One element of Jerichow that stuck out to me is the repeating images of isolation and "gating off" elements. Throughout the film Jerichow presents a place in German society where people are walled off from each other because of class, race, and power, the latter having the most focus in the film, as power seems to shift easily between the three main characters of Thomas (who we learn was discharged from the military, signifying a change in power even before the film starts), Laura, and Ali.
Many scenes depict boundaries either separating characters (scenes containing fences, such as the scenes where Ali spies of Laura at the Soda Dispensary or scenes where Thomas strides down the road opposite the side of Ali and Laura's home), or scenes where characters are creating boundaries (Thomas' building his fence around his home, Laura demanding Thomas bring the van around so she can't be seen by the neighbors). The idea of boundaries keeping others out, and those within safe was mentioned many times in today's reading of Bauman's book, the perpetuation of fear of others through isolation.
"Those of us who can afford it fortify ourselves against all visible and invisible, present or anticipated, known or as unfamiliar, diffuse but ubiquitous dangers through locking ourselves behind walls, stuffing the approaches to our living quarters with T.V. cameras..."
So on and so forth. The characters isolating themselves from each other are using this to protect their own power, such as Ali peering through fences or using Thomas to weed out those who would question his power through embezzlement. Ali, a Turkish immigrant, understands that his class status is what separates him from his workers (as he's seen using immigrants for labor, as evidenced by the other Turkish and Asian workers), and uses those he can control to isolate those he cannot. That is where his power comes from, enabling himself to stay wealthy and disabling those from taking it away from him. The same can be said for his relationship with Laura, he perpetuates his power by threatening to use Laura's debts if she leaves him, and uses Thomas to see if she is cheating on him.
Of course, as Ali continually relies of Thomas he enables him to gain more power over him, finally culminating in the last scene where Ali realizes he has lost power over his wife, his closest employee, and his own health. Despite fighting against his power, perhaps Petzold is making a statement about the perpetuation of power over others with Thomas and Laura's attempt to kill Ali, despite them being victims of his own assertion of power. That's my two cents over the film.
I agree, I do think that the film is based around the idea of power and how it is used and obtained in the film. Throughout the film, the scene was always beautiful skies and birds chirping until the end of the film when a bunch of birds were flying around the beach at this time making a chaotic-sound. In which then Ali finds the car lighter that Thomas owns. Ali is rich and has the power to control his wife, and he gets away with beating his wife, if she leaves she gets nothing.
“The savior always shuts up and gives up,” as Laura told Thomas because she knows how powerful of a man Ali is. Ali becomes obsessed with the idea that Laura is cheating on him so he stalks her and eventually puts an end to it when he finds her with another guy.
‘There are no terrifying new monsters. It’s drawing the poison of the fear’- Adam Curtis. The insecurity and uncertainty of individuals is what makes them no longer in control. Ali knew that he was no longer in control with Laura and that his power would soon diminish because he knew he was dying. Also, this relates to Baumans book because it is important to recognize the power of the state. States that are considered global elites, are not stuck, whereas states that are not elite are stuck. Those states that don’t have power are the states where individuals live in fear, similar to Laura, who lives in fear that she will never get to pay off her debt.
At the end of the film, Ali realizes that his power of being wealthy and rich cannot give him what he wants. What he wants is for his wife, Laura, to love him for who he is even though he knows she married him for his money. The people in Germany do not want him living in Germany therefore leaving Ali unhappy and sick. Ali used his money to manipulate people (Laura and Thomas) to get what he wanted. When he realizes that he can no long obtain his power because he is dying, he ends up killing himself in the car while driving it over a cliff.
I felt the same as you, Andrew. The main characters, though physically close, never shared mundane feelings with each other to show a development of trust over time. When Laura and Thomas share their first intimate moment while dancing they had not previously had any connection to show a closeness more than two acquaintances would have.
What Laura and Thomas feel for each other has no true substance underneath the physical attraction, so the scene when Laura made a cup of coffee for Thomas creates a tense moment. They can't have a normal moment together because they both have created walls around themselves. So, even though Laura shares her troubled past with Thomas it isn’t a way for them to grow closer, but a reason for her to go back to Ali.
