Transit

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!

Highly recommended. Imaginative setting, letters of transit, Occupied France, unrequited love, maybe a bit slow, making it seem a bit long at times, and an enigmatic ending, of course. The German actor a doppelgänger of Joaquin Phoenix. A sometimes intense, always intelligent, certainly worthwhile 'art' film set in Paris, Marseilles and your imagination. We all have waited in a bar, a glass of wine in front of us, waiting for a woman we love.

German Director Christian Petzold's latest, TRANSIT, follows in the line of his excellent movies PHOENIX and BARBARA as another exploration of individual identity during periods of high political tensions. Based on a WWII novel, Petzold made the conscious decision to not be another period piece by setting in the present. Or, did he? The world we find in TRANSIT is like a parallel alternate reality. All shot in present day France. No visual effects. But, there is something off. Most of the clothes and props the main characters wear and use seem to come from the 1940s. Europe has been plunged into some unspecified war. Refugees are being expelled. Others desperate to emigrate legally to the Americas. Transit visas are like gold. Georg (Franz Rogowski) is a German stuck in Marseilles. By chance he acquires a Transit visa from another man, but, this requires him to take on the other man's identity. A mysterious woman, Marie (Paula Beer, recently seen in the exceptional NEVER LOOK AWAY) seems to keep appearing before him. Always elusive. Eventually, they meet, only to make things more complicated. Petzold is after something very tricky here. Without ever fully explaining the world he is building, we are plunged into it often leaving the viewer as baffled as the characters. The parallels to the refugee crisis in present day Europe are obvious (Georg interacts with an African woman and her child, and later, with a Muslim family), but never hammered home. Stylistically, Petzold has created an odd blend between a Noirish CASABLANCA and a totalitarian Orwellian 1984 present, all by way of Antonioni's THE PASSENGER. The past and present fold in and out, like something out of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. TRANSIT is a heady mix that won't be for all tastes, and Petzold doesn't fully command this world as well as he has in his past features. Still, it's a movie that's hard to shake. The acting is quite strong including the two leads, and a particularly strong supporting bit by Barbara Auer. TRANSIT may not be to the level of Petzold's previous few pictures, but, it's a worthy entry that lingers in the mind.

"Transit" (2018 release from Germany; 101 min.) brings the story of Georg. As the movie opens, Georg and another German guy meet up at a cafe in Paris. The guy asks Georg to drop off two letters at an acquaintance's apartment, a writer named Weidel. When Georg arrives at the apartment, it turns out Weidel committed suicide the day before. In the ensuing confusion, Georg takes Weidel's travel documents and latest manuscript. Meanwhile, Paris is getting overrun by the fascists, and Georg manages to slip out by train to Marseille... At this point we are not even 15 min. into the movie, but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this is the latest film from German director Christian Petzold, whose prior films include The State I'm In, Gespenster, Yella, Barbara, and Phoenix, just to name those, and all of them brilliant. Frankly, Petzold is one of the very best European directors of this generation, period. Every single new film of his is an event, a milestone. Here he takes the 1944 novel of the same name by Anna Seghers, and transposes it to the big screen, but with one major change: the setting is today's France. Yes, a 1944 WWII tale dealing with visas and travel documents, refugees, and cleansing of undesirables, is set in this day and age, where one can argue these very elements also exist (albeit in slightly different ways). Another striking difference: Nina Hoss, who has played the female lead in every single Petzold movie since 2007's Yella, is noticeably absent here. The female lead in "Transit" is played by Paula Beer, a German up-and-coming actress whom we saw just a few months back in "Never Look Away". But even more importantly is the male lead performance by Franz Rogowski, whom I was not familiar with. His nuanced performance as the tormented refugee is commanding. Not to mention that he appears in virtually every single frame of the movie. Bottom line: "Transit" left me transfixed from start to finish, and is a great addition to Petzold's already impressive body of work.

"Transit" premiered at last year's Berlin film festival, and now a year later finally made its way to my art-house theater in Cincinnati. Better late than never. The Saturday early evening screening where I saw this at was attended so-so (about 10 people), which is a darn shame. If you are in the mood for a top notch quality foreign film dealing with issues that were relevant in 1944 and remain so today, and coincidentally directed by one of the best in the business, I'd readily suggest you check out "Transit", be it in the theater (if you still can), on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.

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.