Roland Emmerich can crash as many moons on earth or rush flying saucers to metropolises, his Sci-fi disasters would never feel this uncomfortable like an afternoon with the hero of Christian Petzold’s new film.
The entry in the Berlinale competition is called Roter Himmel, and it’s his funniest Movie. Because Petzold is Petzold, but Red Sky also breaks your heart and glues the pieces together in such a way that you wonder how long it will last this time. The fact that Petzold succeeds in doing this with an absolute dislike at the center of his story underlines why he is currently the most exciting German director.
After Undine, Red Sky is the second part of a trilogy
After the fairy tale Undine, Petzold (Transit) continues his loose trilogy about the elements in Roter Himmel. Water follows fire, city follows land. The mentioned unsympathetic is called Leon (Thomas Schubert) and is working on his second novel. Unsympathetic possibly falls short. Leon is, to put it mildly, a black hole that sucks in the joy of others.
With his school friend Felix (Langston Uibel) he drives to a house in the Mecklenburg woods, where they want to work for a few days. And how these forests look, sound and – you can imagine it thanks to the sensual design – smell! The sun squints through the lush foliage, insects buzz to themselves, owls do what owls have to do.
Christian Schulz / Schramm Film
red sky
It would be paradise for most, not Leon. While others sweat in bikinis, he wears black, long-sleeved, leggy. Leon bursts into the forest like a foreign body. Which, by the way, doesn’t make him unsympathetic. He, who is struggling with his second book and fears his editor’s criticism, However, he prefers to deal with his inferiority complex in his surroundings and that includes two strangers in addition to Felix.
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On site, they surprisingly find a roommate: Nadja (Paula Beer) gets into it with the lifeguard Devid (Enno Trebs) so loudly at night that it robs Leon of sleep. The three quickly become friends, although our writer is deliberately left out. In Leon, a perpetual motion machine rattles, powered by inexhaustible narcissistic energynext to which the approaching forest fires initially look like the lesser threat to the summer house peace.
Laughter and sadness alternate Red Sky
Red Sky offers more than just a finger exercise in misanthropy, however. This is partly due to the humor and Thomas Schubert’s differentiated performance, which should help him to priority 1 German casting offices. His Leon despairs of the joy of others, which repeatedly tears him off his high horse. He pushes off, but looking away remains impossible. And like a good slapstick comedy, Red Sky is great fun when someone who deserves falls falls.
On the other hand, the Berlinale contribution brings up an egalitarian empathy for its characters. That doesn’t differentiate between a Leon, a Felix, a Devid or a Nadja. Leon’s compulsive behavior is even accompanied by a certain sadness, he looks out of the dark window frames into the green where life and love sprout.
If he does make himself comfortable outside, Hans Fromm’s camera isolates him while the others are united in the idyll. He breaks out of this, his specially made one frame off once, then for a frustratingly short time.
Piffl media
red sky
As in Undine, Transit and especially the woody Barbara, red sky pulls in nonetheless beguiling sense of romance, a feeling that great love could be waiting around the corner. Or out in the clearing in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. In Leon’s deepest cringe moments, that Petzoldian enchantment pulls you out in no time. The mood changes so quickly.
However, while Undine was a fairy tale in which love flows through the past, present and future as a primeval river, in Roter Himmel there is a threat of extinction. Of trees, houses and maybe even love. However, Leon cannot see this, even when it is too late.
Christian Petzold has made an amusing and yet sad film that presents itself as a psychogram, as a mythical tragedy, as a Commentary on lethargy in the face of the environmental crisis read. But I don’t want to commit myself. Why look so small-minded when you can experience great cinema?