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Reviewed by:
  • Cinema and Social Change in Germany and Austria edited by Gabrielle Mueller and James M. Skidmore
  • Inga Meier
Cinema and Social Change in Germany and Austria Gabrielle Mueller and James M. Skidmore, editors. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012; 302 pages; $85.00.

First screened at the 2009 Berlinale, Deutscbland 09, a compilation of thirteen short films by German filmmakers, was inspired by a confluence of anniversaries: the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, the student movement of 1968, and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990. The film and its [End Page 59] screening are cited by editors Gabrielle Mueller and James M. Skidmore in the introduction of Cinema and Social Change as a touchstone by which to elucidate the various themes and issues that formulate the through-line of their richly diverse collection of essays.

Mueller and Skidmore state that the film’s title “prompted critics to expect the ultimate cinematic event that would help to define the nation”(2), but simultaneously point to “the differentiated and fragmented picture that emerges from this project” (3) and the impossibility of formulating a singular, cohesive concept of the national. Instead, the essays in Mueller and Skidmore’s collection ambitiously push against and expand the boundaries of the “nation,” from a multifaceted array of perspectives.

To structure their discourse on the nation, the editors group the essays in their collection into a series of broad categories. The first of these, consisting of the contributions by Marco Abel and Barbara Pichler, which serve as bookends, “challenge conventional viewing habits” (12). Whereas Abel focuses on the “a-representational realism” (25) of the “Berlin School” to reexamine the movement as a form of “counter-cinema” (25), Pichler explores a series of contemporary Austrian films to address how they challenge the tradition of realism frequently associated with Austrian cinema.

Chapters 3 and 4, collected along with chapter 2 under the heading “Challenging Viewing Habits,” broaden this interrogation within the context of an emerging global cinema. Sophie Boyer examines the works of Austrian director Michael Haneke utilizing the theories of poststructuralist Jean Baudrillard. As Boyer evocatively states, “The disintegration of human relationships, the prevalence of an insidious violence in both the public and private spheres, the manipulation of reality by mass media – these are all topics that permeate Michael Haneke’s work” (44). The following chapter, written by Morgan Koerner, treats Freakstars 3000 (Schlingensief, 2003) as “an intervention in the current discourse on disability in Germany” (59).

Chapters 5 through 10 are unified by a historiographical approach, titled “Reassessing and Consuming History.” In Chapter 5, Roger Cook provides a close reading of Das Leben der Anderen, (von Donnersmarck, 2006), in which he juxtaposes the film’s depiction of East German communism with its structure as a Brechtian Bildungsroman, thereby subverting the totalitarian strategies its depicts. “What does it say,” Cook asks, “about the forms of social control that exert pressures on the individual in the free market democracies of the West?” (80). Chapter 6, by Alasdair King, moves the reader forward in time beyond the fall of the Wall. King posits Heimat 3: A Chronicle of Endings and Beginnings (Reitz, 2004) as a means of constructing Heimat and the nation not only spatially but also temporally; as a “complex kind of filmic time machine, recording the new patterns of everyday life in the decade after the fall of the Wall, chronicling the impact of historical change in Germany, and also registering the being in-time of its key characters” (111). Chapters 7 and 8, by Joanne Leal and Mary-Elizabeth O’Brian respectively, turn to [End Page 60] the 1968 student movement, offering analyses of Die Unberuhrbare (Roehler, 2000) Die innere Sicherheit (Petzold, 2000), Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei (Weingartener, 2004), and Muxmäuschenstill (Mittermeier, 2004). By contrast, chapters 9 and 10 focus on the Nazi past and on issues of Vergangenheitsbewaltigung (the struggle to come to terms with the past) through the genre of comedy, thereby challenging accepted notions of “Holocaust etiquette” – Florentine Strzelczyk by examining Schtonk! (Dietl, 1992) and Peter Gölz in his discussion of Mein Führer – Die wirkliche wahrste Wabrbeit über Adolf Hitler (Levy, 2007).

The...

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