Em Trânsito

"Transit" (2018 release from Germany; 101 min.) brings the story of Georg. As the movie opens, Georg and another German guy meet up at a cafe in Paris. The guy asks Georg to drop off two letters at an acquaintance's apartment, a writer named Weidel. When Georg arrives at the apartment, it turns out Weidel committed suicide the day before. In the ensuing confusion, Georg takes Weidel's travel documents and latest manuscript. Meanwhile, Paris is getting overrun by the fascists, and Georg manages to slip out by train to Marseille... At this point we are not even 15 min. into the movie, but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this is the latest film from German director Christian Petzold, whose prior films include The State I'm In, Gespenster, Yella, Barbara, and Phoenix, just to name those, and all of them brilliant. Frankly, Petzold is one of the very best European directors of this generation, period. Every single new film of his is an event, a milestone. Here he takes the 1944 novel of the same name by Anna Seghers, and transposes it to the big screen, but with one major change: the setting is today's France. Yes, a 1944 WWII tale dealing with visas and travel documents, refugees, and cleansing of undesirables, is set in this day and age, where one can argue these very elements also exist (albeit in slightly different ways). Another striking difference: Nina Hoss, who has played the female lead in every single Petzold movie since 2007's Yella, is noticeably absent here. The female lead in "Transit" is played by Paula Beer, a German up-and-coming actress whom we saw just a few months back in "Never Look Away". But even more importantly is the male lead performance by Franz Rogowski, whom I was not familiar with. His nuanced performance as the tormented refugee is commanding. Not to mention that he appears in virtually every single frame of the movie. Bottom line: "Transit" left me transfixed from start to finish, and is a great addition to Petzold's already impressive body of work.

"Transit" premiered at last year's Berlin film festival, and now a year later finally made its way to my art-house theater in Cincinnati. Better late than never. The Saturday early evening screening where I saw this at was attended so-so (about 10 people), which is a darn shame. If you are in the mood for a top notch quality foreign film dealing with issues that were relevant in 1944 and remain so today, and coincidentally directed by one of the best in the business, I'd readily suggest you check out "Transit", be it in the theater (if you still can), on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.

Being original in the medium of film, when coupled with a fresh perspective for commonly repeated stories and themes, can lead to memorable performances with unique and refreshing interpretations, as seen here (although it seldom works with Shakespeare unless you modernise the dialogue). A 1940s passage is reimagined today within the bounds of those trying to escape conflict at a French port through any means they can establish, with the ever present threat of the authorities constantly and aggressively trying to prevent them. While the times may have changed and their reasons for escape evolved, this dilemma still remains in the real world today for some, to migrate at haste to survive.

What I liked: the intertwined and unexpected developments of this love triangle (or square?) of WW2 refugees in Marseille... ingeniously "teleported" in the current days. What I didn't like: the somehow uncertain adaptation to a story of seemingly current events...

Very well acted this movie reproduces perfectly the depressing mood of the time when the book was written(1944). Great idea to place it in the modern France.

What a lousy, clueless and messy movie. If this was adapted faithfully from a novel, then I'd say that novel also sucks big time! The movie was lazily trying to prescribe a chaos when the German Nazi had invaded the France in WWII, but didn't bother to change everything to look alike the 1940s. The lousy director decided just to use the current French localities such as Paris and Marseille to shoot this movie, so all the things showed in it were uptodate current, vehicles were all present models, cities were full of illegal immigrants from Africa, all the police forces were geared in modern weaponry. The worst and the weirdest thing of this movie was the ridiculous mix up of the languages, the narrative was in German, the characters who played those desperate German Jews fled to France, and all the consulars of the foreign nations, all speaking German, but sometimes, French was suddenly the major dialog.

If this movie was adapted from the specific novel, I don't think the author was in a very stable mental condition. What she tried to deliver was nothing but chaotic mixed-ups, then complete further messed up by the brainless screenplay writers and the moronic director.

The movie was a complete MESS! Some of the reviewers tried to show they were deeper and more intelligent than the other viewers, so they completely understood what's going on in this poorly scripted and brainlessly directed movie, but actually this movie got nothing to do with anything at all. A movie so lazily made without any endeavor, not even in the least to try as the TV series, "The Man in the High Castle", was such a shameless and shameful poor product by the German movie industries. A movie so shamelessly tried to fool the viewers with some stupid modern day "Existentialism" touch was just disgusting!