Das Wunder von Bern

I have decided to discuss Soenke Wortmann's film Das Wunder von Bern, as it fits in nicely with the emerging theme of this Blog - 'Filming German History.'

Das Wunder von Bern (English title: The Miracle of Bern) was released in 2003 and tells the story of Matthias, a young boy, and his family in 1954. Matthias is made the bag carrier and lucky mascot for his local football team by top player Helmut Rahn. Meanwhile, Matthias' father, Richard, returns after many years from a Soviet Prisoner of War camp. Far from a reunited happy family, the film depicts a family in turmoil after Richard's return. Richard has no interest in football, a pointless game, or the World Cup that was to be held in Bern, Switzerland that summer. It is Matthias' dream, however, to be at the World Cup with his idol Rahn, who has been chosen to play for the German football team, a group of part-time players that faced professional teams. Matthias' passion for the football and his fighting spirit helps to rekindle his father's passion for life. The 'miracle' of Bern is therefore two-fold - West Germany's World Cup win and also the reunification of a family.

Germany's 'miracle' victory over Hungary in the World Cup Final was an important development in German history and also for German identity after the Second World War. The success of the German team led to the collective German feeling of 'Wir Sind Wieder Wer' (we are someone again), and aided two generations in their coming to terms with the past. The two generations are presented in the film as Richard and Matthias, and the bond that develops between them through football can be seen as a mircochosm of German society.

Das Wunder von Bern is an excellent example of 'Alltagsgeschichte' (every day history) that features in many German films. The experiences and struggles of Matthias' family is typical of post-war Germans: living amongst the rubble, the absence of fathers, returning Prisoners of War, the shame and trauma of the past and father and son relationships. The film presents a 'normal' family that the older German audience could relate to. Football is also the stuff of everyday people, it is easily accessible and not political or intellectual. However, it can be argued that the film's focus on the World Cup jeapordises the 'Alltagsgeschichte' and the ability of the audience it identify with the film. The World Cup match is presented as a kind of myth, with 'signs' before the match that a miracle would happen, such as the German team being the stereotypical underdogs, rain suddenly falling from 'heaven' and the apparition of Matthias at the final match. These cliches draw an emotional response from the audience, rather than an intelligent or critical response whereby the audience would reflect upon the situation in Germany after the War.

The audience is also encouraged to identify with the characters in the film through repeated use of camera close-ups on the faces and emotions of the actors. The viewer experiences much of the film through Matthias' eyes, he is a typical young boy and the audience would be able to identify with many aspects of his life. Richard represents one of many thousands of German men who were held in Soviet prison camps and then returned home years later to find that they could not simply fit in to their old lives again. He is not a likeable character at first, he is cold and distant, appears weak, isolated and psychologically damaged. The audience feels a sense of pity for Richard as a victim, they are not encouraged to also consider that Richard was also a perpetrator in the War. Richard's mental breakdown, or 'defeat' is played out as the German football team lose their first match. In order to win the World Cup, the German team must first accept their defeat and be able to move on, just as Richard must share his experiences and reveal his weaknesses in order to have a successful future with his family. As Germany's spectacular victory is shown, the real miracle of the story happens - the developing bond between Richard and Matthias. Today we would label Richard as having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - but should we feel sympathy for him? Can emotional empathy function as historical understanding? Christa, Matthias' mother, is also an identification figure. She is a strong female character, who brought her family through the war while her husband was a prisoner. She is pleased when Richard returns but there is also a sense of trepidation, as Christa gains no recognition for all she has done for the family. This situation is also comparable to the role of women after the War in Britain. They took over traditionally male roles during war-time and were then expected to relinquish all authority and ideas of independence upon the return of the men.

A further 'Wunder' is also depicted in the film - the Wirtschaftswunder (Economic miracle) of the 1950s. Adi Dasler and his trainers are portrayed and represent the creative capitalist spirit that created the Wirtschaftswunder. The Ackermann family embody the effects of the Economic miracle through their exotic holidays, fashionable clothes and modern house.

It is very interesting to note the differences in the DVD covers of the German and English DVDs.




The English DVD cover focuses on the football miracle featured in the film, and the tag line states 'Every nation needs a legend...' The German version focuses on Matthias and his father, and the 'miracle' of their relationship. The tag line is also different - 'Jedes Kind braucht einen Vater' (every child needs a father). The German audience is therefore invited to identify with Matthias and his story, the English audience with the football team. Does this reflect on the English perception of Germany? Or perhaps the German perception of the English? To watch a German film, must the English audience first be enticed by football?
Is the 'Hollywood effect' again shown in this film? The name of the film alone demonstrates the stereotypical Hollywood happy ending.




