At Film Forum: The horror of the German Democratic Republic via KARL MARX CITY and BROKEN--the Women's Prison at Hoheneck

A fascinating double bill about the late country of East Germany (aka the GDR or German Democratic Republic) -- that should lay to rest memories of that delightful, bubbly multi-award-winning German comedy, Good-bye Lenin! -- the two films that open at New York City's Film Forum for a two-week run this Wednesday make the GDR seem one of the prime horror haunts of our 20th-Century world.

The main attraction is the full-length documentary, KARL MARX CITY, by Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker both of whom gave us the fine docs Gunner Palace and How to Fold a Flag, in which Ms Epperlein (shown at left, and below, right, with Mr. Tucker) investigates her own and her family's past in the GDR, a country in which, it turns out, one out of three people were spying on the other two.

If you saw and recall the Oscar-winning German film, The Lives of Others that detailed the work of the GDR's secret police agency, the Stasi, you'll have immediate entry into this world (though the documentary rather firmly discredits that movie's major plot point, as well as one of its main characters). As more and more of the Stasi's records become available for former East Germsns to view, Petterlein visits her family and the former Stasi headquarters on a mission to learn why her father committed suicide. Had he, as she suspects, worked as a Stasi informant?

The movie, then, is a kind of mystery coupled to an investigation of family, friends, co-workers and bosses in a culture in which there seemed to exist little trust -- and what there is was often betrayed. We tour the area, with Petterlein as our guide, meet her remaining family, and see and hear from a number of experts in the culture and history of the Stasi and the GDR, along with seeing and hearing a lot of archival footage, some of this actual Stasi surveillance imagery with sound included. Yeah: That's creepy and then some.

The entire film is shot in black and white and Petterlein/Tucker's present-day footage is gorgeously deep and dark with glorious grays of all sorts. The movie is artful and the mystery compelling. It is solved, by the way. Or part of it, at least. Suicide is seldom completely explained, I believe.

By the time we get to the Stasi report on the Epperlein family -- especially mom's reaction to this -- the movie becomes a kind of meditation of memory and even history, as well as our own willingness to so often "rush to judgment." Most of all, the movie is a look at what a deliberately defined culture of surveillance and mistrust can create. It ain't pretty. And it's probably in our future, too.

Released by Bond/360 and running just 89 minutes, the documentary opens this Wednesday, March 29, at Film Forum in New York City for a two- week run.

On the same program with Karl Marx City (named during the decades of the GDR for you-know-who, pictured above, in bronze) is a seven-minute animated film --  BROKEN--the Women's Prison at Hoheneck titled Kaputt in the original German) -- featuring relatively simple line drawings with shadings that accompany a narration that talks about what it was like to be a prisoner in this infamous jail in the GDR.  Both the narration and animation could hardly be simpler or more compact, and yet the overall effect is quietly horrifying. We learn of conditions in the overcrowded prison, the sanitary habits of the inmates, and most especially of the forced labor the women endured -- to sew items that were then sold in West Germany, the money from which helped keep the always near-bankrupt state of East Germany afloat.

This short film is so immediately engulfing and unsettling -- the many details presented in the narrations are beautifully captured by the animation (where the women's "lipstick" came from, for instance) -- that the little movie becomes, by its end, unforgettable. Directed by Alexander Lahl and Volker Schlecht (with artwork and animation by Schlecht) and written by Lahl and Max Moench, this is a film I'd suggest seeing after Karl Marx City, rather than before, if possible.

Christian Petzold's BARBARA, set in the GDR, gives Nina Hoss another first-class role

Another Christian Petzold movie that's slow-moving yet not uninteresting, well-cast and -acted (with the filmmaker's muse Nina Hoss again at the center), after the viewing of which I found myself, as ever (Yella, Jerichow), somewhat dissatisfied yet still glad to have seen to film. What is it about Petzold's movies that put me off a bit? Perhaps their slowness, during which you'll have caught the ideas small and large, and so want the film to catch up with you. With BARBARA, the filmmaker takes you inside the German Democratic Republic (that's the ex-East Germany, for you kids) where citizens spying on each other takes pride of place and so leaves nearly everybody at risk, distrustful & untrustworthy.

Herr Petzold, shown at left, who co-wrote the film with Harun Farocki, gives us in his heroine, the film's titular character, a doctor who is being spied upon because, ostensibly, she has asked to leave for the west. Barbara is played by Ms Hoss (below), and this is possibly her finest role yet (unless you count the juicily entertaining vampire saga, We Are the Night). Barbara knows the GDR ropes well, however, and how best to play them. But as will happen is life and movies, the woman becomes attracted to her co-worker André, a doctor (Ronald Zehrfeld, shown two photos below) who quickly admits that he's been ordered to spy on her. Barbara also becomes a little too attached to her female patient, a young girl from a nearby forced labor camp who turn out to be pregnant. For his part, André, too, becomes attached to his new patient, a young man who has attempted suicide and, though he appears to be getting better, may yet have some heavy-duty residual damage going on in his brain.

There's a lot going on in Barbara, and yet not much happens, and what does--a search or two of our heroine's quarters and even her body itself, a meeting in a secluded forest with her lover--is shown quietly and slowly.

Yet the time (1980, nearly a decade prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall) and place conspire to make the movie especially fraught. Injustice like this seems even more difficult to bear when your neighbors and co-workers conspire against you. And so we begin to hate the man who appears to be in charge of Barbara's harassment. But then, a little more than midway along, we get a scene that in some ways changes everything. Not the reality of what is happening: That continues apace. But how we feel about the people who are doing this begins to change. We can see them as all terribly used by the state and our sympathy becomes more inclusive.

Petzold has always managed this well, I think -- the sense of being able to place ourselves in more diverse shoes than we might have imagined possible. And why not. In the end we are all victims. But I question his storytelling skills. Things could indeed move more quickly, and in this film, more than in his others, there is quite the sentimental streak at work. And while we're happy for the way things turn out, they do beggar belief a bit.

Barbara -- from Adopt Films and running 105 minutes -- is available now via Netflix streaming, as well as elsewhere (Amazon Instant Video) and on DVD.