User Reviews

"Jerichow" is a German movie from 2008, so this one will have its 10th anniversary next year. It was written and directed by Christian Petzold and this movie of slightly under half an hour (without credits) is another statement why Petzold is among Europe's finest now and has been there for quite a while. His films are never really that long but they have great focus and that's much more important than the runtime, perfect this way as nobody needs another half hour or so of dragging scenes and empty moments. The three core players here are Benno Fürmann, Nina Hoss and Hilmi Sözer. Fürmann has worked with Petzold on many occasions and I personally must say I don't think he is a really great actor. This film does not change anything really. His character is relatively lackluster to be honest and I felt that he required little range to work nicely, which works in Fürmann's favor. And so it is all good with the decision to cast Fürmann. Hoss is another actor that Petzold has worked with on quite a few occasions, his leading lady and her character certainly requires a bit more than the previous. But Hoss, even if she has a tendency to give extremely similar performances, is also good enough to make her work. As for Sözer, honestly so far I only knew he'd be in loud movies that Germans would call klamauk at times, so I was certainly a bit surprised to see him in a Petzold movie giving a pretty strong dramatic performance. Definitely the positive surprise here as he may very well be the film's MVP.

This is the story of two men forming a friendship after one of them becomes an employee of the other. When the boss' beautiful wife comes into play, things turn sour quickly in their relationship however. It becomes clear relatively quickly that not all of the trio will survive it somehow, even with the reference towards one character falling of a cliff early on. The big question, however, would be which one(s) would turn out to get sacrificed at the end. This is also one of the most interesting aspects and Petzold comes up with a good finale for sure. I personally would call myself a fan of the filmmaker. This one here is probably not my most favorite film of him, but I still enjoyed thanks to the inclusions of interesting plot points like betrayal, violence and conspiracy. A really dark film actually, one of Petzold'Äs darkest perhaps. I think the fact why he is so good right now is that he usually does not include many characters in the center of his films and that he does without pointless supporting characters that add absolutely nothing because they are underwritten or don't get the screen time they need in order to work out. All the minor characters in here, even if they have only one scene, add something to the movie, not because we remember them, but because we remember what their scenes told us about the protagonists, like the scene with the Asian clerk and the reactions of both Sözer and Fürmann are pretty interesting to watch. The consequence is that the central characters are elaborated on even more and honestly, this is what every quality film needs. One of the better German movie from the 21st century for sure. I recommend checking it out because it feels so authentic and atmospheric at the same time and I had the impression I was watching real characters from start to finish. Watch it.

Christian Petzold's Jerichow tells a familiar tale but is well-crafted and involves refreshing elements that make it distinct from the others. Personally I am not a fan of affair stories and there was a point in the film where it was slowly losing my attention but masterful Petzold hooked me back and held me until the end. To say it is a complicated situation is also nothing new, but this involves people who, unlike similar films of the same nature, are not well-off or privileged in their country. I loved the character Ali and the very 3-dimensional construction of his character, never forgetting the struggles of an immigrant in their new country (among other aspects).

The allusions to "The Postman Always Rings Twice" are obvious and don't need to be discussed. What interested me was the political allegory of this movie. It reminded me of Fassbinder. In the same way that "The Marriage of Maria Braun" is an allegory of Germany up to Unification, this is too, only in a more abstract way.

Spoiler:

One character = East Germany

One character = West Germany

One character = The United States.

Watch the movie and fill in the blanks.

The American character is clearest—generous but inept, suspicious of his charges, unappreciated, cheated, ultimately beside the point.

The ending isn't Fassbinder, but it's close.

This German director's remake of 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' has a harsh, pared-down intensity that leaves a lasting impression. The husband is a rich Turkish-German businessman, a bottom-feeder made good whom nobody wants around. He's really quite nice--and nice to the lean, muscled vet he takes on as a helper--except that he beats his wife. Ali (Hilmi Sözer) runs a bunch of fast food road joints. Thomas (Benno Fuermann) was dishonorably discharged from service in Afghanistan, is back in his old country home and needs work.

The opening scene shows Thomas at a funeral near the town of Jerichow, west of Berlin. A parent has just died and he wants to renovate the country house and live in it. He tries to hide some money from his brother to use for that. He gets caught, and knocked out. This is where Ali comes and asks Thomas to drive for him, because he's drunk.