References:

Film - Das Wunder von Bern. Dir. Soenke Wortmann, (Germany, 2003)

Jordan, Stefan, 'Der deutsche Sieg bei der Weltmeisterschaft 1954: Mythos und Wunder oder historisches Ereignis?' http://www.sehepunkte.de/2004/06/6462.html (12/12/2009)

Seitz, Norbert, 'Was symbolisiert das "Wunder von Bern"?' http://www.bpb.de/DSVSJU.html (12/12/2009)

Goodbye Lenin

I first watched Good Bye, Lenin!, directed by Wolfgang Becker, in 2003. I watched it in a cinema in (the former) East Berlin, and was amazed that the audience stood and clapped as the end credits rolled; I had never seen a film have such an effect on its viewers. I bought the DVD as soon as it was released and have since watched it numerous times. I now believe the initial impact of the film lends itself to the images contained in the film, and the historical memory which these images transmit.

Good Bye, Lenin! was released in 2003, just fourteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the time that the film is set. The film, therefore, deals with events in our recent history - many people today will still have memories of this event from their own personal experiences. The film is set in East Berlin focuses on Alex and his mother, who became an ardent supporter of the GDR after her husband left the family in 1978 to flee to the West. Alex's mother has a heart attack and falls in to a coma shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the arrival of Capitalism to East Germany. She awakes from her coma after eight months, and her family is warned that any shock to her could cause a fatal heart attack. Alex and his sister then try to create the illusion that the GDR is alive and well, if not even better than before.

Thomas Mann stated in his Essay On The Film that 'film [in general] possesses a technique of recollection, of psychological suggestion.' Indeed, the images used in Good Bye, Lenin!, such as newspaper headlines and television pictures, could indeed evoke recollections for the audience, but what kind of memories are these? Critical or nostalgic? And who has these memories?

The title sequence of Good Bye, Lenin! contains images of East Berlin from GDR postcards (see clip from 1min 10secs onwards).



Head of Artwork on the film, Darius Ghanai, stated that he intended to zoom in on the details in the postcards in order to show a different truth to what was actually presented - he wanted the viewer to see 'new' postcards, as buildings that appear in the postcards were demolished after the fall of the Wall (Toteberg p.145). By zooming in on certain features, Ghanai demfamiliarizes familiar images, which leads viewers from (former) East Berlin to remember buildings that were previously there and are not now, and viewers from West Berlin to realise the dramatic changes that occurred for the 'Ossis'.

The front pages of newspapers from several countries (Germany, France and U.S.A.) flash up on the screen in the middle of the narrative during Good Bye, Lenin! As the newspapers are from around the world, it shows that the fall of the Berlin Wall was an international event, or an event of international significance. The memories of this event would, therefore, also spread internationally. This is perhaps shown by the success of the film internationally. As these images interrupt the narrative, a kind of Verfremdungseffekt is created. Viewers become aware of the time setting of the film, the characters and themselves. They remember that they are watching a fictitious film and this encourages them to be analytical or critical. It could also influence the audience to consider what they were doing at this time and their own experiences. This is one of the questions that Good Bye, Lenin! poses - is memory nostalgic or critical? Is it defamiliarizing or does it remind us of the familiar?

There are many images from television throughout Good Bye, Lenin! I will firstly discuss the documentable images. The actual events of 1989-1990 structure the narrative chronologically. This was important to Becker who said 'you just can't deal arbitrarily with certain chronological developments determined by events such as the monetary union and the fall of the Wall.' All of the images we see are from actual news material from the time of the fall of the Wall. We see them happening on our screens as Alex watches them at the same time on his television, for example 40 Jahre DDR parade, Honecker's resignation, people climbing over the Berlin Wall, Germany's first free elections, the money exchange and the World Cup. All of this footage would evoke both positive and negative memories, memories of hope and fear for the future, for East and West Germans and also for the international viewer. Images from Das Sandmaennchen, an actual German children's programme, are also shown.



Actual footage of the first (East) German, Sigmund Jaehn, flying in to Space is also shown, evoking a personal memory for Alex - his father leaving. However, this would evoke proud memories for East German viewers - a collective, national pride and memory.

