Saturday, May 27, 2017

"Berlin Syndrome"

                                                                   

Bleak, despairing, hopeless, shocking, disturbing, Berlin Syndrome is a vicious and intense film, an assault on the senses that tells an excruciating story but does it so impressively that it transcends its horror-thriller genre much in the way Hitchcock did with Psycho.

It might seem overly gracious to evoke the great director and one of his greatest accomplishments, but in Berlin Syndrome, director Cate Shortland takes a nasty little piece of storytelling and raises it to the level of serious filmmaking.  There's a lot to admire, but for many viewers there will also be a lot to abhor about Berlin Syndrome, in which Shortland walks right up to the boundary of acceptability and pushes on it as hard as she can without crossing over.

Last year, an execrable, inexcusable piece of trash called Don't Breathe tried to create a similar sense of dread but failed in every possible way, and while there's no comparison, it's worth noting how easily Berlin Syndrome could have been like that wretched, stinking piece of cinematic waste.  Almost nothing about Berlin Syndrome is, on the surface, at least, appealing, yet the final result is nerve-wracking, mind-bendingly tense and, if you can stand the brutality, very much worth seeing.

It begins with Clare, played by the astonishingly good Teresa Palmer, a dislocated, unhappy Australian tourist who wanders the streets of Berlin with the sort of detached melancholy that imbued Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation.  She is neither a tourist nor an ex-patriate, she is a wanderer.  Just before leaving town, she runs into Andi (Max Riemelt), a handsome and gregarious local who charms Clare with his not-quite-perfect English and his frank assessment of the photographs she takes.

Clare, he insists, misunderstands his city by romanticizing its tortured, unhappy past.  Andi is just old enough to have known a divided Berlin and to have seen the effect that isolation and detachment had not just on the East but on the psyche of the entire population.  They have a daylong flirtation, then Clare tells Andi she's leaving town.

But she doesn't.  She finds him in a book shop, they admire Klimt's "Woman in Gold" painting, the one that was stolen away by the Nazis.  Andi takes her home.  Something doesn't feel right about it, but they sleep together anyway, and the next day Clare discovers that she can't leave Andi's apartment, which is tucked away in a desolate building.

Once-charming Andi has taken her captive, and Berlin Syndrome turns into both a vicious psychodrama and a twisted thriller.  Its script, by Shaun Grant, based on a novel by Melanie Joosten, creates two vividly conceived characters in Clare and Andi, and though we learn infinitely more about his violently unhinged persona than hers, Palmer and Riemelt are both compelling.  Rimelt's psychopathic calm produces a screen villain who genuinely belongs in the ranks of Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter.  Palmer, on the other hand, is given a difficult task: Convey Clare's shock and anguish, her psychological despair, and a troubling descent into a state of acceptance -- while never losing our sympathy.

Berlin Syndrome is the horror version of the Oscar-winning Room, and though its horror-movie leanings prevent it from being taken as seriously as that harrowing drama that doesn't diminish its effectiveness.  This is a brutal, violent movie -- though its on-screen bloodshed is limited to just two tough-to-watch scenes, the psychological torture is even more disturbing.

But it's also a film that, should you make it through to the end (and I wouldn't blame you if you didn't) is not one you'll easily forget.  Berlin Syndrome puts the audience through a similar plight as its lead character: You want to hate every moment, but as much as you try it holds you in a shocked, fascinated, terrified thrall.




Viewed May 27, 2017 -- Arclight Hollywood

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