Reunified, Revitalized

Anyone paying attention to the recent foreign film scene has probably noticed a decidedly Teutonic streak in the offerings. Normally distributed sparingly in the U.S., German films are suddenly in vogue, with several current releases--”Mostly Martha,” “Das Experiment” and the English-language “Invincible”--giving art-house audiences their richest exposure to contemporary German cinema in decades.

And that’s only the beginning. Come November, 10 more new German films will receive U.S. premieres as part of AFI Fest’s “Made in Germany” section. It will be highlighted by the award-winning opening-night presentation “Nowhere in Africa,” set for theatrical release in March.

Are we seeing a nascent third wave of German cinema, which the filmmakers there say has been in the making for more than a decade? If the current trend lasts, it would mark a turnaround for an industry that has struggled for more than 50 years to recapture the glory of its pre-World War II golden era, when it earned a global reputation as Hollywood’s only legitimate foreign rival.

“You could say it started in 1990 when the Berlin Wall came down,” says “Das Experiment” star Moritz Bleibtreu. “TV channels started to produce movies, feature films were beginning to be made for the first time again. What you see now is a people trying to reinvent themselves.”

“I think that people definitely are more confident about their films in Germany,” says “Mostly Martha” writer-director Sandra Nettelbeck. “It’s this feeling that we can make films people want to see, films people will pay to see.”

Given the country’s turbulent 20th century history, it’s not surprising that an event as momentous as reunification would reinvigorate Germany’s young filmmakers. Both previous German film movements--expressionistic Weimer Cinema in the ‘20s and the New German Cinema of the ‘60s and ‘70s--were outgrowths of wartime defeats, movements driven by the belief that a new and improved German identity could be forged through the power of cinema. Although neither movement was ultimately able to transform German society, their idealistic practitioners--Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau in the 1920s; Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog and Volker Schlondorff in the ‘60s and ‘70s--did transform global cinema. Their influence can be seen in the visually arresting work of present-day expressionists such as Tim Burton, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Ridley Scott, as well as the boldly meditative films of existentialist-postmodernists like Britain’s Mike Leigh, France’s Francois Ozon and, in this country, Todd Solondz and Paul Thomas Anderson.

“We were the first genuine postwar generation,” recalls “Invincible” director Herzog. “We had to invent cinema for ourselves. There was a void of a quarter of a century. And we were the first ones to articulate ourselves in trying to find our own language. Now, with reunification, the situation is new again.”

For American audiences, the turning point came with the 1999 release of director Tom Tykwer’s “Run Lola Run,” starring Bleibtreu. In the end, American audiences rallied around “Lola” to the tune of $7 million, making it one of the most successful German films ever released in the U.S.

German Federal Film Board representative Corina Danckwerts, who established the Made in Germany series two years ago before allying with the AFI Fest this year, credits Tykwer and “Lola” with breaking long-held stereotypes, allowing other films and filmmakers to emerge on the world stage.

“The hallmark of this generation has been directors with fresh ideas,” she says. “And ‘Lola’ was the German film that made people aware of that.”

But Tykwer is quick to temper any unrealistic expectations. “All these developments people look for as pointing to a ‘wave,’ they’re usually slower than everyone wants them to be. I totally believe that it’s happening. But I don’t believe it’s happening in the way everyone would like, with dozens of brilliant films coming out of Germany every year. It has to slowly develop and get into the brains of our other filmmakers so we can make films that cross borders.”

The apparent contradiction in Tykwer’s suggestion--that a rediscovery of German identity through cinema should depend on less, rather than more parochialism--underscores the principle dilemma of German society, namely how to escape the residual shadow of Nazism and World War II without escaping Germany. It’s no secret that while Germany has never struggled to produce cinematic talent, it has continually struggled to retain it, losing most of its best and brightest to Hollywood. Notable emigres of the ‘20s and ‘30s include both Lang and Murnau as well as Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch, Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg.

Key figures from later generations have also emigrated--Wenders and Herzog live in the U.S., as do such A-list action directors as Roland Emmerich (“Independence Day,” “The Patriot”) and Wolfgang Petersen (“The Perfect Storm,” “Air Force One”).

“I came at the end of that New German Cinema wave, from television,” Petersen remembers. “Then I had the chance to make this really great, ambitious project with ‘Das Boot.’ And it was a huge success. It was a new experience for Germany because it got worldwide recognition and six Oscar nominations. Then we did ‘The NeverEnding Story,’ which was also a big success, and suddenly there was the feeling that this might be the time for German cinema--or even European cinema--to do something in competition to Hollywood, something really artistically interesting and challenging but also successful, something that could go beyond the borders of Germany. I was really hoping and waiting to see what was next. But there was no next.”

“When I was there, nobody wanted to do commercial movies,” Emmerich says. “I was doing my little movies and Wolfgang was doing his bigger movies, but we didn’t get much support from the media or audiences. Now it’s different. They’re embracing mainstream movies.”

But that embrace, says Tykwer, has a dark side. “The stupid thing about successful European films is that most of them are comedies with very local humor. That has been the case in Germany. Recently we’ve discovered there’s a different way to approach film. And what I like about it is that it has variety. It doesn’t look like a fashion, like there’s a new ‘style’ coming from Germany.”

Although both “Mostly Martha” and “Das Experiment” attempt to comment on life in present-day Germany, their stories and styles are diametrically opposed. “Martha” weaves a romantic drama via the life of a strong-willed female chef, and “Das Experiment” treads in the action-thriller realm with a nightmarish tale of a prison simulation gone disastrously wrong.

