PhoenixHow do we reconstruct ourselves when we have been utterly destroyed? How are we resurrected when we have become as ash, committed to the same Earth-stuff from whence we came? This is the challenge which faces Nelly (Nina Hoss) in the aftermath of World War II. A survivor from a concentration camp, her face was obliterated in her imprisonment. However, her face is recreated--as well as modern surgical methods can allow in the late Forties--and she attempts to begin her life again, her identity altered forever, her harrowing past forever coloring her future.
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Nelly is an avatar of sorts for the Jews who survived the Holocaust--the Nazis effort to perform genocide against millions, and coming dangerously close in their horrific lack of humanity. But Phoenix is a story about the battle to follow--the battle to rebuild in the wake of a war which savaged Europe, with Germany at the crux of the devastation. Ruined, bombed-out buildings where Nelly once called home are all that remain of the beautiful cities which marked the "old world". The restoration process would be one which would take years. And for all the efforts of talented engineers and designers, the reality is that the old world is forever gone, a cultural casualty of war, along with a kind of faith in the institutions which allowed the Nazi party to rise to disastrous power. The ripple effect of this war is felt like a sharp pain in Nelly, as well as her savior and friend, Lene Winter (Nina Kunzendorf), who proposes that Nelly join her in a pilgrimage to Palestine, where they will join others in laying the foundation of the modern state of Israel. But Nelly is haunted by the past; she is not a vain woman, but she understands that as she no longer resembles the "Nelly" before the war, she feels that her identity has been lost. She has been remade, but is actually quite beautiful, although we can never really know how she looked prior to the damage done. What is interesting is that we end up learning more about Nelly not from her--or even Lene--but from the disenfranchised husband whom Nelly had thought she lost when she was captured from hiding by the Nazis. Johnny/Johannes (Ronald Zehrfeld) works busing tables in a cabaret in the American district of Berlin, ironically--or sarcastically, depending on your point of view--called "Phoenix". It is Nelly who--in her unwavering devotion to her husband--tracks Johnny down (rather by chance, and at some risk to her well-being), and he recognizes only that she seems like the type to be looking for work. Johnny recruits Nelly to be a double for his missing (presumed dead) wife so that he can collect on her inheritance, which he promises to split with her. Needless to say, Johnny doesn't recognize his actual wife in front of him, but believes that Nelly looks "a bit" like her, so that she could pass as her.
Once Nelly had found her estranged husband, the focus of the film shifts to their interactions. She has found what she is looking for, and no longer has any interest--if she had any to begin with--in following Lene to the Middle East. Nelly accepts that the past has a hold on her, but it is not as if this would be to her detriment. Rather, Nelly seems to flourish both in her husband's company, and as he remakes her in his wife's image. The process by which Johnny remakes Nelly to resemble...well...herself is like a reinvention of one of cinema's most elaborate recreations of a woman by an obsessed man, Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. As in Vertigo, a man molds a woman to resemble the other woman he was romantically involved in, a process which both abates and accentuates that psychological pain. The difference here is that while Judy/Madeline in Vertigo shared the guilt of the crime at the center of that story--which allowed her to justify the experience as a kind of punishment--Nelly tries to satisfy her husband's fantasy because she believes that she cannot convince him that she is actually his wife otherwise. Nelly's identity has been crushed in more than her facial structure; her very persona has been altered forever, and her husband often corrects her movements and mannerisms as not being "Nelly-like". Is it that he has a particular idea of who his wife is, or that she has forgotten who she is? Lene has tried to dissuade Nelly from seeking out her husband, with epithets about him, decrying Johnny as a "traitor". Pictures of the people who once shared photographs in the life before the war are marked with two symbols: circles indicate they were Nazis, crosses indicate they are dead; Johnny is unmarked. Nelly could be regarded as a representation of the transformation of the identity of "womanhood" after the war, as the advent of feminism taking wing. To relate this to events at the time in Europe, it was in 1944 when women were finally given the right to vote in France. Nelly has sought her husband to reunite with the man she loves, only to discover that he doesn't recognize her simply because her face is different. It could be questioned as to whether Johnny is a "bad man"; many questions are left open-ended and perhaps we can never be too sure, but there is enough to make us question Johnny's integrity, and as a result, so too does Nelly doubt the authority of his judgment. We become Nelly's truest believers, her supporters in her ultimate choice of redemption; not that of acquiescence or even revelation, but of independent will, of freedom, the phoenix rising from the ashes of cultural devastation.
Recommended for: Fans of a story about romance, which is not one; a story about war, when the war has passed. It is for those who know how it feels to struggle to rebuild after a devastating setback, and the satisfaction that comes from achieving in the face of doubt and adversity.
Once Nelly had found her estranged husband, the focus of the film shifts to their interactions. She has found what she is looking for, and no longer has any interest--if she had any to begin with--in following Lene to the Middle East. Nelly accepts that the past has a hold on her, but it is not as if this would be to her detriment. Rather, Nelly seems to flourish both in her husband's company, and as he remakes her in his wife's image. The process by which Johnny remakes Nelly to resemble...well...herself is like a reinvention of one of cinema's most elaborate recreations of a woman by an obsessed man, Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. As in Vertigo, a man molds a woman to resemble the other woman he was romantically involved in, a process which both abates and accentuates that psychological pain. The difference here is that while Judy/Madeline in Vertigo shared the guilt of the crime at the center of that story--which allowed her to justify the experience as a kind of punishment--Nelly tries to satisfy her husband's fantasy because she believes that she cannot convince him that she is actually his wife otherwise. Nelly's identity has been crushed in more than her facial structure; her very persona has been altered forever, and her husband often corrects her movements and mannerisms as not being "Nelly-like". Is it that he has a particular idea of who his wife is, or that she has forgotten who she is? Lene has tried to dissuade Nelly from seeking out her husband, with epithets about him, decrying Johnny as a "traitor". Pictures of the people who once shared photographs in the life before the war are marked with two symbols: circles indicate they were Nazis, crosses indicate they are dead; Johnny is unmarked. Nelly could be regarded as a representation of the transformation of the identity of "womanhood" after the war, as the advent of feminism taking wing. To relate this to events at the time in Europe, it was in 1944 when women were finally given the right to vote in France. Nelly has sought her husband to reunite with the man she loves, only to discover that he doesn't recognize her simply because her face is different. It could be questioned as to whether Johnny is a "bad man"; many questions are left open-ended and perhaps we can never be too sure, but there is enough to make us question Johnny's integrity, and as a result, so too does Nelly doubt the authority of his judgment. We become Nelly's truest believers, her supporters in her ultimate choice of redemption; not that of acquiescence or even revelation, but of independent will, of freedom, the phoenix rising from the ashes of cultural devastation.
Recommended for: Fans of a story about romance, which is not one; a story about war, when the war has passed. It is for those who know how it feels to struggle to rebuild after a devastating setback, and the satisfaction that comes from achieving in the face of doubt and adversity.