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  • The Surveillance Camera's Quarry in Hochhäusler's Eine Minute Dunkel
  • Eric Rentschler

"The World Changes When You Stare Straight at It"1

When a surveillance camera fixes on the world, it transforms what it sees. In Christoph Hochhäusler's Eine Minute Dunkel (One Minute of Darkness, 2011), such a camera breaks down while a murder is in progress and the resulting technical glitch produces a moment of darkness. The film chronicles the quest to understand what has happened—quite literally to fill in the blank.2

The nearly four-and-a-half hours of Dreileben are in fact framed by surveillance camera images. The title of Hochhäusler's contribution, which is the trilogy's final feature, refers to a missing slice of surveillance camera footage in a film that demonstrates how a camera's stare at the world does not ensure that one sees (much less apprehends or understands) reality. Eine Minute Dunkel resolves the enigma of the missing shot only to introduce a further moment of darkness. In the film's last seconds, we glimpse a surveillance camera's record of a decidedly climactic moment, but the image freezes and, in a formal gesture that ironically reiterates the film's title, fades into black before we can confirm that what looks to be another act of violence, indeed another murder, has actually transpired. Here again, left with a void, we must fill in the blank.

In the following I would like to consider the crucial function of inscribed surveillance cameras in Hochhäusler's film as well as their framing role in the Dreileben project as a whole. Along the way, I will also make some more general observations about the use and meaning of surveillance footage within the endeavors of the so-called Berlin School.

Threes and Threesomes

Let me begin with what might seem to be a straightforward question. Is Dreileben one film or three? Put differently, how might one best characterize the relation between the trilogy's separate contributions? Are they complements or counterparts, variations on a theme, or distinct exercises? Is this an ensemble, or are the different pieces at odds or perhaps even in competition with each other? This seemingly straightforward [End Page 635] question is not so simple after all, and, for that reason, I will return to it. But let me say a few initial words about the pertinence of threesomes for the architecture of Dreileben.

The three films by three directors were made possible through a cooperation of three television stations: BR, WDR, and ARD. Part one shows us a romance; part two an investigation; and part three a manhunt. Or, in Christiane Peitz's summary assessment, Christian Petzold's contribution "situates the action and charges it with tension," Dominik Graf 's segment "condenses it to a social study of a small town," while Hochhäusler's conclusion "moves into the brushwood of the past."3 Each film privileges a circumscribed perspective (a young hospital attendant, a police psychologist from out of town, a man on the run, and the ailing police chief who is hot on his trail). A foreigner plays a central role in each segment, and each of them has missing parents. In all three films a repressed element surfaces, and it does so with a vengeance, particularly in the final segment. Each contribution, furthermore, foregrounds a threesome and accentuates the role of triangulated desire. Oh, and yes, the name of the Chefarzt at the clinic is Dreier.

What, we might ask, links this trilogy to noteworthy recent ensemble films? Its structure is in fact quite similar to that of The Red Riding Trilogy (2009), three freestanding but nonetheless interlinked films about acts of violence by different directors. One also thinks of Lucas Belvaux's La Trilogie (The Trilogy, 2002), three films that replay situations from discrete perspectives and employ distinct genre formats while maintaining a uniform visual style. And, of course, there is no getting around a mention of Krzysztof Kieślowski's Trois Coleurs (Three Colors, 1993-1994) or his Dekalog (The Decalogue, 1989-1990). Likewise, the blend of hospital and forest quickly brings to mind David Lynch's multipart Twin Peaks...

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