It isn’t for a lack of trying that they aren’t able to be vulnerable around each other; Laura invites Thomas to a supper she made. She wants to change but she also understands that there are limitations when she tells Thomas, “You can’t love; you don’t have money. That’s something I know.” She is trying to love Thomas like he says he loves her, but what she loves in him is the ability to forget her personal struggles for a while. When she remembers them she goes back to Ali knowing he is the only one who can truly help her.
All of this can be attributed to Petzold’s theme of mobility. In his interview he says, “This unmoving movement, this immobile mobility, I think, is something, a place, an uncanny place, that has emerged as a fundamental condition of life in the present: a new form of loneliness of the traveler.”
The characters are trying to escape themselves through each other and in worldly materials. I find this especially true, like Emily said, in the nature scenes. For instance, the cut of the ocean after Thomas rescues Ali. The juxtaposition of the calm and tranquil water is very different from the characters’ states. They seek out the natural forces around them to cover their own acts. Another example is when Thomas sneaks through the woods to have a brief moment with Laura.
In the Cineaste interview with Christian Petzold, Petzold explains that “people are poorly prepared for modern life and always carry archaic remainders of another life. It is these people who are being pushed out of societies or are put in motion, but they do not even know where to go, where all of this is supposed to lead. They consequently end up in transitional spaces, transit zones where nothingness looms on one side and the impossibility of returning to what existed in the past on the other. These are the spaces that interest me” (Abel 6). I found that this particular interest of Petzold’s is the driving force for Thomas’s experience in Jerichow. Thomas is stuck between his past as a dishonorably discharged war veteran and his venture towards an unknown future. I’d like to make reference to Andrew Huggins’ comment about how Thomas is at a loss of power because of this dishonorable discharge. It seems as though Petzold intended for Thomas’s transitional space to exist in order that he might search for a new source of power. Additionally, there indeed is an impossibility for Thomas to return to what existed in the past, due to his discharge. I find that Petzold’s “transitional spaces” are places where characters in his films have the most defining moments. By defining moments, I mean that these are the things where characters (or even just humans in general) decide who they are going to be. They may be thrown into an emptiness of “neither here nor there,” but their opportunities to choose their destiny become nearly limitless here. I think this is why Thomas chooses to pursue his love for Laura. He is at a place where he is lost, and because he is lost, he has less fear of taking risks. Now, I’d like to again point out the idea of power shifts in the film. One notable moment is after Thomas has found out that Laura is being abused by Ali, and he is driving her home. The camera angles here play a significant role in identifying new possessions of power. In this scene, Laura is lying down on the floor while Thomas is sitting in the driver’s seat (the driver’s seat is also significant because it shows that Thomas has taken control of his life). The camera angles in this scene are looking up upon Thomas and down upon Laura. It is clear that at this moment, Thomas has more power than before, and he also has more power than Laura. We also can infer Laura’s desperation for Thomas and her internal conflict due to her need for money (and therefore her need for Ali). Because Laura is at such a conflicted place, her power is lessened. Thomas, however, now realizing how terrible Ali has been to Laura, decides to take power into his own hands in order to protect her and love her.
There were two particular shots in the movie that really stood out to me, but it wasn't until I read Andrew's response above that I figured out exactly what made them significant: they were displays of power. The two shots I'll analyze in this post are the following:
The first is from the very beginning of the film when Thomas returns to his deceased mother's house along with the men to whom he owes money. Thomas enters the house first, and stands alongside the door as the two other men enter. The men, coming in from outside are lit in full (if my memory serves me correctly), while Thomas is only a black figure in profile. He remains at the door in that exact stance for a few brief moments after the other men have exited the shot.
The second shot I want to look into is one of the last in the film. The three main characters, Thomas, Laura, and Ali, stand in a perfect triangle, with Laura and Ali on the cliffside.
In the first shot above, we are given one of our first real clues as viewers of Thomas' character. The contrast of the men, lit as they come inside, and Thomas, in the dark, gives a foreboding sense of Thomas' lack of control, or power, over the situation at hand. This is enhanced by the act of remaining at the door. It not only reads as defeat, but also as acceptance of defeat before it has come to pass. From this shot, though the viewer is only gaining a glimpse of Thomas's character traits, it sets up his lack of power.
