{"id":5952,"date":"2013-01-01T01:29:02","date_gmt":"2013-01-01T06:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5952"},"modified":"2013-01-01T01:29:02","modified_gmt":"2013-01-01T06:29:02","slug":"dvd-wolfsburg-2003","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=5952","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Wolfsburg (2003)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>V to Z<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Excellent \/ DVD Transfer: Very Good\/ DVD Extras: n\/a<\/p>\n

Label: Indigo (Germany)\/ Region: 2 (PAL) \/\u00a0Released: March 2, 2009<\/p>\n

Genre: Suspense \/ Drama<\/p>\n

Synopsis: A womanizer saves the life of the woman whose son he killed in a car accident, and attempts to seek contrition.<\/p>\n

Special Features: \u00a0n\/a<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

Wolfsburg<\/strong> (2003) is a threadbare variation on a familiar suspense hook where a man covers his identity in order to involve himself in the life of the woman he\u2019s victimized. In this case, the story involves the death of a woman\u2019s child, and although the \u2018accidental killer\u2019 attempts to make good by confessing his identity, a minor event disrupts his plan, and he finds himself in the odd position of being able to console and support the woman without her ever suspecting his horrible deed.<\/p>\n

In a traditional noir thriller, as well as a modern Hollywood production, this entire prelude to deception would\u2019ve been done with during the first act, and the focus would\u2019ve been on the tension as an investigation (by the police, the mother, or a private detective) that ultimately catches up with the killer just as the mother\u2019s reached a moment of inner peace with her new companion. The unmasking would lead to an exchange of rage, some physical violence and\/or possibly revenge, with the killer finally receiving some justice exacted by the mother, or via the police and\/or the justice system.<\/p>\n

One can also imagine, quite easily, how Japanese director Takashi Miike (Audition<\/strong>)would\u2019ve had the mother practice methodical, sadistic revenge on the killer, with nasty torture dragged out in slow-peeling montages; or South Korean director Chan-wook Park (Oldboy<\/strong>) fixating entirely on an extravagantly complicated revenge plot, which perhaps would have the mother seducing and ensnaring her son\u2019s killer before she unmasks herself and explains how every rotten moment of the past ten years was planned by her soon after she learned of his identity.<\/p>\n

Christian Petzold\u2019s approach to the storyline is a unique distillation of the essential Hollywood plot steps \u2013 all adhered to quite faithfully \u2013 but with a delicate emphasis on intimate character conflicts (internal, and within their own crumbling lives), and contrasted by the chilly outer industrial world in which they live.<\/p>\n

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Quiet Characters<\/strong><\/p>\n

Audi salesman Philipp Gerber (Benno F\u00fcrmann) and food warehouse stock worker Laura Reiser (Nina Hoss) live and work in locales tethered together by flat, circuitous highways, and the ever-near presence of industrial factories that stand uncharacteristically silent and sterile. The skies are strangely free of ugly plumes of industrial poison, and the surrounding farmland is eerily still.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the sounds in Wolfsburg<\/strong> are not of clanging and grinding industry in the distance, but of wind and continuous passing cars, and Petzold\u2019s efforts to involve viewers in the lives of his cold, utterly unhappy characters is by emphasizing banal, sterilized sounds that place the viewer physically closer to characters as they withhold rage, or are involved in personal crises that must be kept at a low key so as not to stir up unwanted interest or intervention.<\/p>\n

A prime example is the obvious inner arguments Philipp is weighing in his mind while he\u2019s driving after running over Laura\u2019s son. The soundtrack contains tires on asphalt, the occasional muted bump, and traffic as heard from within a soundproofed passenger compartment. There\u2019s also the ticking sound of the signal indicator when Philipp changes lanes that further annoys the twitchy character..<\/p>\n

Although he\u2019s best-known for emotionally high-pitched roles, F\u00fcrmann\u2019s performance remains bridled and fettered, because Philipp has to remain still due to his awful position in trying to maintain a fragile relationship with his boss\u2019 sister, and past history of cheap flings that could destroy his position at the car dealership.<\/p>\n

The character of Laura is equally somber due to her working in a brain-numbing job; unlike the character of Yella in the eponymous 2007 film, Laura\u2019s studies for a career (typography) end up being quite useless, whereas Yella initially manages to escaoe her dead-end life and attains her goals in becoming a financial analyst.<\/p>\n

The only joy in Laura\u2019s life is her son \u2013 evidenced by the warm colours and toys that clutter his bedroom \u2013 and his death almost destroys her will to live, regardless of being well-liked at work or having a supportive and sympathetic best friend.<\/p>\n

Laura\u2019s friend is also a single mother, and the son\u2019s death now creates an imbalance\/low-level jealousy which leaves her emotionally vulnerable. That\u2019s where Philipp steps in and becomes a guilt-ridden parasite, preventing her lame suicide attempted, talking to her as a passive friend, and setting up a typography position which functions as a lurid distraction from her grieving, and her solo efforts to track down her son\u2019s killer by visiting junkyards in search of the red damaged fender that can identify the car\u2019s make and model, and hopefully its owner.<\/p>\n

