Film review: 'Rosenzweig's Freedom'
Germany's legacy of hate provides the impetus for Liliane Targownik's "Rosenzweig's Freedom", a serviceable courtroom drama about a Jewish lawyer who defends his brother, accused of murdering a neo-Nazi leader.
While the film -- an award winner at the Hollywood Film Festival -- is based on events that took place in 1991, recent local right-wing extremist activities give the story a disturbingly universal pertinence.
When a white supremacist group firebombs a Vietnamese refugee shelter in Germany, a dazed and confused pistol-brandishing Michael Rosenzweig (Christoph Gareissen) frantically searches for his girlfriend Nhung (Uyen Van Thi Dao) and her son.
By the time the smoke clears, the somewhat simple-minded laborer, who is unable to remember much of what transpired that night, is charged with cold-bloodedly gunning down one of the group's key perpetrators.
But when his brother Jacob comes to his defense and uncovers evidence that would point to his innocence, he discovers that the case isn't so clear-cut. The children of concentration camp survivors, the Rosenzweig siblings find themselves dealing with very thinly veiled prejudice at every turn and a prosecution that would rather see the trial point to a clear case of retribution than to end without an identified assailant.
Writer-director Targownik does an efficient job in keeping the courtroom sequences moving, incorporating a concise storytelling shorthand and effectively setting up a closing sequence that chillingly acknowledges a situation that may never know any satisfying closure.
But while the writing and performances are uniformly solid, there's a prevailing movie-of-the-week feel to the production. It's a quality reinforced by the zoom-in character close-ups that would seem to cue upcoming commercial breaks, not to mention composer Peter Ponger's synth-heavy, budget-conscious score.
ROSENZWEIG'S FREEDOM
Director-screenwriter: Liliane Targownik
Producer: Susan Schulte
Director of photography: Johannes Hollmann
Editor: Olga Barthel
Costume designer: Jurgen Knoll
Music: Peter Ponger
Color/stereo
Cast:
Jacob: Benjamin Sadler
Michael: Christoph Gareissen
Nhung: Uyen Van Thi Dao
Running time -- 90 minutes
No MPAA rating...
While the film -- an award winner at the Hollywood Film Festival -- is based on events that took place in 1991, recent local right-wing extremist activities give the story a disturbingly universal pertinence.
When a white supremacist group firebombs a Vietnamese refugee shelter in Germany, a dazed and confused pistol-brandishing Michael Rosenzweig (Christoph Gareissen) frantically searches for his girlfriend Nhung (Uyen Van Thi Dao) and her son.
By the time the smoke clears, the somewhat simple-minded laborer, who is unable to remember much of what transpired that night, is charged with cold-bloodedly gunning down one of the group's key perpetrators.
But when his brother Jacob comes to his defense and uncovers evidence that would point to his innocence, he discovers that the case isn't so clear-cut. The children of concentration camp survivors, the Rosenzweig siblings find themselves dealing with very thinly veiled prejudice at every turn and a prosecution that would rather see the trial point to a clear case of retribution than to end without an identified assailant.
Writer-director Targownik does an efficient job in keeping the courtroom sequences moving, incorporating a concise storytelling shorthand and effectively setting up a closing sequence that chillingly acknowledges a situation that may never know any satisfying closure.
But while the writing and performances are uniformly solid, there's a prevailing movie-of-the-week feel to the production. It's a quality reinforced by the zoom-in character close-ups that would seem to cue upcoming commercial breaks, not to mention composer Peter Ponger's synth-heavy, budget-conscious score.
ROSENZWEIG'S FREEDOM
Director-screenwriter: Liliane Targownik
Producer: Susan Schulte
Director of photography: Johannes Hollmann
Editor: Olga Barthel
Costume designer: Jurgen Knoll
Music: Peter Ponger
Color/stereo
Cast:
Jacob: Benjamin Sadler
Michael: Christoph Gareissen
Nhung: Uyen Van Thi Dao
Running time -- 90 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 8/16/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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