Wednesday, June 1, 2016

“Before the Dawn” on Stefan Zweig: Auspicious of cinema – SPIEGEL ONLINE

Rio de Janeiro, July 1936: receipt for the world famous, 54-year-old Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (Josef Hader), which is two years earlier fled from the Nazis. A large room, filled with elegantly dressed people. The long table is covered with lush tropical flowers. Brazil’s Foreign Minister holds a eulogy on the standing beside him branch. The answers stirred, but short. Finally, a horse race awaits the gathered high society. All sit down to eat.

But suddenly branch rises hesitantly again, and with it the whole society. Deeply moved, the author describes his hope that Brazil can not be a model for the world; because while in Europe conquer fascism, people of different races and colors here lived together peacefully.

This first scene from “Before the Dawn” acts as a prologue, and it sets the tone for the whole movie. What the director Maria Schrader create here together with her cinematographer Wolfgang Thaler, is nothing less than a work of art in itself.

The camera view is uncommonly elegant composed; the main characters are in the foreground, but as a spectator one perceives also arranged in the distant background, and deep sharp filmed extras. Maria Schrader filming the long scene in a setting and then does not cut when her lead actor Josef Hader stands with his back to the camera in the second part of his speech. It speaks a strong, self-confident style will, which is rarely seen; especially in the conventions of television too often so impaired German cinema.

You can the pictures hardly escape

About the stylistic elegance out but the prologue is already an example of the dramatic art, with Maria Schrader history by Stefan Zweig in exile told: not for biopics usual epic width, but with scenic depth. For the viewer, this narrative has a seemingly contradictory effect. It can be the pictures hardly escape – while remaining distant observer

In four chapters show Maria Schrader and her co-writer author Jan Schomburg excerpts from Stefan Zweig years in exile, which end in 1942, when he chooses with his wife Lotte (Aenne Black) suicide. Schrader and Schomburg show branch in September 1936 at the Writers’ Congress in Rio de Janeiro, where he is urged to openly speak against Nazi Germany. In January 1941, he and Lotte are in the tropical heat of Bahia road where the two an absurd receiver must stand at a sweaty provincial mayor who persistently “Stefan Show” calls him.

Direct from there flying the pair in the winter cold New York, where his first wife branch Friderike (Barbara Sukowa) countered that told him of the horrors of their flight from Europe. And in November 1941, the film follows him on his birthday on branch new Location Petrópolis in Brazil. Here he meets the also exiled journalists Ernst spring (Matthis Brandt) and reported this to his plans “Schachnovelle”. A re-filmed in a setting epilogue framing this chapter with a stylistic sophistication that reflects the prologue and even exceeds them.

Not an epic synopsis therefore tells of this sensitive, plagued by depression, nonetheless picked polite man, but some time crowded episodes. However, the drill unequal deeper point beyond themselves and show a more accurate picture of branch and his time. Simultaneously, the episodic narrative structure branch reflects elegance own literary technique of historical miniature that he “Out of mankind” used in his work.

Schrader, Schomburg and Thaler also do not pretend so, this man and his motives completely to see through; his conduct must remain so apparently contradictory as it is life after all. In “Before the Dawn” cultivate rather an emphatic observation that needs all the power of film language familiar and no verbalization of mental processes. So they dissolve again by Stefan Zweig and look with their own funds to the powerful voice artist.

A film which interferes in the presence

In a scene about Stefan Zweig and Ernst spring standing on the balcony of the Wohnaus and look to the tropical vegetation. “We have nothing to complain about,” Branch says dully. “No, we do not,” replies spring. “How are we the only endure?” asks branch. It receives and does not expect a response. Silently and helpless, the two men standing at the edge of a jungle, thousands of kilometers away from their homes, knowing that there just their relatives and friends are threatened with death and what happens to destruction of their culture. Maria Schrader leaves the scene long run; until the silence makes the unexpressed pain with palpable.

The exciting actress Maria Schrader ( “Forget me I”, “Germany 83″) turns out to be with her second directorial work as at least as exciting director. Whether intimate play like miniature or complicated sequence with many extras and camera movements – here succeed and her team everything. And of course, Schrader has a knack for actors. As the Erzzyniker and brilliant comedian Josef Hader back takes under her direction as he balanced melancholy, sadness and a mild joke, that’s just wonderful to see

“Before the Dawn” is indeed a historical drama. but an urgent, aufwühlendes completely current. Not least this is due to the meta-level, plays terrific with Schrader. During an interview speaks branch in her film of his hopes for Europe and says: “. I believe that passports and borders one day the past will be a thing I doubt that we will live to see.” It is impossible not to think of the fugitives of the present and how Europe meets them today. In this respect, “Before the Dawn”, a film which interferes in the spirit of Stefan Zweig about the historical retrospect the present. This is the greatest tribute that Maria Schrader could do him

In the video. The trailer for “Before the Dawn”

” Before the Dawn “

Germany, Austria, France 2016

director: Maria Schrader

script: Jan Schomburg, Maria Schrader

Cast: Josef Hader, Barbara Sukowa, Aenne Schwarz, Matthias Brandt, Charly Hübner, Lenn Kudrjawizki, Vincent Nemeth, Oscar Ortega Sanchez

production Danny Krausz, Kurt Stocker

rental: X-rental

length: 106 minutes

Rated: from 0 years

Start: June 2, 2016

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