ROSENSTRASSE
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten
Grade: A-
Samuel Goldwyn Films
Directed by: Margarethe von Trotta
Written by: Pamela Latz, Margarethe von Trotta
Cast: Katia Riemann, Maria Schrader, Martin Feifel, Jurgen
Vogel, Jutta Lampe, Doris Schade, Fedja van Huet
Screened at: Preview 9, NYC, 2/12/04
Some benighted souls want to call it quits over the Holocaust
films, believing that we've heard enough. One wonders whether
the same people would urge an end to all romantic comedies
(not a bad idea), all pictures about crime, all action-adventure
pics. These critics fail to realize that there were niche
occurrences in Europe from 1933-1945 that deal with the
treatment of Jews by the Nazi regime. Everyone knows about
Anne Frank and Oskar Schindler, thanks to films by George
Stevens and Steven Spielberg respectively. Does anyone know
about the fate of Jewish men married to Christian women and
vice versa?
"Rosenstrasse" fills that gap in our knowledge, dramatizing
events that took place in one specific place in one particular
building where scores of Jewish men married to so-called Aryan
women were stashed in 1943 awaiting trucks that
would take them to the extermination camps of the East.
Margarethe Von Trotta, known to film buffs for such sensitive
films as "Rosa Luxemburg" (a biography of the title figure, a
socialist and pacifist who played a prominent role in German
politics in the early 1900's) and "The Lost Honor of Katharine
Blum" (about a woman persecuted because she is suspected of
aiding terrorists a work that would ideally find a place right now in
President Bush's VCR), provides a beautifully photographed,
multileveled drama inspired by the brave work of dedicated
Christian women who sought to get their Jewish husbands freed
from incarceration before trucks would carry them off to certain
death.
"Rosenstrasse" could have played out as a straight period
piece, plunging right into the Berlin of 1943, with an exploration of
the mixed feelings of some high-level Nazi officials toward Aryan
women with Jewish husbands. For example, during one of the
many journeys taken by Lena Fischer (Katja Riemann) to an
apparatchik seeking clemency for her man, the official strongly
suggested that she get a divorce, easily arranged, and that if she
refused she would be considered a Jew-loving whore.
Yet when the same Lena Fischer was introduced to Goebbels at
a party, the minister was so instantly infatuated with the beautiful
woman that he seemed amenable to a deal, and a deal is what
she got.
However Trotta, using a script that she co-wrote with Pamela
Latz, uses the more creative approach, opening in New York City
in current times, flashing back the Berlin of 1943 and years
earlier and forth again to New York seamlessly. While this
technique could confuse the audience at times, the shattering
conclusion makes the journey worthwhile. "Rosenstrasse" is
nothing if not heavy-handed and without humor, but the
treatment has the look of a high-budget epic, challenging the
audience to ponder whether we, in a similar situation, would risk
our reputations, even our lives, to equal what these brave women
pulled off.
The film opens in contemporary times as the 60-year-old Ruth
Weinstein (Jutta Lampe), secular all her life, acts like a baal
teshuva, i.e. a non-religious Jew who returns to the fold by
embracing traditional Jewish law. Just after her husband's
funeral, she sits shiva, covering the mirrors and lighting the
remembrance candles, shocking her soon-to-be-married
daughter, Hannah Weinstein (Maria Schrader). At first mocking
her mother's sudden conversion to orthodoxy, Hannah becomes
curious about her mother's past in Berlin. Going to Berlin to visit
the 90-year-old Lena Fischer (Doris Schade),a Christian who had
taken the 8-year-old Ruth (Svea Lohde) into her home after
Ruth's mother was deported and killed by the Nazis, she
encourages the elderly woman's reminiscences about the
troubling 1940's and, most important, learns exactly why the 60-
year-old Ruth had NOT been a practicing Jew for decades before
her current change of temperament. That story is the foundation
of Ms. Von Trotta's film.
In one effective scene, we get a sample of the brilliant culture
enjoyed by the German people before the ascension of the Nazi
Party, both the high [a Franck sonata for piano and violin
performed by the Jewish Fabian Israel Fischer (Martin Feifel) and
his soon-to-be wife, the Christian Lena Fischer (Katja Riemann,
and the popular (a night-club scene with citizens
dancing joyfully to the singing of a black woman backed up by a
jazz band]. After their marriage, however, the talented and
ruggedly handsome Fabian is swept up with other Jews who are
in mixed marriages to Christians and held in a building at
Rosenstrasse. As the wives wait outside hoping for the release
of their men, they take a brave action that leads to a surprising
collapse of Nazi will.
"Rosenstrasse," unlike "Life is Beautiful" which was criticized
in some quarters for allegedly making a comedy out of the
Holocaust is somber, moving, and believable, the past and
present merging under Corina Dietz's editing. The New York
scene, shot by Ranz Rath in high-quality, full-color film, is
juxtaposed against the desaturated, blue-tinted takes on the
grim 1940's. The 62-year-old von Trotta, director, screenwriter
and actress, affords us a subtle, straightforward examination of
psychological and political complexity.
Rated PG-13. 136 minutes.(c) 2004 by Harvey Karten at
Harveycritic@cs.com
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