|
Rosenstraße is the name of the street in Berlin where in 1943 a group of "Aryan" women gathered to protest the Nazi detention of their Jewish husbands, who hitherto were protected by the race laws. In her film of the same name, Margarethe von Trotta goes a long way around the block to get there. It starts in modern-day New York City, where Ruth (Jutta Lampe) has thrown her household into traditional Jewish mourning for her deceased husband. Daughter Hannah (Maria Schrader) protests, and she’s even more vociferous when mom throws out Hannah’s gentile fiancé and refuses to let them marry. Then a woman named Rachel shows Hannah a photo of her mother as a child (Svea Lohde) with an Aryan woman named Lena Fischer (Katja Riemann) who saved Ruth’s life. Off Hannah goes to Berlin, much more excited about the prospect of solving the mystery than I was. Trotta’s clumsy narrative of flashbacks, expository dialogue, and stagy scenes defuses all dramatic tension, clarity, and suspense and dissipates any emotional involvement. Her films work best when they focus on a single relationship, often between women, as in Die bleierne Zeit/Marianne and Juliane (1981) and Heller Zahn/Sheer Madness (1983). In Rosenstraße, perhaps she should have started out at the street of the title where determined women called out, "Give us back our husbands!" In English and German with English subtitles. (136 minutes)
BY PETER KEOUGH
|
