ZENTROPA
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: A weird and hypnotic film, but ultimately a disappointment. The viewer is apparently hypnotized and regressed to be a German-American in Germany shortly after WWII. He becomes a train conductor pulled into the conflict of the Americans against the anti-American resistance. Rating: high 0 (-4 to +4).
You are being hypnotized and regressed to an earlier existence. The hypnotist puts you to sleep and makes you live the life of an American of German descent who went to Germany a few months after World War II ended to become a sleeping car conductor. You are under the supervision of a stern uncle whom you have just met, and he pushes you through a Kafkaesque world that places impossible demands on you, all to meet the incredibly high standards of being a sleeping car conductor on the Zentropa train line. But this is only the beginning. You are about to be drawn into an intrigue that pits the Americans occupying Germany against werewolves--the secret German resistance against the occupation.
ZENTROPA is a complex and confusing film, very heavy on style. Sometimes it is dense with ideas, sometimes totally incomprehensible. It is filmed mostly in black and white with selective use of color. Some scenes are all black and white, some are all color, some have only the foreground in color. Sometimes just one object will be in color like in a Nuprin ad. The black-and-white photography is usually crisp and sharp, with some amazing images. One of the best is a train speeding through a tunnel seen from a few feet ahead with the smoke forming a streaming "hair-do" over the top of the train.
ZENTROPA (original title: EUROPA) is Danish director Lars Van Triers's strange look at Germany after war. Parts of the world seem as if they could never have been. The Zentropa Railroad is a world out of BRAZIL crossed with Kafka in which the individual is beaten into submission by the system. In the film's one obvious joke, our main character has just had to pay for his uniform--which nevertheless belongs to the company--and several other expenses he must pay in order to start work on the railroad. "I now understand German unemployment," he says. "Nobody can afford to work."
Ultimately ZENTROPA is a muddled thriller that only partly makes sense. The viewer is never certain if the historical detail has any validity or is being made up from the whole cloth. There are certainly moments of tension, but more of confusion. It won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film festival of 1991, but lost out to BARTON FINK for the Golden Palm, at which Van Trier reportedly was extremely indignant. Stylistically it is an achievement, but the viewer will have to decide if it is really is an entertainment experience. For me it had all the elements to work but a few logical questions left unanswered. For that I rate it a high 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
att!mtgzy!leeper
leeper@mtgzy.att.com
Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper
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