Barbara: Review

October 25, 2012.

Christian Petzold’s Barbara is a taunt and suspenseful drama that poses moral and political questions, writes Roberto Oliveri.

The year is 1980. Barbara, a paediatrician, is banished from Berlin to a small provincial hospital, where she is kept under constant, humiliating surveillance by those in power. At first she mistrusts her superiors at the hospital, one of whom is André Reiser (Ronald Zehrfeld), an affable doctor, handsome but plump, whose individual character, like his figure, is being altered by his adherence to the system. He warns her not to be too ‘separate’ – she must be more affable and conform to what is acceptable in order to survive.

When a young girl, Stella (Jasna Fritzi Bauer), is dragged into the hospital by armed guards, André suspects her of lying about her sickness in order to avoid the severe toil to which she is subjected at a correctional work camp. Responding to this mistreatment of Stella at the hands of André and his team of nurses, Barbara intervenes, and by doing so asserts herself, her individuality.

Stella is suffering from meningitis and is pregnant. She refuses help from anyone but Barbara, who reads to her about Huckleberry Finn and his escape on the Mississippi – prefiguring Stella’s own later attempt. André realises his mistake in not believing Stella and starts to recognise Barbara’s merits. The scene in which André attempts simultaneously to gain her trust and to show that he is a man of feeling is simply one of sublime beauty. In it, he scrutinizes Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson, and expounds its meaning – that of forcing the onlooker to sympathise with the victim on the table rather than the doctors circling and dissecting him.

Barbara (Nina Hoss) commands the screen. Close-ups scrutinize her beautiful yet aged (haggard seems a bit harsh) visage. Hers is a face that could launch a thousand ships, but also tell a thousand stories. Each line is a road that leads you through an avenue of narrative, one of anguish. The haunting guitar soundtrack, coupled with sound effects, such as the screech of the train in which we first see Barbara, and the wind and rain that engulf her later in the film, grapples you into a state of uneasiness. A deep sense of foreboding is made even worse by the cold eyes with which the film’s protagonist glares at her colleagues and all around her. She’s endured some hardship, but what? The audience can only watch her movements and read the story of her face.

Surveillance is, of course, an important theme in this film. There are shots of characters looking out of windows, spying on those suspected of acting against the state. Indeed, the first time we meet André he is looking at Barbara from his office window. At first, he can only spot her from a distance, but as he gets to know her he starts to admire her from a closer view.

Though she’s under intense observation, she is able to cycle far into the open and (almost) private countryside, where she can steal a few minutes to meet her handsome, enigmatic lover who brings her gifts from the West, such as cigarettes and nylons, and is plotting her escape. The idyllic surroundings – isolated lanes fringed with golden trees – for a moment, fool you into thinking that she is free. Yet, after her tryst with her lover in the woods, she finds her bike, a symbol of her freedom, with kinked cables, flat tire. Her liberty is merely an illusion.

Her only means of escape is the hope of Denmark her lover offers her. All she has to do is meet him at a particular place and time. Yet she’s torn between freedom and her new patients, whom she has grown to love, and André, whose genuine kindness appeals to her, and with whom she has shared a rather sudden kiss. Stella, on the run from the work camp and desperate to escape, arrives at Barbara’s house at the critical moment. Only one can escape. Will Barbara take the chance of a new life with her lover, or will she give the chance to pregnant Stella?

Dilemmas often plague Petzold’s characters. The director made his name with thrillers, like Jerichow, but Barbara differs from his previous works. Here his approach is more subtle, which results in a film that champions character and relationships. Yet it retains aspects of the thriller, by subverting our expectations. For example, there are shots of the Stasi, outside Barbara’s home, then knocks at the door. When she answers the door it’s a character that neither she (nor us) expects. Nothing is explained, but much is implied, particularly that which causes pain. A needle is shown, but its insertion isn’t, only the reaction to it. When Barbara is subjected to humiliating searches, we see only rubber gloves which suggests what’s about to happen.

At the end, Barbara has no choice but to return to the hospital. Mario, brought into the hospital because of a head injury, has been operated on, and in his room sits André. She joins him. The two exchange glances, and there’s a sense in which Barbara has come back for him, that the two will start a life together. But the fact that this scene features shots of them as individuals, not together (in, say, a two-shot, which would suggest a coming together) throws this into uncertainty. We question whether this is a happy ending. Is her return not a victory, but a loss? Has she come back to declare her love, or submit to the oppressive system, from which she can never escape?

Barbara is an acute study of the human character. Part of its beauty is the fact that its eponymous heroine, her acting redolent of the great Isabelle Huppert, evades scrutiny. Her face is motionless throughout the film. She, like Petzold, refuses to answer, refuses to judge, but demands that others do so. For all its detachment, suggestion and implicitness, the film is textured and informative. It makes you think, dares you to know.