Post-Wall German Cinema and National History: Utopianism and Dissent by Mary-Elizabeth O'Brien (review)

In her comprehensive study of post-Wall German cinema, in particular the history films made since 1989, O'Brien introduces readers to a large number of cinematic narratives, which are all—as she convincingly shows—in the business of nation-building.

O'Brien has taken the fall of the Wall as the starting point of her cinematic history and argues persuasively that "1989 has replaced 1945 as designating the primary caesura of recent German history" (2). Parallel to Germany embracing the European Union with great political vigour, O'Brien sees another trend emerging from within the country: the rehabilitation of nationalism. She asks the compelling question, ". . . how can a divided country whose common jingoist, genocidal past has rendered nationalism deeply suspect begin to conceive of itself as a viable and future-oriented unified nation?" (1). It can, because it must, in order to build a strong, cohesive entity, and—somewhat surprisingly, given the all-pervasive sense of shame and guilt about the Nazi past—unified Germany dared to do so, as telling "stories about a shared past, establishing foundation myths, and finding commonalities of experience are pivotal steps in the construction of national identity" (7). There is perhaps no better medium for such a project than film, or, more precisely, history films, in both mainstream and art cinema, and O'Brien claims that "German cinema has provided a forum for this national narrative in which utopianism and dissent in the postwar period emerge as a prominent model for post-Wall German identity" (7).

In structuring the history films thematically, O'Brien has chosen highly appropriate categories, exploring the themes of amnesia and nostalgia, oppression and resistance, the wild west and the east of Eden, before studying cinematic constructions of utopia and its pursuit with or without violence. Each chapter allows for detailed discussions of exemplary films and their contextualisation within the period and art scene.

O'Brien's analysis of the past 25 years of German cinema initially reads like an antidote to Rentschler's diagnosis of a German cinema stifled by the desire for consensus. Indeed, she unearths DEFA studio films from the period 1989 to 1992 and an assortment of oppositional and critical filmmakers to outline her thesis of a "cinema of consciousness" (15). However, the lure of the consensus is great and, ironically, the argument comes full circle. As O'Brien rightly asserts, cinema helps to communicate versions of history, and, when viewed, these history films create de facto shared memories, which in turn help establish collective identities and understandings of difference. This process, along with the communal experience of seeing a film, has created new communities. German post-Wall cinema has therefore allowed for many moments of collective viewing and dreaming, and with its many history films recalling seminal moments of the post-war past of both the GDR and the FRG, it has allowed a shared version of the past to emerge. To complicate O'Brien's reading, would this not of its own accord result in a cinema of consensus?

Irrespective of the ill-chosen label of a "cinema of consciousness," Mary O'Brien's study of post-Wall cinema is a most thorough and thought-provoking reading of utopianism and dissent, disillusionment and communal understanding, which will help readers to understand the ideas being embraced or rejected by many Germans of today.