Die Legende von Paul und Paula
Uh… oh God, how difficult. This movie cannot officially figure in my favorite movie list of all times, because I don’t like the characters and because ultimately this movie is not me. I came to Germany 1 month after the GDR ceased to exist, yet I grew up in a very Eastern German environment for quite a few years. (It is very Eastern German for little children to openly make fun of foreigners, by the way. So not so much Ostalgie from my side here.) Yet it’s fascinating in a similar way as North Korea is fascinating, and as somebody who has seen the Alexanderplatz changing over the years, I have a certain attachment to everything Eastern German.
(Honestly, however, I wonder if I would feel different if I went to the Heinrich Hertz Oberschule which is where my grade school teacher wanted to send me. I would most likely have preferred Schrödinger over Schnitzler and Hertz over Horváth today.)
I dislike Paul for obvious reasons – not because he considered his career more important than his love (if I had a choice, I’d say I despise men who prefer women much much more) – but because he changed his mind. And by his obsession he ended up killing her, isn’t that lovely. As much as this love story is beautiful, I cannot help but think that this supposedly very powerful scene was tainted by his irresponsibility. Finally, however, seeing Paul sleeping in this small bed with his three children is too lovely.
Paula on the other side is a little child who wants ‘everything’. There are indeed things in the world that you cannot have, but she wants them anyways. Then again, is it really too much to ask for? This thing she is asking for is ultimately coming out of an egoistic, yet very pure desire. I don’t think I have ever seen a more openly passionate character in film history. And for that to come from a German woman at that! It’s not this French, elegant and somewhat reserved charme, and completely different from the Latin hotness, no sophisticated, overly dramatic words; it’s just plain and simple but immensely strong embraces. An angry Emmanuelle Béart is nothing against that, really.
She must have suffered so much, but I am so happy for her! To have somebody to love so deeply! Not complex, but deep!
Visually, the movie has nothing special really. It’s just a good movie. Unlike the wonderfully photographed and at least as touching “Live of Others”, this movie is not in the 1000 movies of all times. I think about 99% of the greatness of this film comes from its GDR feeling, because of the way people dress, they think, what passion they display in contrast to their life. This movie is great in the same way the Ch’tis are great – and they had the same kind of impact. They open a world of dreams that we will never see in reality and we even accept it that way.
With every single blog posting by you my list of films to watch grows bigger and bigger. More in the long overdue mail that I am going to write to you in the next hours. (After having received the pleasure to sleep by… myself!)
Hahaha yeah, like I said I am watching quite a lot of nice movies lately. They were all so nice that I was comparably disappointed by this Bergman I have seen (maybe I just saw the wrong one? XD)
Anyways, I don’t even remember when our last long e-mail exchange was! Hahaha. The only thing I remember very clearly was that I recently went through some of our old backlog and recommendation lists.
If you want, I can make a comment on each movie from now on, to give you a better idea if you really want to see that or not. XD