The most recognizable member of the “New Berlin School,” Christian Petzold has, with his prior Yella and now with Jerichow, reconfigured classic American films into commentaries on modern capitalist Germany. Whereas the transparent Yella borrowed from 1962’s Carnival of Souls to condemn the means by which his native country’s free-market enterprise has engendered moral rot, the director’s latest recasts James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice as a portrait of the fallout wrought by Germany’s new economic order. Going pulpy suits Petzold far more comfortably than did his previous effort’s foray into metaphysical mystery, as his measured, icy cinematographic style and diegetic soundscape (most frequently populated with the sounds of chirping birds) brings omnipresent unease to the proceedings. Marked by a mood of chilling foreboding, his story concerns a quiet, dishonorably discharged vet named Thomas (a disquietingly unreadable Benno Fürmann) who returns home from Afghanistan to the titular northeastern German town to tend to his mother’s funeral, is promptly cold-cocked by associates eager to collect on outstanding debts, and shortly thereafter finds his penniless circumstances improved by a chance encounter with a drunk driver named Ali (Jilmi Sözer) whom he generously helps home one afternoon.

Read More...