Actual archival news material from the GDR news programme Aktuelle Kamera is used in Good Bye, Lenin!, but in a different manner to the other images - to fool Alex's mother.



This news programme had the same structure and content every night, it wanted to show that the world of socialism was perfect. In a sense Aktuelle Kamera was Das Sandmaennchen for adults - its monotonous and never changing content had a sedative effect on its viewers. Images from this news programme would bring back memories of the show for East German viewers, however, the images have further implications. As Alex and Dennis manipulate and use the footage for their own gain it shows the viewer how easy it is to distort the truth. Wolfgang Becker states 'you can see how quickly you can fake things with pictures and a slightly altered commentary - which makes you doubt whether the pictures were already completely truthful in their original context, and how much truth is to be found in the pictures to begin with.' (www.sonyclassics.com/goodbye/flash.html)

What are the effects of using archival images in Good Bye, Lenin!? Does the use of existing archival material reflect on the film's own use of archival material? Does the film undermine its own historical veracity? Through the use of images and voiceover, the fake narratives of the Aktuelle Kamera news reports are put together in the same way as Alex's narrative in the film - so the viewer of the film is in the same situation as Alex's bed-ridden mother: are we to be seduced by the plausible but inauthentic reconstruction?

Also, the images shown in the film have been seen so many times before that '[they are] memorie[s] consisting largely of images that have by now become so conventionalised that they determine what is a "correct" representation of the period and what is not.' (Kaes p.196) When images like these are seen time and again they become the memories - they are not the actual memories. The images have been seen so many times before that perhaps the viewers' personal memories are being replaced with images that they have seen on television, therefore are personal memories being replaced with collective 'memories' and film narratives of the past?


References:

Good Bye, Lenin! Dir. Wolfgang Becker (Germany, 2003)

Boehn, Andreas, 'Memory, Musealization and Alternative History in Michael Kleeberg's Novel Ein Garten im Norden and Wolfgang Becker's Film Good Bye, Lenin!' in Memory Traces: 1989 and the question of German cultural identity (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2005) pp. 245-260.

Kaes, Anton, From Hitler to Heimat (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989)

Toteberg, Michael, ed., Good Bye, Lenin! (Berlin: Schwarzkopf und Schwarzkopf, 2003)

www.sonyclassics.com/goodbye/flash.html (5/12/2009)

Jakob der Lügner vs. Jacob the liar

While watching the credits of Peter Kassovitz's film, Jacob, the liar, roll down my t.v. screen, I was intrigued to see that it was adapted from a German book by Jurek Becker called Jakob der Lügner . Having a keen interest in German literature and film, I decided to read Becker's book and searched for it on a popular book-selling website from the rainforest. The novel popped up in the search results, as did a German film, also called Jakob der Lügner, directed by Frank Beyer. I bought them both, and after reading Becker's novel and watching Beyer's film I was surprised at the differences between both films and the book they were adapted from.

Jakob der Leugner and Jacob the Liar focus on Jakob Heym, a Jew struggling to survive in a Polish ghetto during World War Two. He makes up a story that he has a radio, forbidden in the ghetto, and fills the other ghetto inhabitants with hope as he tells them of radio reports that the allies were advancing.

Becker's novel uses a non-omniscient narrator, who admits he is unreliable, sometimes the narrative perspective shifts to other characters, and the technique of 'free indirect speech' is also used. The Jewish characters are, therefore, easy to relate to as their thoughts and feelings are shown. Several stories intertwine with the main story of Jakob. Beyer's film uses an internal narrator who is totally immersed in the ghetto experience and tells of only one story, Jakob’s. The narrator cannot offer any insight into Jakob’s mind, and therefore the viewer gains no inner-perspective on Jakob’s thoughts and experiences. These are, instead, conveyed through clever camera work e.g. close ups of facial expressions and the use of emotive music. Kassovitz's film uses Jacob himself as the narrator of his own story, using inner-monologues, which allows the viewer to be fully immersed in Jacob's thoughts.

The characterisation of Jakob is also very different in both films. In Becker’s novel Jakob is depicted as a ‘shy, fearful, reclusive individual’ (O Dochartaigh p.462), and furthermore, an anti-hero. Beyer’s Jakob is very similar to Becker’s, who finds himself as the hero of the ghetto almost by accident, as he is not trying to be a hero, he is just trying to survive. Even the appearance of Vlastmil Brodsky (Jakob) is far from that of the stereotypical hero; he has a weather-beaten, sleepy eyed, unattractive face. In contrast, the character of Jakob in the Kassovitz film (played by Robin Williams) is portrayed as a stereotypical ‘Hollywood’ hero, a kind of ‘leader and saviour’ of the Jews in the ghetto.

