Post-WWII drama sizzles with tension
Print Edition
OUT of the ashes of summer moviegoing emerges a masterpiece.
“Phoenix,” by the German filmmaker Christian Petzold, is a post-World War II drama set in Germany where the bombed-out streets of Berlin are strewn with rubble and shame.
Few Holocaust dramas have plunged into the aftermath like this. “Phoenix” resurrects this world with a mesmerizing tale of broken, and reclaimed, identity.
Nelly Lenz (Nina Hoss) is a Jewish nightclub singer returned to Berlin from Auschwitz by her friend Lene (Nina Kunzendorf). Her face, covered in bloody bandages, has been badly disfigured. She’s brought to a doctor for facial reconstruction. Before going under the knife, the doctor asks if “a Jewess like yourself” wouldn’t rather look like someone else.
Nelly doesn’t hesitate: She wants to look as much like herself as possible. But after the surgery, she’s unrecognizable.
It’s a harrowing homecoming. Many of those she’s returning to were either Nazis or informants.
Seeking inheritance
Nelly soon seeks to find her husband, a former piano-player named Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), a Gentile whose betrayal may have sent Nelly to Auschwitz.
When she finds him in a smoky club named the Phoenix, he’s working as a busboy and doesn’t recognize her. She doesn’t reveal herself. But Johnny thinks she looks enough like his wife (he believes she’s dead) to pose as her so he can collect the inheritance.
From his subterranean hovel, Johnny teaches Nelly how to act like his wife and how to appear like a camp survivor. She goes along with his scheme and we do, too, because Hoss’ performance is so powerfully delicate.
Petzold masterfully spins the layers of duplicity and denial until “Phoenix,” and Nelly, finally shake them off in a breathtaking climax to a profoundly mournful movie.
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