s at risk in the coiled Barbara or the rapturous Wings Of Desire, but Silent Country feels more authentic to the experience of the majority of Germans when that era ended: something happened somewhere, and everything is going to change.
Exactly how would take years to figure out.
