Les trois vies de Rita Vogt

The second half of last year meant for many, especially for those of us who lived in the half of Europe which fell under the control of the communist dictatorships imposed by the former Soviet Union, the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain and of the Berlin Wall. The events were celebrated and remembered with documentary films and speeches by politicians, but on this occasion we could see how few people remember how the world was before 1989, with the divided Europe, the ideological polarization, the Cold War, and most of all the dull and hopeless life in the countries of the communist bloc. Some, the young people or those who lived in the West, did not know it. Others seem to want to forget. Reviewing movies like 'The Legend of Rita' (German title is 'Die Stille nach dem Schuß') can make a contribution against forgetting. The film made in 2000 by the German director Volker Schlöndorff returns 25 years after his great success 'The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum' to the theme of terrorism in Germany in the 70s, presenting it from the perspective of those who at one time or another were small wheels in the mechanisms of history, and which must live the rest of their lives the consequences of their acts of youth and of their adherence to a murderous ideology.

Hanna Arendt was writing about the 'banality of evil'. It can be said that Schlöndorff expands her idea in this film and that he performs a kind of 'humanization of evil'. The two main characters in the 'The Legend of Rita' are Rita Vogt, a young woman from western Germany, involved in robberies and armed attacks, some of them resulting in the death of innocents and Erwin Hull, a communist bureaucrat serving Stasi security services in eastern Germany. Both are executors in a totalitarian terrorist mechanism. She is an anarchist terrorist, he is an agent of state terrorism. On the one hand both serve anti-capitalist ideologies through violent means without manifesting too many moral scruples, on the other hand they both aspire to a normality of their lives in complete contradiction with the goals of the organizations and of he system they serve. Does Schlöndorff absolve them from guilt? I do not think so, because it is very clear in the film that everything that happens around contradicts the supposed humanistic ideals of the system. It can be said that the two characters are the only ones in the film who still believe in ideology, who do not understand or accept the changes that are happening around them. The refusal to assume any personal responsibility for the actions committed in the name of the 'cause' is also the root of their personal failures.

Between a prologue that presents Rita's terrorist activities in the mid-1970s and the epilogue that happens immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, most of the film describes the main heroine's attempt to build a new life, under cover, in a anti-Western activist protection program sponsored by Stasi. Against the course of history, she travels the opposite way to the one made by hundreds of thousands of East Germans who during the Cold War took refuge in the west. 'The Legend of Rita' belongs to the category of German films that reconstitute life in the so-called German Democratic Republic, being a more sober variant of the excellent 'Good Bye Lenin!' The two actors who play the lead roles (Bibiana Beglau and Martin Wuttke) as well as the whole team around them seemed excellent. The directorial performance is remarkable both in terms of the ambience details, and especially of the characters psychologies. Rita's attempts to restore her life manage to create, perhaps unmerited emotion and empathy towards the character. Neither personal happiness nor peace of mind are possible for those who compromise by collaborating with a crooked system. Schlöndorff does not avoid controversy, his intention seems more to open the discussion, but the main idea to me seemed clear.

Maybe it's the cultural specificity of the piece, but somehow Volker Schlondorff's "The Legends of Rita" fails to hit the right emotional chords, where essentially the film's humanism-over-politics thematics want to evoke in the audience. Don't get me wrong, "Rita" is an excellently crafted film, subtle and never forceful. The film succeeds above and beyond expectations in its depiction of the latter years of the GDR, portraying an ideologically bankrupt nation whose environments and inhabitants seem to be caught in a state of limbo. Perhaps Schlondorff's acquiring of the former DEFA (and UFA before it) Babelsburg studios is the main reason for the authenticity of his vision of the former East. As well, this is a departure from the realm of fantasy that Schlondorff had probed history within in such works as "The Ogre" and "The Tin Drum." Instead, as with Bertolucci's "Besieged," the director has returned to his roots in filmmaking and provided a once-again fresh, verité aesthetic. This could very well be a companion piece to "The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum," although, as I mentioned earlier, the emotions fall flat here, failing to deliver an ultimate, devastating "punch."

This is not the strongest film by Schlondorff, but it is very entertaining nonetheless. Rita is a woman of a thousand disguises: some adopted for her terrorist roles in the West, some given to her by her Stasi handler in the East, and some adopted to cope with the jarring dissonances that people experienced under Communism.

The time is never right for Rita. She is told that since the DDR is about to sign a pact against terrorism, she and her comrades are excess baggage. When her boyfriend announces he's going to the USSR to work, she has to tell him she can't go with him, as she'd be unsafe there. Plane tickets to Beirut are offered to them: Rita refuses but Andreas and the others go (anything to get away from the socialist nightmare). Rita's refusal saves her life, of course.

I found the moral questions that a politically engaged citizen of either of the former two Germanies had to face were brought out better in The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, but Rita has many lovely moments.

'the legend of rita' is an unfortunately choice of title when compared to the German 'die stille nach dem schuss'. The film is about how members of small armed revolutionary groups come to terms with what remains of their lives ('die stille') between/after periods of action ('dem Schuss'), not principally about one person, let alone their 'legend', even if there is only one character who is continually present.

Since the group in question hides out for a period in the ddr, a number of occasions arise in which the politics of armed guerillas and that of the ddr are compared, and both appear a long way off the kind of broad participatory socialism they are often mistakenly taken to aspire to. The exchanges between the main stasi officer and rita about the role of violence and the state are particularly priceless.

Drawing parallels with real members of the RAF far-left militant group and events of the 70s and 80s in Germany, Die Stille nach dem Schuss depicts the relationship between the terrorist organisation and the East German Stasi through the eyes of an individual. Rita Vogt seeks refuge in the GDR after becoming the target of a manhunt following a prison break gone wrong. Rita is shown to be unique in her unconditional love for the supposed values of her adopted homeland, standing in stark contrast to her fellow citizens, all of whom refuse to have the wool pulled over their eyes. The film lacks both the style and thrills of Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (2008) or any real sustained drama. Much of the time you find yourself lacking empathy for the characters and unmoved by the lack of much suspense or action. Arguably this indifference and coldness from the audience to the East is intended at times, but at others there is something lacking. Just when it seems the stakes are to be raised in Rita's personal life, the narrative moves on too soon.