REVIEW: ‘Jerichow’ can teach Hollywood a lesson

Jared Iorio / Roundup

Not a lot goes on in ‘Jerichow’ — the town, not the film. Jobs are hard to come by, everyone recognizes each other. It’s a small town, like any other. What happens in the lives of the town people is not unordinary, we just rarely get such a glimpse into private lives.

Director Christian Petzold’s story is a simple one. Thomas (Benno Fürmann), a dishonorably-discharged former soldier returning to rural Germany from Afghanistan finds himself in a potentially dangerous affair with a rich Turkish business owner’s wife.

Whether Ali (Hilmi Sözer), the owner of 45 snack bars in the area, is aware of their deception and nefarious plan for him, is the basis for the suspense of the diligently crafted story arc.

A long shot of Thomas attending his mother’s funeral, leads almost directly to a violent confrontation with a loan shark, from whom he was attempting escape. At the end of the beginning Thomas is left penniless and looking for work, living in his dead mother’s home.

As Thomas walks home from the store one day, a drunk Ali crashes his car on the bed of a lake. Thomas helps him get the car unstuck, at the same time, misleading the police into believing that he was the driver. After a second drunk-driving episode lands Ali without a license, Thomas is offered a job as his driver and assistant in making the daily snack-bar run, introducing him to his beautiful German wife for the first time.

The thought that his wife Laura (Nina Hoss) and his new found assistant would soon plot to kill him probably never crosses Ali’s mind.

Ali is the glue that holds ‘Jerichow’ together, as the most multi-faceted of the characters. He’s a ruthless business man, but a husband who has done right by his wife and provided Thomas with an excellent job. But we also see his self-pitying side, his violently-jealous side and his manipulations. All-in-all he’s an outsider in a country he has lived in since he was 2, and this is his story. A story about not fitting in and not trusting, and being correct in both aspects.

As in life, the new lovers seem to only have eyes for each other, seemingly swept away in their budding affair. In the european style, we aren’t given much background. Thomas has been dishonorably discharged, but we’re never told why. Laura is an ex-con, who married Ali for security and money, the details of her background are never fleshed out. There are no saints in ‘Jerichow.’

Ali watches Laura like a hawk. The trust one expects to find in marriage is clearly not there. Whenever he can’t be sure of his wife’s whereabouts, he sets out to find her — and to watch her. It is this behavior that leads the viewer to question whether Ali really went on that business trip to Turkey, or whether he was spying as the new lovers finally took advantage of their chance to consummate their adultery.

It’s a pleasure to see that a minimal, talented cast coupled with a director with a vision can make an engaging and thought-provoking film that knocks the socks off Hollywood big-budget behemoths.  The pacing of ‘Jerichow’ is wonderfully slow, building tension throughout, only to end abruptly, with a subtle twist, but a twist that makes perfect sense if you were able to read the characters right.

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