This is greatly contrasted in the second shot I'll discuss. When Thomas, Laura, and Ali are standing in a triangle, it is unclear which of them is the top point of the triangle, which I would translate to holding the most power. Each has some sort of power both over and under the other two by way of debt, love, or employment (which could be argued in this case to be a debt owed). For example, Laura is indebted to Ali, yet loves him less than he loves her (giving her power over the relationship, as we discussed in class today); Thomas is Ali's underling for employment purposes, but he is physically more powerful. Because the power between the three characters is ultimately balanced, the viewer cannot tell who will act first and be the one with the decision-making power over how the three of them will proceed.
I appreciate that in this discussion thread you all seem to be in conversation with each other on the same basic topic of power, even though you approach it differently, with different evidence etc. A couple of things: when citing or paraphrasing a text please provide page number and source (if source isn't clear from context). And, make sure to WORK WITH the quotation you offer. In other words, don't just cite something and move on but weave the essence of the quotation's meaning into your comments ("What this means for the film is that..." What the author is saying is that .... And this is important w/r/t the film because....). Finally, please proofread before posting: you do need to make sure your prose is clean in terms of grammar and spelling. Only because these are blog posts doesn't mean the rules of the English language don’t apply :)
In the movie Jerichow, I found a quote Laura says to Thomas interesting.
“One cannot love without money,” Laura said. Laura and Thomas have a very secretive and passionate relationship. Even though Thomas is a man of few words, his feelings toward Laura are evident very early in the film. When Laura starts to develop feelings for Thomas she as well “test” his feelings for her by revealing her baggage, she shares with $146,000 in debt, her two years spent in prison and that she is essentially owned by Ali who’s prenuptial agreement would leave Laura with virtually nothing. Laura uses her baggage and sob story as a defense mechanism and as a way to screen people in her life. She knew revealing the negativity in her life would either push Thomas away or show that he was going to be her “savior.” Laura feels that because she is in such great debt, she is incapable of love. Her debts puts restraints on her ability to get close to others for fear of burdening them with her past. Thomas is actually in Laura’s same position of loving without money even if that is unknown to both of them. Thomas begins working for Ali with nothing in his pockets. Ali shows Thomas kindness when Thomas has no support system. Thomas is given responsibility and a steady job working with his hands. He proves his worthiness to Ali using his martial arts skills to get them out of undesired transactions. At this point in Thomas’s life he owes his fresh start to Ali. Because Thomas has this debt to Ali, he cannot truly love Laura, being with her jeopardizes his employment and friendship with Ali. Every character in the film endures some form of the struggle to get ahead in the hopes of a better life. From the cashier at the food truck that begs not to be discovered pocketing cash from the register, or the group of field workers harvesting cucumbers on their stomach over the sounds of heavy machinery. Each character felt the need to make ends meet because having more money is a controllable. It would alleviate some fear and more tangible than love. In Bauman’s “Liquid Modern Life and its Fears” he writes, “Fears prompt us to take defensive action and gives immediacy and tangibility to fear. It is our responses that recast the sombre premonitions as daily reality, making the world flesh.” The concept of love without money and the fear without either applies universally in life. If we cannot take care of ourselves, we cannot possibly hope to care for others. Money and love drive our desires. We seek opportunities in the hopes of getting ahead despite risks and we feel the backlash and strain in our relationships when money or love become the source of conflict. Every individual wants to experience some form of love and the fear of never having or being enough dictates what role love plays in our lives.
I highly agree with you on your analysis on Laura. About her defense mechanism as a way to screen people in her life. However, I would disagree that Thomas cannot truly love Laura because of his debt and friendship with Ali because he kept coming over to their house to spy on her. To me, I think that the reason Thomas was trying to maintain his friendship and loyalty with Ali was to not jeopardize his relationship with Laura. Also, he is afraid that Laura will get hurt if Ali ever finds about her affair with him.
The class was introduced to this film – or Laura's quote – as the inspiration for the course's title, "One cannot live without money." As such, I was anticipating money's importance in the film before we began watching it.