Alienation is a big theme here. Bonds do not exist or if they do, are born of emptiness. Remember Faye Dunnaway's line to Jack Nicolson in Chinatown? "Are you alone?" and his reply: "Isn't everyone?" These folks are shut up in their cold little "windowless monads," to cite a German philosopher. Such also is the cold, ugly world of Forties American noir. Petzold has neatly transposed it to 21st-century Germany. It's what we don't know about Thomas, Ali, and Ali's wife Laura (Nina Hoss) that makes them interesting to us.

Petzold tells a simple, effective, highly focused story whose action is held together by the glue of bad behavior and suspicion.

Thomas isn't exactly a drifter like the John Garfield character in the 1946 original, but he comes close. The only job he can get is tossing cucumbers into a machine at harvest time. But after the frequently drunk Ali has his driving license revoked, he calls on Thomas to help him full time as driver and co-worker for the deliveries and collections from his roadside snackbars. Laura helps with the accounting, Laura and Thomas immediately meet, and before long they're sneaking kisses and more, with dangerous boldness, almost as if Ali were blind like the cuckolded husband in Nabokov's 'Laughter in the Dark' (which is set in Germany).

'Jerichow' doesn't pause for a breath and has no frills or beauty--though the photography has an elegant clarity both in depicting the landscape and painting the light around the three characters. What we get is like a good short story. The spaces become vivid--the runs through heavy rain between houses, the cliff over the water where the victim will come to grief, the space between Laura and Thomas on a bed, the space between Laura's breasts and her thin print dress.

Unlike the films of Faith Akim, this isn't from the Turkish-German's point of view, but Ali is not a simple rotter but a man of warmth and vulnerability as well as brutishness. He has lived in Germany since he was two but he remains an outsider. There is also the quality in this theme of feeding his wife's infidelity. He beats her, he cannot satisfy her, she does not like him. But none of that shows. He sees Thomas can handle responsibility and trusts him with runs on his own. It is possible to walk back and forth between the two houses. The three have a picnic on the beach when Ali gets drunk (as usual) and dances. He's angry when Thomas alludes to Zorba--the Greek! The final scene will return to this place. Petzold also has a clever plot device by which for a long period we don't know where Ali is and he may be spying on the illicit couple. Laura, of course, has nasty secrets too.

What Petold lacks of the cultural richness of Faith Akin or sleazy atmosphere of Götz Spielmann, he makes up with intensity and menace. Once in a while Forties noir finds a perfect contemporary match and this is such an occasion. Petzold is clearly a director of great understated sureness and accomplishment who deserves to be well known outside his native Germany. Hans Fromm's cinematography is an essential element here, and the performances are fine.

Opened in Germany January 9, 2009, scheduled for French release in April. Shown as part of the Film Comment Selects series at Lincoln Center, New York, February-March 2009.

A promising slow paced depiction proceeds to a disappointing ending.

One of the principals plans on killing his boss after saving his life on three occasions, all for the love of the man's wife, a woman he hardly knows and a former criminal. A cigarette lighter becomes the deus ex machina.

Jericho lies at the Jordan, in Palestine, Jerichow in Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany. That is used to be in the GDR, you can recognize in the movie by the senseless license-plate initials "JL".

Despite the film makers confession that this movie was inspired by "The Postman rings twice", there is for sure another movie, and a German movie, that must have been the direct source of "Jerichow" (2008), although Christian Petzold does not mention it: I mean R.W. Fassbinder's film "The Merchand of the Four Seasons" (1972). Both women - Irmgard and Laura - have no family of their own and married a man whom they never loved. Both Hans and Ali are drinkers. Both are suffering from a heart-disease and both kill themselves at the end. Hans is a green-grocer, Ali sells Turskish fast food. Both women, are relatively attractive and sleep with any other men whenever there is an opportunity. Both Hans and both Ali engage an auxiliary worker for themselves on the basis of confidence, and both wives cheat their men with these coworkers and steal money by aid of them from their husbands. Both Hans and Thomas have been "Blue Helmets", i.e. with the army abroad: Hans in the Foreign Legion, and Thomas in Afghanistan.

While is it possible that Fassbinder had used the Postman-novel or the film by James M. Cain, the "Merchant of the Four Seasons" has much more parallels with "Jerichow" than "Jerichow" has with the "Postman". I still think that "Jerichow" is a very good movie, like all movies of Petzold, by the way, but it is a breach of decorum that the actual source has never been mentioned.