8 - Waiting in Line, Moving in Circles : Spaces of Instability in Christian Petzold’s Transit
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 April 2022
Summary
Abstract
Loosely based on a 1944 novel by German writer Anna Seghers and set in present-day France, Christian Petzold's Transit is a story of fateful migration, in which conflicting agencies and shifting identities are translated into an aesthetic principle. Its fluctuating interrelations between images, texts, and temporalities transform the film into an ultimate “non-place,” which, except for a few hints at fascism and a refugee crisis, provides no explanation or overview of its political implications. Alongside the characters, spectators are thrown into a world defined by fragile image spaces and zones of exclusion, always haunted by fragments of the past and glimpses of an uncertain future.
Keywords: cinematic space, non-place, historicity, aesthetic experience
A scene like any other: A man sits in a cafe sipping his espresso, eventually distracted by the insistent sirens of police cars rushing by. Suddenly, he is approached by another man who seems to know him from somewhere.
“Georg? Why are you still here? Paris is being sealed off. You won't get out.” “And you?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
The man tells him that he has a danger visa for the United States, “a visa for people in great jeopardy.”
“You’re in great jeopardy?” Georg smiles, not quite taking him seriously, but still agreeing to doing him the favour of delivering two letters before he will join him on his escape from the city. Suddenly, Georg leaves the cafe, and the film's title appears: Transit.
Against certain expectations one might have, based on the canonical dramaturgy of Hollywood thrillers, the prologue hardly conveys a sense of palpable danger. This impression surely cannot only be attributed to the fact that Transit (2018), German director Christian Petzold's eighth feature film, is not a Hollywood production. While Petzold, a representative of the so-called Berlin School, is known for his matter-of-fact style, and for calculated yet emotionally complex references to classical genre cinema, there is something odd and “off” about the opening scene, precisely because it drifts apart on the level of sound, dialogue, and acting:
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- Refugees and Migrants in Contemporary Film, Art and Media , pp. 177 - 192Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2022