By the film's conclusion, it was clear that these expectations were met. It seemed to be the case that money was the plot's focal point. The vast majority of the important events in the film are transactions of some sort or another, while the plot is framed in the context of running a business (something that money dictates as well).
You've already mentioned a couple of the main events in the plot that are dictated by money. Laura revealing her massive debt and Thomas' encounter with the stealing cashier are events, dictated by money, that affirm characters' relationships to one another (Thomas to Laura and Thomas to Ali, respectively).
There were two additional events I noticed that merit special discussion. They stuck out because of the sad-sounding musical score that accompanied them. All of the scenes that had music – whether it be diegetic or not – were pivotal.
Anyway, these two scored scenes were when money was taken from the main characters. At the beginning of the film when Thomas' creditor found his money in the treehouse and near the middle when Ali found Laura's secret cash, the extra-diegetic score clearly showed the some characters just went through a major loss.
What that money means to them, or to the viewer, is an entire discussion in itself. Like you said, it could represent the ability to love. Or, it could mean something like power. In any case, the characters lose something important.
"A lot of commercial capital can be garnered from insecurity and fear," Bauman said. An alternative reading of this passage could say that one needs money to be safe. It certainly seemed to be the case that both Thomas and Laura would have been in a safer situation if they had more money. It isn't difficult to imagine how much better their lives would be if they had some cash.
Great association with the diegetic sounds. I couldn't remember when the classical string score came in the beginning but definitely remembered it when Laura forks over her money to Ali. I also noted that the diegetic sounds that typically came from a stereo or radio were mixed to be louder and play over sort of like a soundtrack than from the natural source they were supposed to be playing from. This includes near the end when Thomas and Laura develop the idea to get rid of Ali on the cliff and a group of children are singing joyfully, it echos over all the other sound in the scene. I hadn't seen music used like this in a film recently. I don't really think I liked how out of place the pop, tango, or rock radio music fit in the film but I do understand its importance and why it was included that way.
As a response to both Nate´s and Drew´s topic, it is easily discernable that one of the main thematic concerns is money and its real-life influence in individuals and their choices, particularly romantic ones. After all, the film´s pace and interactions are dictated by the rhythm of money: starting with a major monetary loss through Thomas, slowing down to earn money through hard labor, maintaining timing through Ali´s business, and then disrupting it through Laura´s monetary strains. The constant mentioning of sums, the images of money, the implied exchanges from goods to money, and the direct dialogues about money make it inescapable—mirroring the reality of its inescapability. However, while I agree that the importance of money is directly associated with the relationship between characters and the love triangles, I think this is only the premise. Yes, the isolation, the boundaries, the mazes, and mixed messages alter the way the relationships develop, but there cannot be relationships before there are individuals. Behind distancing mechanisms, troublesome relations, and murdering desires, there is a sense of self. As individuals Ali, Laura, and Thomas exist outside of one another. They are complicated by other factors outside of their interactions. For example, Thomas has some problematic history with the guys that take his money at the start; Laura has her own dark past, as does Ali. Consequently, examining the self-loathing that comes from basing self-worth into a monetary sum is as important as remarking on the role of money in the ability to love or to perform that love into actions. Laura’s self-doubts and hesitations are directly related to a solid reality where money dictates her romantic relations, and also who she is as a person, how she values herself, and how others value her. This internal struggle seems reflective of what Petzold, on describing his first year studying cinema, described as being “a permanent state of crisis for me” (5), one which him and his group “eventually…”thematized” (5). He talks of struggling to find his voice to theorize his approach and how this hindered his ability to make films. I think, similarly, the ambivalence to find the self before finding love or mediums to express it, is the crisis Petzold thematized. The self gets convoluted together with other factors to the point of disappearing. It begins experiencing through others, just like Ali does, it seems a way of searching back for the individual within. At two instances on the film, there are sounds of nature merged with music—at the beach, the waves crash while the radio plays, similarly, at the house, the radio accompanies the birds singing. This discordant symphony is the same element at play, in my opinion. It is a crisis of experiencing in a new environment, of testing the waters, and creating the most adaptable self for the new environment. Capitalism thrives on individualism and egocentric monetary gains and their subsequent expenses. It makes sense the system would target the individual first to gain better control.
