Christian Petzold's Film 'Phoenix'

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Situated amidst the horrors of the Holocaust, Director Christian Petzold’s film Phoenix is a masterfully told story of the human soul and the monsters which only war can reveal. Set in Berlin, Germany in 1945, the Germans have surrendered after World War II. Love and hate are on a collision course with lies, betrayal, and the discovery of personal worth and acceptance are the aftershocks of a crushing truth. A concentration camp survivor, Nelly was a German-Jew, betrayed by her German husband, the selfish yet devilishly handsome Johnny. Once a beautiful nightclub singer, Nelly is discarded, exploited, and disfigured by a bullet to the face during her internment in Auschwitz. After corrective surgery, the film is based on her reactions as she searched for her husband, unable to believe he betrayed her to the Nazi’s. Personal guilt entwined with the guilt of a nation comes face to face with who one actually is as opposed to the image the heart created when Nelly locates Johnny. The anguish of the Jewish people is emotionally displayed in Nelly as the shame of the entire German nation is blatantly exposed in …show more content…

Nelly wants to go back, Germans wish they could go back, and the Jewish people also wish they could roll back time. Johnny is dangerous and hard but dead inside. He cannot be redeemed, he cannot ever give Nelly what she so desperately craves. Nelly declares she is a German, for she was never an orthodox Jew and ultimately cannot pretend to be something she is not, and in the end, not even for Johnny. While the film is about loss, it is also about reclaiming something, anything, that makes a person whole. Nelly seems lost in her pursuit of proving Johnny will recognize her, her steely resolve to prove he did not turn her over to the Gestapo. It is her desire to reclaim a piece of what the war has stolen that gives her an edge of morality that Johnny does not

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