Transit (2019)
Directed by Christian
Petzold
Music Box Films, 102
minutes, Not-rated
In German with
English subtitles
* * ½
Transit is a film
that encourages reviewers to over intellectualize. But if one layers metaphors
atop assumptions, do we miss the forest for the trees? Transit has been well received by pedantic critics but largely
ignored by audiences, even those in art film venues. That’s because it because
it’s a mess of a film–an interesting mess, but a mess all the same.
Director Christian Petzold based his film upon Anna Segher’s
eponymous novel. Segher published her work in 1944 and set it in 1942. During
World War II the Vichy government of France cooperated with the Nazis in
rounding up known Jews and Jewish refugees passing through southern France.
Petzold does something a bit different. He updates the timeframe to one that’s
either the present or the near future and presents Western Europe as once again
under authoritarian rule. This time there's a twist.
Petzold’s intent seems so obvious that it surprises me that so
many reviewers missed the point. Transit centers
on a German man, Georg (Franz Rogowski), and the attempt of he and his friends
to get out of Europe before authorities apprehend them. They make it as far as
Paris before Georg’s best friend is killed, but Georg escapes and travels on to
Marseilles. He has managed to acquire the ID of a famed writer named Weidel and
hopes to parlay the author’s reputation into passage to a safe nation such as Mexico
or Venezuela before Weidel's death is discovered.
Several things should tip you off. First, Georg is German.
If you follow the news you know that Germany has been one of the most generous
nations in accepting refugees, but that its hospitality has led to a resurgence
of the far right. Second, there is no mention of the religious or political
backgrounds of those fleeing, hence no reason to assume Georg is Jewish; in
fact, we infer that Georg's German ethnicity is the real issue. Third, the
migrants seek refuge in nations that currently individuals emigrate from not to. In other words, Transit is a turn-the-tables commentary
on contemporary immigration. How does today's refugee crisis look if we replace
fleeing North Africans or Venezuelans, for example, and replace them with
Germans? What would it be like if white Americans suddenly bolted to "freer"
lands such as Mexico or Somalia?
Petzold oversteps by being too beholden to the film’s
literary inspiration. This means that Georg must become smitten with Weidel’s
widow, Marie (Paula Beer), who doesn’t know her husband is dead. She is both
beautiful and mysterious, a woman who takes lovers and we don’t know if it’s
because the couple is estranged, if they have an open relationship, if she’s
amoral, or if she’s just not what she appears to be. In Marseilles she searches
for her husband and keeps missing him in the various consulates she visits. (That
is, of course, because Georg has his identity card and transit letters.) Yet
she’s both attracted to Georg and is also having an affair with Richard
(Godehard Giese), a doctor who is also trying to get out of France but won’t
leave without Marie.
The port city of Marseilles is central to the plot. Transit
hubs often operate in the gray zones of officialdom–think Michael Curtiz’s 1942
masterpiece Casablanca. Marseilles was
like Casablanca both during World War II and today. It is France’s most multicultural
city, but some view it as seedy and dangerous. In the film (and now) Marseilles
is a point of entry for both legal and illegal immigrants. As in Casablanca, leaving requires securing
various documents, letters, stamps, and approvals. The labyrinthine process of
shuttling from one place to the next invites comparisons to Kafka, as well as
stretched metaphors of migrants being suspended between Heaven and Hell. In Transit we observe a network of cafes,
dodgy hotels, safe houses, and bars that cater to those awaiting transit or
simply living underground. Who, if anyone, can be trusted?
Beer is superb as the enigmatic Marie. Her face is lovely,
but it’s also a blank canvas that invites us to paint upon it what we wish to
see. Rogoski is also riveting as Georg, who is lost in just about every way an
individual can be lost. Nonetheless Transit
ultimately works better as an intellectual exercise than as a film. Its
narrative is so loose that it’s often like a series of snipped-thread
vignettes. Though I seldom say this, Transit
would have been better had it been more explicit in its intent.
I’m not surprised that reviewers have read other things into
it, but Transit is really about
today’s refugee crisis. The sort of existential crises that occupied Kafka are
not those that concern those on the razor’s edge of survival. If you will, the
question that Petzold never asked is how many filmgoers have read Kafka. I
have, but I doubt that’s typical. I’m not suggesting that Petzold should have
dumbed down his film, but I do find it problematic when the main point is so
muddle that reviewers instead pile metaphors atop assumptions.
Rob Weir
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