Ali is one of the most interesting characters I have ever seen in a film. In my opinion, he is a man who is full of fear, delusional, and abusive, but at the same time, he resonates an aspect of human “beings” that we can certainly sympathize. Near the end during a conversation with Laura, Ali says his most profound line in the film, “I live in a country that doesn’t want me, with a woman that I bought.” To me, this line captures two important societal issues Petzold tries to address in the film—fear and money.
Ali’s role in the film is best describe as ironic. As a man who is well equipped with managing skills, he is not able to manage his most important asset—Laura. Moreover, it is critical to examine Ali’s relationship with Laura, with a quote the class is interested in, “One cannot love without money”. It is apt to think of money in the film not as the physical piece of paper we give for goods, but as a notion of exchange, and in this case, love is exchanged for services. Laura is only with Ali because he has the means to take care of her and her debts, and in return, Ali receives a sense of romantic love.
Their marriage union is arguably a façade and a case can be made that Ali indeed acknowledges this, but he is numb to it. In my opinion, he drinks to escape the realization that Laura does not love him, and he is paranoid because he wants to be sure that Laura is keeping up with her end of the marriage contract. If Laura cheats, their contract no longer has value and in an economic sense, Ali is investing in something worthless. This is his biggest fear not just with Laura, but with all aspects of his life as he expresses to Thomas, “Everyone here cheats on me.” Certainly, a line that is a foreshadowing of Laura cheating on Ali with Thomas.
A quote in Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Times resonates with Ali’s fear, “Unable to slow the mind-boggling pace of change, let alone to predict and control its direction, we focus on the things we can, or believe we can, or are assured that we can influence” (11). I think that Ali has known about his heart condition for a long time. This is where we can sympathize with Ali. In my opinion, Ali’s disposition in the film is driven by the knowledge that he has a life threatening condition and it is something he cannot control, which scares him. The infidelities in Ali’s life leaves him with no control over his relationship, his business, and his existence. In society, it is arguable that uncertainty is the driving force of fear. I think that Petzold captures this notion brilliantly, by having Ali instill fear into his employees as a mechanism to have control over his business, and a notable scene is of course with Chein Taung—the Vietnamese immigrant who was pocketing change for himself.
The statement that we are all interested in, “One cannot love without money” is certainly an uncomfortable notion, but it is worth exploring. Petzold explored it with a story that is illuminating as it highlights that love can be an exchange, and essentially, love can be measured and weighted—in Ali’s case, Laura’s love is worth around 142,000 dollars. The film also captures the notion of fear of uncertainty. I did not discuss this, but Thomas is also an example of this notion as he exemplifies living a life of uncertainty with an unstable job and no family. Overall, it is irresponsible to not sympathize with Ali because at some point, one has experience the same kind of paranoia that Ali displays in the film. The key is not letting that fear of uncertainty dictate our lives. If one lives through a lens of fear, life seems to have a degrading quality to it, and one does not want to end up like Ali driving off a cliff.
"Jerichow" is a quiet movie, if not a silent movie, but not in the typical use of the term. Unlike the films of the early twentieth century, which were silent completely and out of necessity, with no symbolic significance, "Jerichow" is partially silent out of choice in order to convey a message.
The "silence" of "Jerichow" is evident from the beginning, as two minutes goes by before the first word of the film is spoken. There are similar "long" pauses in dialogue throughout the film, including many of the scenes in which Thomas is driving with Ali. The "quiet" nature of the film is also evidenced by the lack of "loud" scenes. There are no bustling markets, frustrating traffic jams or rowdy bars. Even the inside of the airport is quiet. The loudest scene may very well be near the beginning, when Ali and Laura are driving down the road at night with the music blaring, a scene that lasts only a few seconds.
Finally, the silence is reflected in the character of Thomas, who generally speaks only when spoken to. When he does respond to someone, he generally does so in a direct and no-nonsense manner. For instance, when he answers a question, his answer is often simply, "Okay."
