2023-05-09 17:27:05
The Petzold problem
Nadja is only allowed to recite Heine
Source: Christian Schulz, Schramm Film
Some love it, others hate it: Christian Petzold’s film “Red Sky”, which won the Silver Bear at the Berlinale. But what triggers the moviegoers in the actually harmless Baltic Sea romance? The truth tells us the female muse.
Et rarely happens that you want to write about a film that has been in cinemas for some time. But “Red Sky” by Christian Petzold is such a tricky case because some love it so much that they get really angry when you criticize it, even ask the system question because the film and the others didn’t get anything at the German Film Prize really hate him, can’t contain my anger at the end of this film, in which the “dysfunctional straight man” is again the absurd main prize, as a friend threw at me annoyed when we came out of the cinema.
Leon alone on the beach
Source: Christian Schulz, Schramm Film
With a wink, one could say that Petzold divides society. I admire the director for “Ghosts”, “Yella” or “Jerichow”, his collaboration with Harun Farocki, who died in 2014, was great. But then his work slowly flattened out, but it didn’t bother me anymore either, it had become a very quiet side issue. Now I’ve seen “Red Sky” – and only had to laugh out loud in the cinema. But now I’m wondering what’s wrong with me – is it me or the film that has a problem?
The chubby, clumsy writer Leon (Thomas Schubert) travels with his Adonis friend Felix (Langston Uibel) to their parents’ holiday home on the Baltic Sea to go over his failed script with his publisher (Matthias Brandt). But Nadja (Paula Beer) already lives in the house. Her name sounds “Russian”, says Leon disdainfully, she is a “seasonal worker” so you hear. At the same time, and this is forced on you by a lot of talking, but not made tangible, he naturally falls in love with the self-confident woman in the red dress from the very first moment. Snoops around in her diary, suffers when he hears her having sex.
At the latest when Nadja strides through the picture playing the whistle, it becomes clear that Petzold is quoting Eric Rohmer’s “Summer” from 1996, all this long-mocked academic love distraction with a poetic, transfigured view of the sea. Unlike Rohmer, the man doesn’t call the whistle here, it’s the muse himself – but that’s almost it for renewal! Nadja doesn’t have to cook, she can heat up goulash for the boys three days in a row. But even she will not turn out to be a “cleaning lady”, but rather a literary scholar who quotes Heinrich Heine’s “Der Asra” with a blush in her face and in a duet with Matthias Brandt. A male academic arrogance that chokes on its intended irony. In order not to end up as a bourgeois Baltic quote of the “summer”, Petzold builds – attention, spoilers! – add a forest fire as a threatening backdrop.
All for Leon
No joke: Felix and his new love Devid (Enno Trebs) die with a rookie in the purgatory of climate change. In the end, however, Nadja will still hold Leon’s hand, even though he only behaved like an incapacitated asshole. And the finale of the finale is even flatter: Everything is in the service of Leon’s script, now ridiculously celebrated by Matthias Brandt – with Felix’ death as the climax donor.
What remains: Nadja is allowed to whistle in a way that used to be inappropriate for a woman, but she still hasn’t written the novel for the film.
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