Great Freedom

First, it's not true this is the first film that deals with the infamous Paraghraph 175 of Germany. Just to name a few (because I can't claim I watched all the films in the world), there's cinema verite style 'Jagdszene aus Niederbayerm', 70's melodrama 'Die Konsequenz', and the whole dedicated documentary 'Paragraph 175'...

But unlike in the UK media where the anniversary of 1967 legalization of homosexuality is celerbrated with TV specials and dramas, Germany has been definitely sluggish to recognize the victims of Pink Triangle that carried into post war West Germany. Only in 2018, the German president officially apologized about the unjustly penalized gays in the past... so overall it is a welcome in itsef that we finally see a major production that portrays the misery and consequence P.175 created.

It is polished, well acted, pretty down to earth and at times hard hitting film. But it's also slow, not particularly innovative or gripping. I can't vision this film becoming a world wide sensation a la 'the Brokeback Mountain'.

But what this 2 hour long film does clearly demonstrates is how a taboo and penalization against nature can kill the free spirit of a person... While we see Hans getting somewhat more comfortable in the prison environment and even learn to use the system to his advantage over the 3 decades of in and out of impresonment, we see how the experience has killed his spirit in the last scene where he is supposed to savour the 'great freedom' that has finally arrived. I'm from the culture where homosexuality remains a huge taboo if not illegal... and even now living in a different country where 'it's OK to be gay', I find myself still constantly self-regulating and cover up about my sexuality. It is unimaginable what kind psychological damage the genration who suffered what Hans has carried in them.

As miserable as is, I think it's always important to address the past. For the generation who thinks gay right is the given right and the Pride means just a party, it is important to watch such a reminder of how fragile our freedom really is, the impact of a single law can have on an individual's life, and thus, in extension, the importance of our political choice... especially living the current time of the regression.

In 1980 Frank Ripploh gave us "Taxi zum klo", a raunchy, rather self-satisfied (albeit slightly mocking) look at the gay scene in Berlin of that time, with a singular focus on the bulimic sexual doings of Ripploh, playing himself as one of its committed denizens. With his terrific Austro-German "Great Freedom", Sebatian Meiser takes us back to that period and to all that had gone before and gives a corrective, eschewing all the clichés about gay life, prison life, German life, or just-plain life and love that you can think of. Freedom, he seems to be telling us, comes from within and must be conquered individually, against the massive odds that society puts up against it. Toward the end of this new film, we are given a glimpse of the pseudo-freedom in which Ripploh gloried. Meiser tells us that this Great Freedom is not the real thing at all, and that affirming your sexuality alone, without an understanding of your whole self and the constraints of the world you live in, is meaningless.

At a Q&A at NYC's Film Forum last night, Meiser stated that he had had Franz Rogoski in mind as the protagonist as he was developing the project, and that if Rogoski had turned him down he didn't know what he would have done. Since Hans, Rogoski's character, is present in almost every frame of this picture (including ones shot in total darkness), we are never left in doubt as to why Meiser felt this: Rogoski gives us what has to be one of the most intelligent, committed, uncompromising performances of that past decade, at least. Hans, we learn (or are led to infer), had been convicted of lewd homosexual acts by the Nazis and thrown into a concentration camp (details of all that, and of how he survived, are left to our imaginations) only to be imprisoned again in 1945 under the post-war Allied occupation, to serve out the balance of his sentence. From then onward, his life largely unfolds behind bars, as the German penal code's Paragraph 175, outlawing gay sexual activity, ensures that whenever he gets out of jail and asserts his right to be himself, an unapologetic gay man hungry for connection, he ends up back in prison. Which is where most of the film takes place, within a perfectly realized, relentlessly grim carceral world which differs from the grim outside world only in its details and rituals.

Forget any notions you've gained from redundant genre films about gay people (tormented and/or triumphant), or of any prison film you have ever seen, or of any love story you can think of, or indeed any expectations at all. Rogoski's realization of Meiser's uncompromising vision is note perfect, and therefore harrowing. He has been compared to Joachim Phoenix, and I see the point, but, much as I admire Phoenix when he's in the right hands, Rogoski goes farther and deeper into his character than I have seen Phoenix do. (Though perhaps Phoenix has never gotten to work with a director of Meiser's talent.)

There's plenty of violence here, physical and psychological, but it is treated as being the in the natural order of things: we are not invited to be shocked, or scandalized, but rather to reflect on how banal it is, and on how little prison differs from life outside. In this way, "Great Freedom" (has any movie title ever been as ironic?) takes us back to the existentialists: to Sartre's "Hell is other people", to Camus' Dr. Rieux in Oran under quarantine.

This is a film about being true to yourself, in life and in love, set against a world that has other ideas about who you are and who you are expected to be and that will grind you down every chance it gets. It' a masterpiece.

This explored something rarely seen in prison movies, same-sex love more specifically in a post-Nazi Germany before they abolished Paragraph 175, a German law that criminalized sexual acts between men.

Emotional, slow, tender, powerful, violent, unpleasant, and tense with great performances by everyone while navigating multiple timelines effortlessly.

The movie "Great Freedom" emphasizes how a simple paragraph of the German Criminal Code punished same-sex relationships for more than a century in Germany. Director and writer Sebastian Meise purposely place two incarcerated individuals in the same prison cell for a certain period of time: one for being a criminal and the other just for being homosexual. Two marginalized characters who accept their fates and the bitterness of their lives.

The sad and lonely life of homosexual Hans Hoffmann, from suffering in concentration camps to prison in the 20th century, hasn't changed anything: the tortures, prejudices, and tattoos marks were the same, whether under the Nazi regime or under the American allies regime post-war.

It's impossible not to think about so many real gays who went through the same or even worse situations.

Actor Franz Rogowski as the homosexual Hans Hoffmann and Georg Friedrich as Viktor are spectacular, their performances are breathtaking, and they emanate originality and precision throughout the movie.

This movie is a great tribute to everyone who hasn't been able to experience love simply because their partner is of the same sex. It's sad to read some reviews of the movie, I don't think the movie is perfect myself but watch it with Paragraph 175 in mind and the historical value this movie carries, we wouldn't speak freely about LGBTQ+ today.

This film is fictional but history teaches this film is more of a documentary.

We're tired of Pride!", "Why Pride?" "We don't want any more Pride". Yes, I have read and heard this a lot this year, 2023. In my home country of Norway, in 2022 there was even a terrorist attack against a gay pub. Two innocent people were killed.

This film perhaps clearly shows why Pride, why Pride and gay rights are about human rights. We are not free until everyone is free. This film is strong and very current. It shows what happened to homosexuals who practiced their sexuality in the 50s and 60s. Prison where they received degrading treatment from both other inmates, staff and society's moral pointer.

As I write this, there is an increase in the number of countries where homosexuality is banned and queers are persecuted. So we need movies like this, as a constant reminder of how NOT to treat difference and gays.

The film is also an experience in itself. Character actor Franz Rogowski carries this film, mostly with what he doesn't say, but shows.

Strong stuff here.