This silence is intentional and reflects the emphasis on the individual in capitalism. There are no loud scenes because there are very few scenes with more than three people. This is a manifestation of the transition from a community-oriented society to an individual-oriented society inherent in capitalism (Bauman, 2).
Thomas's relative silence in his interactions with others is a result of that individualistic characteristic of capitalism and displays the affect of capitalism on individuals' personal lives. As Zygmunt Bauman writes, "Social life changes when people live behind walls, hire guards, drive armoured vehicles, carry mace and handguns, and take martial arts classes" (Bauman, 9).
Knowing that Petzold’s films explore economic transformations and how they are related to desire, it’s interesting to watch this develop in Thomas’s character. As the film progresses, Thomas goes from completely broke, to eventually gaining employment picking cucumbers. As the film continues, Ali hires him and it is at this point we watch Thomas start to make bolder decisions. As Ali offers more responsibilities to Thomas, his attraction towards Laura intensifies.
There is a point when Thomas and Ali sit in the van near an intersection and Ali asks, “where would you put a store?” as the two discuss, they notice Laura sitting at the intersection. As Jaimey Fisher points out in Contemporary Film Directors on page 4, this is the point Petzold shows us that love and economy intersect. Fisher’s concept would relate to how Thomas’s intensified actions towards Laura are connected with increasing responsibilities from Ali. As Thomas economically transforms, so too does his desires.
I see the house that Thomas wants to rebuild as a metaphor for not only his financial status, but struggles we face throughout life. Most of us certainly want to make goals and as for Thomas, he wants to rebuild his mother’s house. By the end of the film we know the house unfinished. There is a constant concept of struggle Petzold wants us to see. There is one point Thomas tells Ali he stayed up all night refinishing a door, but it’s at that point that Ali offers him even more responsibility, which eventually distracts him from the house and leads his focus to Laura. This is the last we hear of Thomas working on the house.
I noticed how Petzold creates small scenes used to connect certain aspects of each character. For example, midway through the film, we watch Thomas as he sweeps out the delivery van after a days work, later in the film, after we learn Laura is also broke, she is seen sweeping the van in a similar fashion from a similar viewpoint.
Petzold also seems to use music to build concepts behind each character. Many times we hear a more somber string ensemble played with individual scenes of Laura and Thomas. This idea might even be better noted when all three are at the beach during the scene we see Ali dancing to more upbeat tunes, then afterwards he leaves frame while Laura and Thomas begin dancing to more slower intense music. Ali is obviously the one with money while Laura and Thomas are face financial struggle.
In the beginning of Jerichow, Thomas is knocked out and lays unconscious for hours outside his mother’s home and is awakened when a doe wanders by and checks him out. The deer represented a peace and innocence to the situation, as it was the power of money that he didn’t have that put him in a conflict that resulted in his assault. After Laura and Ali embrace and kiss after he catches her cheating on him with the beverage guy, the camera cuts to Thomas watching from the woods 50-100 yards out. He’s almost like the deer in the beginning of the film; silently watching from a distance and then wanders back into the trees and greenery without a sound. Thomas is observant and swift which is demonstrated in his ability to act quickly when he stops an employee from attempting to stab Ali.
Laura and Ali also exhibit animalistic characteristics. Laura is always very shy and timid. Her small stature is always emphasized such as when she’s sitting on the floor of the front seat of the service truck, she folds herself up into that tiny space and her sunken eyes gaze up at Thomas. Many instances in the film she tries to blend in or remain out of sight, hiding in the shadows. When her and Ali are fighting outside, he stands on the porch with his arms crossed facing her while she stands further away on the dirt, rubbing her arm nervously and not able to stand her ground. Ali reminded me of a vicious animal in the first scene he appears. After he wrecks his car, he has blood all over his mouth and face as if he had just got done eating his prey. He also throws Laura around like a rag doll and it’s very clear that the employees of the different shops he manages are intimidated by him.
Thomas is a man of few words. He speaks only when spoken to and never seems to initiate conversation even when alone with Laura – their physical attraction speaks for them. We don’t see them really talk until Ali leaves and Laura opens up about her past in prison, debt, and the reason she married Ali – he had money. When Laura cries out “One cannot love without money. That’s something I know,” I couldn’t tell if she was referring to herself as being unworthy of love or to Thomas as he could not love her because he didn’t have money to make them happy.