Even historical films like “Invincible” and “Nowhere in Africa,” both of which begin during the prewar years and focus on the seeds of anti-Semitism, take wildly different approaches. “Invincible’s” fact-based story of a Polish-Jewish blacksmith’s rise to fame as a cabaret strongman is a moralistic fable in the same vein as Herzog’s previous films “Aguirre, Wrath of God” and “Fitzcarraldo.” “Nowhere in Africa” takes the more classical biopic approach to the trials and tribulations of a German-Jewish family of refugees in Kenya during the ‘30s and ‘40s.

A key economic component of the German industry’s renewal is the growing domain of international co-productions. Herzog’s “Invincible” was co-produced with the U.K.’s Film Four, while “Mostly Martha” culled its financing from sources in Austria, Switzerland and Italy.

A better example is Tykwer’s latest, the Miramax release “Heaven.” Co-written by the late Polish master Krzysztof Kieslowski (“The Decalogue”) as the first of a trilogy (still to come are “Hell” and “Purgatory”), it stars American Giovanni Ribisi and Australian Cate Blanchett, and was filmed in Italy in Italian and English.

“A film leads you to the country where it’s set, where it has the potential to be the best film,” Tykwer says. “I never thought I was going to make a film in Italy. But the subjective identity of my films will always stay German because I am German. I can’t peel off that skin, and I don’t want to.”

Even as he develops an international career, Tykwer remains committed to the German industry as a partner in the artist-driven X-Filme, one of the country’ most progressive production companies. It’s unlike most German companies, which too often tailor their choices to the tastes of those who dispense government arts subsidies.

“The basic hindrance is the way films are financed in our country,” explains “Das Experiment” director Oliver Hirschbiegel. “They pretty much rely on government funding. You always have to have a TV station on board and the rest is put in by distributors.”

Hirschbiegel goes on to decry a system that, he says, fails to sufficiently reward talent, too often chasing away those like Petersen, whose 1981 “Das Boot” is still considered one of the finest German films ever made. “Everyone wants to move up in the world. As a German director, that’s very hard because the amount of money you’re paid is nothing compared to what you get in Hollywood. We live in a capitalist system, but in the film industry, it’s not like that.”

“Nowhere in Africa” director Caroline Link, whose 1999 film “Beyond Silence” was nominated for the foreign language Oscar, also blames audience apathy. “In Germany, there’s the feeling that every movie has to be everything, otherwise our little industry is disappointed. The distribution companies become hesitant about buying more German movies because audiences don’t want to see them. ‘Das Experiment’ is an exception. ‘Mostly Martha’ is an exception. My film is an exception. So what you have in America are three exceptions.”

Making matters more uncertain at the moment, say observers, is the collapse of media mogul Leo Kirch’s once mighty Kirch Media in April, a disintegration that even sent shock waves through Hollywood, where Kirch’s debts to major studios like Paramount, Columbia and Disney (for German distribution rights to Hollywood films) are estimated at more than $1.2 billion.

While it’s no secret that German money has benefited Hollywood more than Germany, helping to finance everything from bombs like “Battlefield Earth” to the recent Mel Gibson Vietnam War epic “We Were Soldiers,” the insolvency of a behemoth like Kirch has been devastating for smaller German production companies less able to secure alternate financing.

But if Germans often lack enthusiasm for their own cinema, Americans seem willing to pick up the slack, embracing not only new German films but also classics, as witnessed by the recent American Cinematheque tribute to Herzog and the ongoing Hollywood Entertainment Museum exhibition and L.A. County Museum of Art film series commemorating the Marlene Dietrich centennial. In October, Kino will bring a restored print of Lang’s “Metropolis” to West L.A.’s Nuart, succeeding its highly successful New York run with another restored German silent, F.W. Murnau’s “Faust.” There has even been renewed interest in controversial 100-year-old Nazi-era filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, soon to be the subject of a Jodie Foster movie.

It’s an atmosphere that has Danckwerts optimistic enough to see a silver lining even in the Kirch situation. She calls it “a great opportunity for the filmmaking community to restructure itself and come out more independent in the end.”

For American audiences, Danckwerts says there are “more than enough” great German movies yet in the pipeline, pointing to “Nowhere in Africa” and the acclaimed Cold War drama “The Tunnel,” a hit at last year’s Made in Germany, as key releases for 2003.

“I believe it’s here to stay,” Tykwer adds. “It took a long time, but now we’re back at a level that is world standard. It absolutely can compete with any other country. The second step is to connect this potential with really interesting stories and characters and subjective visions.”

To those who still might wish to follow in his Hollywood footsteps, Petersen adds a word of caution. “I think it’s very important, first of all, to start with making great German films,” he says. “You have to be careful about trying to run away from Germany too soon, too early to make it somewhere else. It’s not easy to make it somewhere else. I know so many filmmakers who tried to jump three steps ahead and make it here and failed. Go back and do a couple of films in Germany, even if it’s hard. Put something together, even if it’s hard. I think it’s important to find your own style, that it grows out of your own German filmmaking.”

“Let’s not speak of the film industry,” Herzog says. “Let’s speak of the situation of Germany itself. Yes, I think Germany is changing. I do believe that Germany is finding its role in a larger context. And in the end, I think Germany will find a more healthy attitude toward its own identity.”

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Wade Major is an occasional contributor to Calendar.