THERE ARE CLEARLY very good explanations as to why the directors of A German Life allow their subject Brunhilde Pomsel to speak without interruption. For reasons of aesthetics alone, it makes good sense to focus the viewer's attention solely upon her, rather than punctuate our audio and visual impressions with interventions from interlocutors, including the four directors themselves. Moreover, it is generally not difficult to divine what she has been asked. Including her interviewers’ voices might indeed have come across as redundant and perhaps distracting. Yet even when there is some enigma about her vis-à-vis, or doubt about what has been asked, one can make the case convincingly that this is precisely what keeps the viewer intellectually engaged. It magnifies the puzzle that Pomsel already presents. And given her sometimes painfully slow cadences, one certainly cannot claim to be swept up in the narrative such that one is deprived of sufficient time for contemplation. Quite the contrary: keeping the camera focused exclusively on Pomsel, often in very confining close-ups, and subjecting the audience to her unhurried elocution and extended silences indeed possesses both an aesthetic and ideological justification, for these may be the very techniques that enable the film to function as critique. On both counts, then, the decision seems sensible.

But this is not quite the directors’ explanation. When Florian Weigensamer explains the directors’ decision to feature Pomsel exclusively, and to bracket out the questions, he instead highlights the filmmakers’ aim to present her as if she were speaking freely, on her own. In other words, bracketing out the questions gives the viewers the illusion that she is spontaneously reflecting on her past, without any prodding or prompting. The film, however, does not shy away from sourcing other kinds of interpolated material: each and every one of the thirteen intercut films is meticulously labeled with a citation appearing on an otherwise blank screen and for a considerable length of time. Each of these excerpted films is a rich topic in its own right and is presented as a counterpoint to Pomsel's musings.