Philip Gröning 2013 Germany
Starring: Alexandra Finder, David Zimmerschied, Chiara Kleemann, Pia Kleemann
As an avid cinephile who watches films from all styles, genres and nations I've had to deal with being accused of only liking the arty, the subtitled and the obscure with a monotonous frequency and while I have issues with 'subtitled' as a classification and it's obviously an untrue statement sometimes I feel like I'm really not helping my case. Yesterday's viewing of Philip Gröning's The Policeman's Wife was once of those occasions, it being best described as a meditative, three hour German drama about domestic abuse made by a director mostly known as a documentarian. Split into 59 chapters, all of which open and close on numbered intertitles and some of which last barely a minute, this is the most stringent and challenging film I've seen in a long time and occasionally it feels as if Gröning is deliberately being difficult. The detachment that might be expected of such an approach (and that features in the work of several directors Gröning has unhelpfully been linked to, particularly Michael Haneke) however is entirely missing and his camera instead remains close to its subjects at all times, sometimes uncomfortably so, making the boxed-in red brick terrace the family live in at once intimate and claustrophobic. In spite of this he holds back from judging his characters or encouraging us to revere or abhor them and simply examines their everyday life in its sweetness and its terror before presenting scenes experimental and unexpected. There are episodes where his actors appear to look at and even speak directly to camera (but not through the forth wall) as if they're in a Ingmar Bergman production and others where we see an elderly man living in wretched isolation and it's only later it becomes apparent that this may be Uwe (the policeman of the title) many years down the line, presumably without his wife and daughter, his dirty blond hair faded to a grimy grey. In the same vein there's no soundtrack or sound effects and dialogue is often sparse to the point that the title of Gröning's previous movie, Into Great Silence, could have easily been used for this one too. In fact when somebody first does speak, about ten minutes in, it's actually quite a shock. Nature too hangs heavy, not just in the gorgeously shot images of the forest and various animals but also in Uwe and Christine's daughter Clara's (played with exceptional poise by infant twins Chiara and Pia Kleemann) fascination with wildlife and the growth of the plants that act as the only measurement of time when Uwe's abuse of his partner becomes terrifyingly workaday and only he leaves the house. Early on it also features when Uwe attends a crime scene at which a late-night driver has hit a deer and the animal lays injured but not dead in the road. When the official channels can't (or can't be bothered to) send someone to dispose of it Uwe has to step in and shoot it before dragging the carcass to a nearby grassland and marking the ground so it can be picked up later. It's an act that obviously distresses him but that he pulls off with little hesitation creating a undercurrent of foreboding also present in the jokey arm-wrestling match the couple have as a prelude to sex and later a water-fight, both scenes full of eroticism and sensuality but containing an inherent aggression that grows organically through Uwe's occasional explosions of temper and, in one of the film's most upsetting scenes, the morning when he attempts to take Christine despite her refusals as their daughter plays in the next room, his only reasoning a petulant repetition of the words "It's my birthday", a phrase that calls to mind Dennis Hopper's frightening and infantilized refrain of "Baby wants to fuck" in Blue Velvet. Again Gröning never offers any explanation or reasoning for Uwe's growing violence other than that it seems to come from a great fear of his family leaving him (as he puts it "without you I'm nothing", a line the chapters with the old man seems to suggest may be true) but simultaneously doesn't try to excuse him, and nor should he, Uwe's actions are after all unforgivable. It's not all darkness though and there's an awful lot of warmth, especially in the tender moments between mother and daughter. As a whole The Policeman's Wife is an incredible piece of work, intelligent, authentic, disturbing, heartfelt, beautifully shot (like Terrence Malick with more substance) and led by three remarkable performances. The payoff is huge but as previously mentioned the film is a terrifically taxing experience to undertake and all but the most dedicated of viewers will have to have the patience of an unusually good-natured blue whale to stay until the end. I genuinely hope they do though because it's the best film I've seen this year.
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