«Alone in Berlin»3 reading minutes

Otto (Brendan Gleeson) and Anna (Emma Thompson) Quangel live in a modest Berlin neighborhood. For them, the years of the Second World War were dark: Hans, their only son, was mobilized to fight in France, the good Führer paralyzed all freedom with terror, and factory work became ever more intense because «production had to be increased». Nevertheless, the couple remained loyal to the party of the people, the honest people. Until the day a proud nationalist letter announces the death of their only offspring. «What more can a man give than his son?»

Otto had had enough; the Führer had become the Liar, and action had to be taken against him and his hold over the Germans. So the worker buys cards, clumsily grabs his pen and begins distributing a «free press». His wife, also passionately rebellious, was seduced by his commitment. Discreetly striding the streets of the Reich's capital, they publish these poorly written little papers, revealing such statements as: «Hitlerism is a world where force prevails over law» or «Have confidence in yourself, not in Hitlerism.» Each message ends with a call to spread national blasphemy: «Pass this card around. Free press.»

The modest husbands risk their lives at every turn, threatened from every angle. As people discover the bills on their doorstep, between two flights of stairs or in the weft, the vast majority send them to the police. Inspector Escherich (Daniel Brühl), under violent pressure from the Gestapo, is put in charge of the case. The Quangels remain persecuted, alone in their action, alone in Berlin.

The film is directly inspired by the novel Jeder stirbt füt sich allein by Hans Fallada. In 1947, just after the war, Fallada recounts the true story of Otto and Elise Hampel, resistance fighters and authors of these anti-Nazi cards. Their story is deeply moving and honorable; the novel, which Primo Levi called «one of the most beautiful books on the German anti-Nazi resistance», poignant; but the film adaptation, a real failure.

Vincent Perez, the French actor-turned-filmmaker, got just about every part of his directorial work wrong. Starting with the original language: English. How can the actors« performance, beyond being credible, move us with such a discrepancy? »I do that for my Führer!" What a dissonance: the language of the Allies lent to the Nazis! And the actors' selection error doesn't stop there. Their (over-)acting is so flat and empty that we remain indifferent to the deportation of a poor Jewish woman.

As for the script, it doesn't help matters. In fact, the dialogues themselves become pathetically banal. Emotion would like to be aroused by robotic, forced speeches, with no pauses or silences and, of course, no embodiment.

Then comes the image: sickening and wearying. It's bathed in a brown-green philtre in every shot. From the military clothes to those of policeman Escherich, a beige-dead coat, and Otto and Anna, as cheerful as the sentence awaiting them. These fifty dreary shades of brown can be found in virtually every heavy, old-fashioned film that tries to recreate a sad era. The drama, however, is the men's moustaches. They all have the same one: blonde, nicely styled and terribly artificial. I wouldn't congratulate the costume designer on this film.

To crown the catastrophe, the plot lacks unity in what it would like to tell. An old Jewish woman is deported without being given any importance, a mentally retarded man is liquidated in a tragic seven-second misfire, and Inspector Escherich, whose psychology is stupidly absent, commits suicide with a gentle, theatrical frown. Suffice it to say that the end of their respective lives, as great as they should have seemed on screen, remained as gripping for the viewer as the suffocation of a goldfish out of its aquarium.

This artistically clumsy picture spoils the desired tribute to the admirable Hampel couple. Such a testimony to life, well crafted, lived in and correctly shot, would undoubtedly have made a genuine Oscar show. But there's no loss of life in this setback. This is only Vincent Perez's third directorial effort, and he'll find plenty of opportunities to hone his eye. At the very least, he has revived a serious subject, that of the martyrs of totalitarianism. Another filmmaker, with a sharper camera, will certainly be able to highlight those who, through the expression of their freedom, remained alone, in Berlin or elsewhere.