Transit

Transit is based on a 1944 novel by Anna Seghers, in turn based on her experiences as a German Jewish Communist political refugee in Marseilles trying to get out of Vichy France to Mexico. The protagonist is a German illegally in France, who travels from Paris to Marseilles, through chance assumes the identity of a dead German leftist writer who has an exit visa to Mexico, and finds himself involved with both the writer's estranged wife and the wife and son of a fellow German illegal.

What made the movie work for me is that it is not a routine World War II vintage costume drama. Director-Writer Christian Petzold has chosen to set the entire story in present day France. There are no Nazis, no swastikas, and no political explanations. There are only the omnipresent French police checking papers in the street, raiding hotels and apartments, and rounding up illegal aliens for deportation to an unnamed destination, assisted by good French citizens either venal or patriotic, and the desperate struggle of the refugees to procure legitimate identity and travel documents in the face of bureaucratic indifference or hostility. It all feels like it could be happening six months from now, there or, for that matter, here. The contemporary setting greatly increases the tension by taking away historical cues -- you have no idea how it is going to come out or whether the hero will make his getaway to Mexico.

This is an excellent, if somewhat heavy drama. Excellent acting. The plot obviously romanticised and, given the dystopian premise, unbelievable yet eminently relatable. A reverse WWII refugee story of love and self realisation.

I enjoyed it and certainly felt a note of anguish at refugee plights the world over.

A good movie!

Very well acted this movie reproduces perfectly the depressing mood of the time when the book was written(1944). Great idea to place it in the modern France.

What I liked: the intertwined and unexpected developments of this love triangle (or square?) of WW2 refugees in Marseille... ingeniously "teleported" in the current days. What I didn't like: the somehow uncertain adaptation to a story of seemingly current events...

Being original in the medium of film, when coupled with a fresh perspective for commonly repeated stories and themes, can lead to memorable performances with unique and refreshing interpretations, as seen here (although it seldom works with Shakespeare unless you modernise the dialogue). A 1940s passage is reimagined today within the bounds of those trying to escape conflict at a French port through any means they can establish, with the ever present threat of the authorities constantly and aggressively trying to prevent them. While the times may have changed and their reasons for escape evolved, this dilemma still remains in the real world today for some, to migrate at haste to survive.