These personal events are largely what Petzold covers on a local level. Philipp\u2019s honeymoon trip to Cuba is only covered by the drives to and from the airport, and not through location vignettes or photos taken in Cuba. The director also emphasizes the cold industrial world in Berlin\u2019s neighbouring towns and peripheral suburbs; they\u2019re not ugly, but they lack people, pets, natural flora ornamentations or picturesque fauna. Views of gardens are from indoors, and the natural lighting is high contrast, so as to obscure or muddy fine garden details.<\/p>\n

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The Physical World<\/strong><\/p>\n

Homes are always attached to noisy roads, and Petzold\u2019s camera emphasizes driveways with interlocking stones that omit the more familiar visual and physical barriers common in North America. Philipp\u2019s home and workplace is sleek glass and metal industrial, but it\u2019s not shown as sterile \u2013 just modern, in the best contemporary German sense where buildings, window gratings, bathtubs, or the chubby blocks dividing parking a lot from a side street are minimalist, functional, and conservatively stylish.<\/p>\n

Internally, the character\u2019s worlds have minimal clutter except when it\u2019s a child\u2019s bedroom, or when a household is in chaos (such as when Laura sleeps over at her friend\u2019s place, in the cluttered bedroom of the daughter).<\/p>\n

Petzold\u2019s visuals are a fusion of German industrial aesthetics while following the elegant relationship of objects, buildings, landscapes, and human figures as strikingly captured in a Michelangelo Antonioni film. Petzold, for example, will follow Philipp\u2019s car down a highway, but he\u2019ll allow the camera to hold on a perfect framing of manicured trees, the snaking road, and blue sky, as if acknowledging the new order and beauty that industry has placed on land and the industrial elements that have replaced unmanicured grass, clusters of trees, and un-channeled waterways.<\/p>\n

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And yet it\u2019s still a genre picture<\/strong><\/p>\n

In spite of this superficially icy atmosphere, Wolfsburg<\/strong> has intriguing characters, as well as a linear story \u2013 a rewarding combo, given Yella was deeply flawed, and ultimately frustrating in closing with a tiresome twist finale.<\/p>\n

Both films have string similarities: the female heroine is being pursued by a persistent male whose eventual physical contact can only bring harm; a great deal of scenes take place as the heroine is being driven across flat expanses of outer suburbia; water exudes an eerie gravitational pull for suicide; and\u00a0 car accident is ultimately what starts and ends both dramas.<\/p>\n

Petzold also makes an amusing nod to Hitchcockian suspense through the use of clean montages, clear visuals (such as Laura\u2019s decision near the end of the film), and the use of music and silence. Wolfsburg has no score until the end scene, yet the soundtrack is filled with very precise sound effects.<\/p>\n

Even dialogue is treated as a dramatic element of the sonic design. When Philipp returns to work the day after the boy has died, all he hears is a colleague saying the word \u201cRed\u201d over and over again like a child\u2019s verbal game. The word refers to the colour of the Ford car he was driving at the time, and the colour of the side panel Laura seeks in local junkyards. In terms of Hitchcockian lore, it also refers to the film Blackmail<\/strong> (1929), the director\u2019s first sound film, where the heroine hears only the word \u201cknife\u201d during a dinner conversation some time after she stabbed a man to death.<\/p>\n

SPOILER ALERT<\/p>\n

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In classic noir fashion, Philipp\u2019s secret identity is safe as long as there\u2019s no physical intimacy or romance, but his need to rectify his horrible act through generosity \u2013 setting up a job for Laura with a typography firm \u2013 inevitably starts to destroy his own career and new marriage. The goal of contrition mutates into obsession, and actual romance becomes the final ingredient that destroys Philipp. What\u2019s unique about the finale is the unexpected last scene which is appropriate and satisfying, because Laura does enjoy the revenge she\u2019s been wanting to mete out to her son\u2019s killer, but she also gives him the one chance at survival her boy was denied.<\/p>\n

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END OF SPOILER<\/p>\n

Petzold\u2019s films have gone in and out of print on DVD in both Germany and North America, and although his Gespenster (\u2018ghost\u2019) trilogy is making its way to Region 1 land in bits and pieces \u2013 Die Inner Sicherheit<\/strong> \/ The State I am In<\/strong> (2000), the first, will be available via Project X \/ Cinema Guild, whereas Yella <\/a>[M<\/a>]<\/strong> <\/strong>(2007), the final part, was the last title from the now-defunct New Yorker Home Video \u2013 much of his work remains unavailable.<\/p>\n

Perhaps with the recent theatrical release of Jerichow<\/strong> (2008), his noir thriller which also stars Hoss and F\u00fcrmann, Wolfsburg<\/strong> will emerge from the shadows and gain the attention it deserves.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2009 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Soundtrack Album<\/a> — Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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