German director Christian Petzold, in his searing drama "Phoenix," assumes we have seen footage from Nazi concentration camps or we have watched "Schindler's List," so we don't need to have those images relived for us to understand the horrors of the Holocaust.
No, in "Phoenix," all that's required is to look into Nina Hoss' tortured, defiant eyes.
Hoss plays Nelly Lenz, a Jewish survivor of the camps who is brought to a hospital by her loyal friend Lene Winter (Nina Kunzendorf). Nelly's face has been disfigured in the camps, and after reconstruction surgery she no longer looks like her old self, a vivacious Berlin cabaret singer.
Returning to Berlin with her new face, Nelly is determined to find her husband and accompanist, Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld). Lene warns Nelly not to pursue Johnny, because she has evidence that Johnny betrayed Nelly to the Nazis.
Nelly finds Johnny in Allied-occupied Berlin, but doesn't identify herself to him. He is sure Nelly died in the camps, so when he sees her, he has an idea: to hire Nelly to masquerade as herself, as part of a scam to collect the benefits that go to any camp survivor. She goes along with the scam, following Johnny's training in how to write, act and look like the Nelly he and their friends remember from before the war.
Yes, the premise (in a script by Petzold) sounds a bit far-fetched, a con-artist film noir with traces of "Vertigo" and other Hitchcockian obsessions. But once audiences take that leap, "Phoenix" rewards them with a deep psychological drama about what changes — and doesn't change — in a person after unimaginable trauma and tragedy.
Petzold directed Hoss and Zehrfeld in the brilliant Cold War drama "Barbara" two years earlier, and the collaboration here yields rich portrayals of people locked in desperate mind games. Zehrfeld's Johnny seems straightforward: He wants money and will exploit someone he sees as a total stranger to get it. Hoss' Lenz runs a range of contradictory impulses — wanting to be near Johnny, to reveal her identity to him and to confront him over his misdeeds — all fighting for control.
Petzold brings it all together in the movie's final scene, which is such a gut-punch that describing it would rob it of its power. It all depends on Hoss' brilliant portrayal of a woman who, as the title suggests, rises from the ashes of the horrors she has experienced.
spmeans@sltrib.com
Twitter: @moviecricket
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'Phoenix'
A Jewish survivor of a Nazi concentration camp searches for her husband in postwar Berlin in this shattering drama.
Where • Broadway Centre Cinemas.
When • Opens Friday, Sept. 4.
Rating • PG-13 for some thematic elements and brief suggestive material.
Running time • 98 minutes; in German with subtitles.
| Schramm Film/Sundance Selects Ronald Zehrfeld (left) and Nina Hoss star in "Phoenix," a noir drama about deception in post-war Berlin.
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