Watched: Netflix (on 12/28/2015)
Review: Most World War Two (WWII) and Holocaust films take place on the battlefield or in the concentration camps. Their imagery and violence are visceral you come away from these films emotionally drained. 'Phoenix' takes a wholly different approach. Set directly after WWII 'Phoenix' gains it's emotional wallop skirting around the gaping hole that is the Nazi legacy.
The opening scene of the film is a tense introduction at an American military checkpoint. We are introduced to Lena (Nina Kunzendorf) and a mysterious passenger whose head is bound in bloody bandages. Unlike most scenes at checkpoints the tension doesn't come from the threat of violence or exposure, but from the heaviness in the air a sense that something has gone very, very wrong. The woman in the passenger seat is Nelly a concentration camp survivor. Played brilliantly by Nina Hoss Nelly is utterly haunted. Not only is she gaunt and weary but Hoss injects her physicality with anxious and belaboured movements. Watching her performance I never doubted Nelly had survived hell. To the doctor performing her reconstructive surgery Nelly firmly states that she wants to look exactly as she did before. There is so much denial in these scenes. Things can never go back to how they were. How do you even begin to recover from such violence?
The city of Berlin in the film looks post apocalyptic, buildings reduced to rubble, the streets are filled with beggars, and crime is rampant. It is here at a nightclub that Nelly discovers her husband Johnny. And this is where the story really begins. Johnny who does not recognize Nelly as his wife, hires her to help claim her own inheritance. He begins to mold Nelly into who she was before the war. There has been many apt comparisons to Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ but ‘Phoenix’ explores not only the psychological aspect of this but also the historical.
All characters in ‘Phoenix’ encompass larger elements of collective identity and the Holocaust. Johnny personifies guilt and denial in equal measure. The war has made him hard, and devious; he will do anything to get by. He’s willing to ignore the brutality of Nazi fascism for the sake of comfort and security. Nelly in her inability to come to terms with the brutality she’s faced at one point denies her own Jewish heritage. She stands in contrast with Lena whose rage has poisoned her German identity.
‘Phoenix’ stands apart from other Holocaust films for both its poetry and its humanism. Instead of brutal images it gives us metaphors, and whispers of violence and betrayal that speak volumes in our imagination. I love ‘Phoenix’ because of its ending. Dear God that ending.
All and all you may not love ‘Phoenix’ but I still think it’s a must watch.