Being broke isn’t the only thing Laura and Thomas have in common. They’re both dishonorable people. Other than the obvious that they are having an affair, Laura’s an ex-convict and Thomas was dishonorably discharged from Afghanistan and it’s unclear what they did. They both seek freedom and to be with each other without the consequences or guilt associated in her infidelity and his friendship with Ali. In the end, when Ali catches and shames the two of them, I saw it almost as a curse, could the two of them ever be happy knowing that Ali had found out and killed himself the same way they had planned to kill him even while he only had a few months to live.
After watching the movie, Jerichow, I noticed that the issue of money was constantly brought up. Everyone had a fair share of money problems. According to the movie, Thomas was a retired veteran that was left jobless and in debt. This connects to today’s major problem where veterans were left homeless and unemployment. Laura, on the other hand, is also in debt and had to forcibly marry Ali, a wealthy Turkish businessman. Ali’s problems with money were also brought up in the movie. He starts to feel betrayed by his own laborers and is became fatally ill. Even with the money and good treatment, he still can’t be cured. Ali also had major trust issues where he would end up spying on his own wife. He does not trust his employees as well and said “Everyone here cheats on me” Although he was wealthy, he seems like a very depressed person and an alcoholic. This indirectly conveys a message that money can’t buy you happiness.
Another message that I’ve picked up from the movie was that love always comes with a price. Love is a negotiation or part of a deal according to Laura. The reason that she married Ali was to clear her debt and then, when she had an affair with the manager of the soda dispensary, they made a deal that they would split their profits in half. To me, that is not love. So, when she finally falls in love with Thomas, she does not know how to handle it because she was so used to associating love with negotiations and deals. She sees Thomas as unworthy because “he lives like a bum” (quote by Laura). He would not be able to provide for her and save her from her debts which added to her dilemma of being with him.
When it comes to the cinematic quality of the movie, there were a number of unique techniques that the director used that is uncommon. The angle of the camera was always either taken from a far or really up close. When it comes to depressing scenes the camera tends to be in an angle far from the character. Along with that, the movie uses very few background music or extra-diegetic music. Therefore, the expressions and actions were more emphasis to compensation for the minimal use of background music. There were a lot of silent scenes in the movie that gives a very depressing feel to the viewers. It gives us time to digest what happens.
I agree with the point you make about one of the messages about love always comes with a price. I would also say that for Laura to stay with Ali would come with the price of Laura's happiness.
Where I do disagree slightly is about the cinematic quality of the film. I think most of the depressing scenes ( Laura giving Ali her money, and Thomas losing his money in the beginning) the camera angles were close up on the characters. I don't think many of the camera angles in the film were uncommon. I do think you were very right about effect of the lack of background music or extra-diegetic sounds.
Although the quote from this movie was “One cannot live without money”, I think that a more appropriate term is power. Yes, money did play a pivotal role in the story line of the film, but it represented more than just psychical currency. This is what stood out to me the most; throughout the entire film we are able to watch the different exchanges of power and watch how it changes the characters’ subsequent actions as well as consequences.
In the beginning of the film we see Thomas lose what little power he has left over his life, as a broke dishonorably discharged solider. He accepts his powerless, moneyless state. He doesn’t actively try to change it but he doesn’t seem to really mind it either.
Then there is Laura who is almost powerless too. What I found the most interesting is just how much power she allows to be taken away from her. She gets trapped in this marriage because Ali took on her debts, as long as she stayed with him, but works full time for him and she seemingly makes no money from it. When she had put some money away for herself, Ali makes sure to take it away. So in Laura’s situation, money is absolutely interchangeable for power.
In the film Ali seems to have the most power until the end where we actually learn he has the least. He has the most money, he asserts his power over his wife by physically harming her and keeping her debts looming over her head, and bossing Thomas around. However, his health failing and leading to his unavoidable death, Ali has absolutely no power in this circumstance. This is why I think that his drinking and the problems that this has caused him is a constant theme throughout the movie.
