Sensitive Subjects: The Political Aesthetics of Contemporary German and Austrian Cinema by Leila Mukhida (review)
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In Sensitive Subjects: The Political Aesthetics of Contemporary German and Austrian Cinema, Leila Mukhida engages with theory by German Jewish intellectuals Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, and Alexander Kluge, emphasizing "points of intersection and divergence in their writing, points that emerge from their shared disenchantment with the domestic output of the German film industry" (8) in order to examine the political aesthetics of postunification German and Austrian cinema. The book foregrounds the importance of medium-specific devices like lighting, [End Page 394] sound, and mise-en-scène for close readings of contemporary film. In dialogue with a number of works by these neo-Marxist thinkers, who have interrogated notions of precarity, temporality, and contingency, Mukhida argues that post-1989 films by directors such as Valeska Grisebach, Michael Haneke, Andreas Dresen, and Elke Hauck engender a political sensitivity in viewers. Mukhida insists that the political aesthetic of contemporary German-language cinema, when read through the writings of Benjamin, Kracauer, and Kluge, allows for a unique understanding of contemporary films that departs from Eric Rentschler's analysis of German post-Wall cinema as one of consensus. While Rentschler suggests that the political value of contemporary films becomes legible when compared to the aesthetic and stylistic choices and production strategies of the New German Cinema of the 1960s and 70s, Mukhida's readings seek to undo the dichotomy between "consensus" and "interference."
After a brief introduction to set the stage for the project, chapter 1 foregrounds filmic content, or plot, and context as opposed to form. Mukhida interrogates representations of the working class and asks whether such a category is applicable to twenty-first-century German and Austrian films. Emphasizing that films such as Toni Erdmann (2016) by Maren Ade and Western (2017) by Valeska Grisebach visualize changes to the flow of capital and labor, they insist that films such as Michael Glawogger's Workingman's Death (2004) and Elke Hauck's Karger (2007) "do not allow viewers to choose to remain ignorant of the human cost in the current global economic system" (63) and foreground the precarious conditions of workers.
Leaning on Kracauer's understanding of film as "uniquely equipped to record and reveal physical reality" (Kracauer in Mukhida 68) in chapter 2, Mukhida turns their sights to the possibilities of representation. They offer readings of Angela Schanelec's Marseille (2004), Gerhard Friedl's Hat Wolff von Amerongen Konkursdelikte begangen? (2004), and Andreas Dresen's Halt auf freier Strecke (2011), films that pay close attention to the "real." Mukhida foregrounds how the three films "disrupt the viewing experience, yet at the same time there is a commitment to authenticity" (102). Thus, they understand the films discussed in this chapter as linked to documentary-style filmmaking.
Chapter 3 argues that Benjamin, Kracauer, and Kluge encourage active viewer participation instead of the passive consumption of the films' storylines. Indeed, the theorists "demand a transformation from a passive viewer . . . to an active collaborator"(107). Analyzing Michael Haneke's 71 Fragmente einer Chronologie des Zufalls (1994) and Code Inconnu: Récit incomplete de divers voyages (2000), Mukhida claims that the filmmaker seeks to "challenge viewers' imagination rather than to numb them" (108), but these films still exhibit a sense of optimism that is tied to the filmmaker's impetus to engage his audience.
The fourth chapter turns to the notion of alienation and argues that Benjamin's theory of the shock effect functions as a means to generate alertness and critical awareness in the audience. Viewers' heightened awareness of their life worlds enables [End Page 395] them to become more sensitive and develop a sense of ethical responsibility. Both Ulrich Seidl's Hundstage (2001) and Valeska Grisebach's Sehnsucht (2006) generate feelings of discomfort and withhold the possibility for viewers to make sense of the images on-screen (such as the portrayal of accidents and suicide attempts).
Mostly summarizing the main arguments of the book's four chapters...
