By Sarah Sluis
Guest correspondent Heike Scharrer reports on two standout films from the 2009 Berlin Film Festival, just concluded.
In the past decade, the Berlin Film Festival has become known as a launchpad for politically minded
cinema. This year was no exception, with political thrillers like Storm, the contribution of Berlin School director Hans-Christian Schmid, re-examining war crimes and human-rights violations in the former Yugoslavia.
Kerry Fox in 'Storm'
The film focuses on a lawsuit at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, which is scheduled to be shut down by 2010 due to lack of funding. Schmid provides thorough insight into the Tribunal's complex and often hidden bureaucratic system, while probing the role of justice in achieving reconciliation. The geographical complexity is complemented by an impressive multilingual cast hailing from countries ranging from Sweden and Denmark to Romania and New Zealand.
Hannah Maynard (Kerry Fox) leads the trial against Goran Duric, a commander of the Yugoslavian National Army who has been significantly involved in ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. However, it looks as if the trial will be cut short, as key witness Alen Hajdarevic (Kresimir Mikic) has committed suicide. Attending the funeral in Sarajevo, Hannah comes across Alen's sister Mira (Anamaria Marinca, star of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), who turns out to be a true witness to the deportations and rape of Bosnian Muslim women in the spa town of Vilina Kosa.
Sparked by this encounter, Hannah sees her chance to continue pursuing Duric, with Mira as a key witness in her game bag. But having just built herself a new life in Berlin, Mira is reluctant to join in; she doesn't want to put her family at risk. Slowly the two women make friends and, confronted by recurring memories of the incidents in Yugoslavia, Mira finally decides to put aside her private interests and testify against Duric.
Hannah faces bureaucratic obstacles and conflicting diplomatic and political interests. When colleagues within her own ranks bend to the bureaucratic machine, disallowing Mira's testimony, Hannah has to resolve the inner conflict between her idealism and the fulfillment of her institutional duties.
The character of Hannah is based on Carla del Ponte, The Hague's ambitious and largely successful female prosecutor. It's evident Schmid spent a great deal of time researching the subject, given the complexity and level of detail involved. Ultimately, the film's message is that justice depends on one's perspective.
Employing handheld camerawork and clinical, nondescript locations, Schmid strives for authenticity, the traditional documentary style in narrative filmmaking of the Berlin School, which idolizes directors like John Cassavetes. But Storm's aesthetics are as conventional as an average TV drama's; handheld camerawork is no longer a novelty. Schmid also shuns flashbacks to the incidents in the former Yugoslavia, which is consistent with the film's documentary style and avoidance of sensationalist traps.
***
Arriving in Berlin one year after Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg, Gary Yates' genre film High Life offered a new angle on life in the Canadian provincial city of Winnipeg. Based on a play by Lee MacDougall, this upbeat black comedy follows four hapless small-time criminals trying to pull off a bank heist.
We find ourselves in Winnipeg in 1983, where it is supposedly so cold one might be better off being locked up in prison (where it's warmer). Dick, a slacker and morphine addict, has just started his first serious job in a real hospital when the past catches up with him. His mate Bug unexpectedly turns up at his workplace and gets him fired just like that.
The two lowlifes and their friends continue living out their pink morphine dreams in a warehouse loft, while hatching plots for the future. Dick is in urgent need of cash to get some more dope and pay back his mate who took his rap. A compelling idea soon arises: The ATM has just been invented, offering a chance to defy the cold hand of new technology. Donnie, another member of the clique, has already had experience with the new devices, as a pickpocket specializing in debit-card scams. Since he's a nice guy, he always returns the wallets to the original owners as "it's a disaster if you lose your purse." The three guys finally decide to face the challenge, joined by handsome womanizer Billy, who enjoys life as it comes�even when he finds himself bloodstained all over in a convenience store, he still has a flirting eye for the cashier girl. Surreal details, like a horse standing around in Dick's apartment during a drug session, seem perfectly at home in the dream world of the four protagonists.
The look of High Life is highly stylized and reminiscent of graphic novels, intensified by high-contrast lighting. This often leaves the faces of the actors slightly darker than their surroundings, with a light edge at the side�a common practice in graphic novels.
The color pink dominates the film. Pink is the color of sweet dreams and the morphine tablets that these amiable screwups are constantly consuming. The color pink also becomes their undoing as they try to get away with the bank notes, thanks to a color bomb which explodes, covering the protagonists in pink paint from head to toe and making the cash virtually useless.
High Life may not be utterly innovative, but it's an effective piece of contemporary genre filmmaking whose main strength is its amiable characters.
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