Humour plays a central role in Becker’s Jakob der Lügner; there are many humorous scenes that play on human weaknesses and appear comic even in such extreme circumstances as the Nazi controlled ghetto. However, the humour does not dominate the narrative of the story and is funny, yet moving. The 1974 film also contains humour, which stays true to the novel, for example, in the scene when Mischa and Rosa are in bed talking and Fajngold has to pretend he is deaf, the camera effectively switches from the couple to Fajngold, sitting up in bed with an expression of disgust and frustration on his face, inviting the viewer to laugh at the situation. By contrast, humour in the Kassovitz film is present from the beginning, and also very obvious, for example the joke, which Jakob tells:

Hitler goes to a fortuneteller and asks:
‘When will I die?’
She replies: ‘On a Jewish holiday.’
‘How do you know?’ he asks.
‘Any day that you die will be a Jewish holiday!’.
The humour continues in this cheap, exaggerated way throughout the film, far from the subtle humour present in the novel and 1974 film.

The ending of Becker’s novel and both films are significantly different. The novel has two endings, one fictitious ending created by the narrator, where Jakob dies heroically trying to escape the ghetto, and the ‘real’ ending, where the Jews are being deported. The narrator’s imagined ending leaves the reader with a sense of hope – just as Jakob’s ‘imagined’ radio gave hope to the Jews in the ghetto. However, Beyer’s film does move away from the novel in that it only has one ending: the ‘real’ ending from Becker’s text. Jacob imagines a scene as he is on the train; he is in the snow, hiding from brutal reality in dreams that halt in a freeze frame. The final credits are superimposed on stills of faces in the train suggesting lives that have ended. Kassovitz’s film, however, includes two endings, although different to those of the novel. The first is Jakob’s death at the hands of the Nazis after refusing to admit, in front of the other Jews, that the radio did not exist. This is also the highest act of resistance present in the 1999 adaptation. Furthermore, this scene bears a resemblance to that of a scene near the end of Mel Gibson’s 1995 film Braveheart. In both scenes, a crowd gathers and watches as the central figure is going to be executed if he does not withdraw his views, both characters have been beaten and tortured and both are finally executed, yet defiant to the end, as shown by a close-up of Jakob’s smiling face. Through this ending, Jakob is portrayed as a kind of heroic figure, ‘a Jewish resistance hero’ that contrasts greatly with the anti-hero of the original novel and 1974 film. After his execution, Jakob narrates a second ‘ Hollywood happy’ ending, where Russian tanks liberate the train that is deporting the Jews. Lina’s daydream turns into a colourful scene with Russian soldiers and a Chicago swing band playing music, which has been played previously on the radio in the barrack scene at the start of the film.


So, why are the films so different? Is it because they were made in different decades, in different countries, for different audiences? Which film is more 'successful' (how do you define success?) and why?




References:

Primary Text/Films:
Becker, Jurek, Jakob der Lügner (Leipzig: Verlag Philipp Reclam jun., 1988).
Jakob der Lügner. Dir. Frank Beyer (Germany, 1974).
Jacob, the Liar. Dir Peter Kassovitz (USA, 1999).

Secondary Texts:
Gilman, Sander L., Jewish Frontiers: Essays on Bodies, Histories, and Identities (Basingstoke: Plagrave Macmillan, 2003).
Insdorf, Annette, Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (Cambridge: CUP, 2003)
Ó Dochartaigh, Pól, ‘Americanizing the Holocaust: The case of Jakob the Liar’, Modern Language Review, 101 (2006), pp. 456-471.
Reich-Ranicki, Marcel, ‘Roman vom Ghetto’, in Irene Heidelberger-Leonard, ed., Jurek Becker (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992), pp. 133-137.
Rock, David, Jurek Becker: A Jew who became a German? (Oxford: Berg, 2000).
Stoll, Andrea, ‘Das Lebensthema Jurek Beckers im Wechsel der Perspektiven’, in Irene Heidelberger-Leonard, ed., Jurek Becker (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992), pp. 332-347.

First post ...

Perhaps the first of many?