Barbara (Nina Hoss)

“What’s Barbara’s secret?” is the question we ask throughout Christian Petzold’s Barbara, a sharply pensive but remarkable film. Petzold holds out the answer like a rabbit to a racing greyhound even until the end. It is 1980. Cold War Germany. The superbly talented Nina Hoss, plays Barbara, an East German Doctor from Berlin who smartly negotiates between the evil of the Stasi and the life-affirming healing arts she practices in a rural hospital. There she meets the sympathetic Andre (Ronald Zehrfeld), a doctor who cultivates her love for the arts (and eventually for him) but also watches Nina along with the East German secret police.

Barbara is a good story; thin on the dialogue, but thick with potent character interactions which betray every passion and emotion; every fear and desperation. All combine to step away from the common place notions of East Germany: cold and repressive; grey and ominous. Instead, Petzold films flourishing countrysides and forests; colorful apartments, and people, like Barbara and Andre, who invest in those who have come to them for care.

Andre (Ronald Zehrfeld) and Barbara

Yes, Barbara is a good story but Petzold takes far too long to unveil the mystery, and we almost cast aside our investment in the characters. Nina Hoss and Ronald Zehrfeld inhabit their characters to such an extent, however, that we are brought back into the fold. Barbara’s end will strike a hopeful chord with everyone, and that is: No matter the trial, in the end, we are blessed to return home and to be welcomed back.

Barbara plays through February 7 at The Ross Media Arts Center in Lincoln.

Movie Talk at The Ross on Sunday, February 3, at 2:15 pm with Marco Abel and H. Peter Reinkordt after the 12:30 pm screening of Barbara.

The Oscar Nominated Shorts 2013 and The House I Live In both open at The Ross on February 8th

Abridged Audio Version @ 40:06 http://tinyurl.com/bhwqhu6

Stephanie (Marion Colliard) and Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts)

French director Jacques Audiard entices us to remember that life will compel us to fight for what we desire when we least expect it. His newest film Rust and Bone features two likeable but brooding characters forced to wade through life-altering catastrophes. The film centers on Stephanie, a trainer of Orcas played by Oscar winning actress Marion Cotillard, and Ali, played by Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts—two strangers who ‘bump’ into each other on an ordinary night at a disco, in an ordinary town called Antibes on the Cote A’Zur, France. Ali, a bouncer and a former prize-fighter, rescues Stephanie from a boisterous male patron, escorts her home, and leaves his phone number in the presence of her live-in boyfriend.

The film then moves between the disparate worlds of Stephanie and Ali, leaving the audience to ponder the connection between this handsome puissant boxer and very confident athletic trainer of Orcas.

Ali and Sam (Armand Verdure)

Audiard enfolds Rust and Bone into day-to-day ordinariness, but releases a virtuoso of trials brought on by life’s obnoxious interruptions to bring Stephanie and Ali together. In one instance, Stephanie is an accomplished trainer of Orcas but none of her skills protects her when the killer whale ‘breaks character’ from a trained creature for human amusement at the marineland while she conducts a show. While she is recovering from her injuries, on impulse, Stephanie calls Ali. In another instance, Ali deeply loves his five-year-old son Sam, but Ali’s carelessness almost costs Sam his life. As Ali awaits word of Sam’s recuperation in the hospital, Ali asks Stephanie not to leave him.

The beauty of this film rests in exactly how these characters will wrestle for what is meaningful to them and if, in the end, they will find respite from and reward for enduring each trial.

Rust and Bone plays at The Ross through February 7.

Abridged Audio Version @ 42:12 http://tinyurl.com/bhwqhu6