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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (March 13, 1984)
Tuesday, f.Utxh 13, 1C34 Daily N'cbrr.:!ccn Fez's 0 'Marianne and Juliane is contrast between uneasy sisters Review by Eric Peterson Margarcthe von Trotta's most recent film, Mari anne and Juliane, reveals great care careful thought, a careful eye. There are some of the same elements in Mari anne and Juliane that there are in von Trotta's earlier film, ThrcsSizicrsr. the same balancing and contrast of intimate but uneasy sisters, the same delving into the past and childhood throui except ionally vivid flashbacks, the same quietly beauti ful images. The fecus of Marianne and Juliane Is politics, and a comparison bet ween mainstream and vio lent strategies in the Jxft is powerfully explored through the confrontat ion of Marianne and Juli ane. The film showed Sun day and Monday in the Sheldon Film Theater as part of UPC's Foreign Film Series.' Juliane, the main char acter played by Jutta Laropc, and Marianne, play ed by Barbara. Sukowa (who is also in the 14 part Fassbinder film Ber lin Alexanderplatz play ing this week at the Shel don) have a more intense relation as sisters than they will ever have with other people. "We always buttoned each other's shirts, even when we hated each other," Mari anne tells her sister, which neatly expresses the commitment and am biguities of their relation ship. . - Juliane is a feminist jour nalist, and Marianne is a terrorist. There are indi cations that Marianne has become a terrorist in part to out do her rebellious sister; many of their act ions are made in clear or implicit competition with each other. But none of their conflicts can keep them from feeling the greatest and sometimes involuntary concern. In the end, Juliane's lover, played by Rudiger Vogler, is ready to leave her be cause she will not be rid of her obsession with Mar ianne's death. The center of the film, the short interviews bet ween the sisters, are mom ents which von Trotta is able to fill with an almost breathless interest. At the first, Juliane walks past a . towering row of statues, past a fence of iron bars and is not daunted by the reminders of male and martial authority. "At last!" Marianne says dra matically, although Juli ane has supposedly been the one searching for her fugitive sister. Von Trotta rarely em braces or condemns en tirely or unreservedly. While Marianne is a com pelling character and a mightily articulate speak-, er, this does not mean the film embraces her ter rorism. What seems to emerge instead is a strong challenge which liberals like Juliane must face and Marianne's life of act ion and martyrdom be comes the structure that Juliane embellishes or perhaps understands and explains with her thoughts and words. Marianne's decision to engage in violence has both purified her will and purpose and cut her off from the sources of humanity and peace for which she must ultimate ly aim. "I've no time to cry over the death of a neu rotic intellectual," she says when she hears of her former husband's sui cideThird world child ren die every day," she says in response to her own and her sister's quest ions about letting her son Jan go into a foster home. Some comprehension of Marianne's sense of pur pose comes through a flashback of her days in a revolutionary movement called El Fath. With her jubilant and serious let ters as a voice-over, she speaks of the people's faith and the frame fills with children. When Marianne is cap tured and put in prison, she at first refuses to see her sister but when Juliane writes that she wants to help, they are able to meet in the same room, with several guards present, for small amounts of time. The first time goes badly. Marianne sits in the Ir'ht, Juliane in shadow and Juliane shouts her rejection of terrorism "Your bombs spoiled it all you over simplified things!" Then corner a flash back: the sisters watch a documentary about the Nazis, including the hor rifying image of a bull- ( dozer pushing emaciated corpses into a pit. Both girls leave, Juliane vomits and Marianne weeps. This documentary is lat er balanced with one which Juliane and her f emin 1st coworkers watch with the same helpless horror. Juliane. comes to feel ever more strongly her sister's desperation: "I see no one but you and my lawyer once a month. I live in utter silence and complete isolation. I can't sfeep with that light, that silence." And the rest of the film is Juliane's at tempt to understand and to explicate that silence and horror through her writing, through force feeding herself to see what it's like, through put ting a cord around her own neck in a shocking emulation, through try ing to explain Marianne to Marianne's son. A love ly image has Marianne and Juliane communicate across a separation of prison glass. "Your hands are cold," Marianne says with the old ironic smi Ic.and the matching of their reflections in the glass is breathtaking film ing and even more sensi tive artisty. I 1.1 I f I I I T A tl CP A Enjoy the sunny sida of life. 1120 "K" Street yc:h:a:ti:e slope, WE'VE COT Vi.l CCD3! We have access lo ov 4 000 Con OOS m the Colorado Ski Country tUrtmg as to as $50 per night' Thert is no charge lor our services M LET US FIND THE RIGHT ONE FOH YOU! Hww.tY r..Vw.iTf.!. 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