There is really nothing that Thomas seems to care about until he develops feelings for Laura, but in my opinion Laura never fully developed feelings for Thomas, thus having power over him. She uses him to create that plan to get her out of her marriage with Ali but as soon as she learns that Ali is already dying and ready to give her all that she wanted to begin with, she doesn’t need Thomas anymore and tells him to leave without any explanation to him. Ali learns that he has no power over his wife after he finds Thomas’s lighter, which also means he has no power over Thomas either.
So in the end of the film it is Ali who has the least amount of power and once he realizes this he does the only thing that he has power over and kills himself. Obviously money plays a substantial role in this film but money is just one form of power throughout the storyline and proves that sometimes we don’t have the power that we think that we do. Everyone is powerless in some way or another, it is impossible to have complete control. Look at the stark opposites of Thomas and Ali. Ali appears to have complete control over everything because of his wealth and status, but ends up having control over nothing. Where as Thomas appears to have control over nothing, when he actually ends up having control over Ali simply through the racecar lighter.
What I noticed about "Jerichow" was how much green there was throughout the entire film. The color green symbolizes a lot of things about the movie. The natural surroundings alone had so much green in it. The towel that Laura uses toward the beginning of the movie is green. The crates in the warehouse where Ali and Thomas find Laura and the warehouse worker were green. It seemed in just about every scene there was some object that was green. The three main symbols of the color green in the film were money, jealousy, and safety.
Money is the most obvious symbol of the green. With the quote from Laura about that there is no love without money and her enormous debt, money played an integral part of the film. This aspect has already been mentioned in earlier comments, but I don't think anyone pointed out the scene when Ali told Thomas to order from one of his vendors that he thought was pocketing money. This is one of the first instances that we get about Ali's desire for money. Or that he felt cheated.
The second symbol of the color green relates to jealousy. Green is a color that represents jealousy. So, this makes sense why the color green was visible throughout the film. Ali was constantly worried about Laura cheating on him, which she was. Jealousy is an emotion that can cause people to do anything. It lead to Ali stalking Laura, being abusive toward her and his death.
The third symbol of the color green is safety, which I included because I found it ironic. Although green represents the other two symbols I listed, it's also an indicator of safety. The reason I felt this is ironic is that I never felt any of the characters were safe during the film. Whether I thought Ali would catch Laura and Thomas or if Ali was going to fall to his death when he was drunk cliffs. In the book, Liquid Times, the author states, "Unable to slow the mind-boggling pace of change, let alone to predict and control its direction, we focus on things we can, or are assured that we can influence: we try to calculate and minimize the risk that we personally, or those nearest and dearest to us at the moment, might fall victim to the uncounted and uncountable dangers which the opaque world and its uncertain future are suspected to hold in store for us." (Bauman 11). This relates to Ali at the end. When he told Laura that he was dying and he wanted her to have the company, that her debt would be taken care of and she would have the help of Thomas. He just wanted the safety of Laura, the main thing that was nearest and dearest to Ali.
I think this film shows how three different people react differently to similar situations. While Thomas, Ali, and Laura all face different specific problems, they all face problems that come along with money, love and power.
Thomas is confronted first in the movie. His cool, calm, nature is shown when they guy comes looking for the money Thomas owed him. When he does find the money his reply is, “I needed it to repair the house.” This shows Thomas’ nature when relating to money. He doesn’t run over to confront him. He just lets him walk back and reacts calmly. Thomas needs money, but doesn’t allow it to make him beg. He simply works.
On the other hand, Ali seems to worry about everyone trying to slip one past him. He is always on the lookout for someone cheating him. He says he has a “good heart too,” when talking to Thomas, but his true character comes out in the next line: “Next time, stir fry him.” This shows Ali’s use of his power over other people.
Laura seems to entangle love and money. She decided to marry Ali because he had money and was the first respectable guy who she dated. She puts an emphasis on money that puts her at odds with her own debts. When she finds a way to sneak money behind Ali’s back she then entangles sex with it. The same goes with her and Thomas’ relationship. When they begin to get close she brings up her debt.
One last thing, in some scenes a train is shown going by in the background. In the scenes where it is behind Thomas it has blue siding, but when it is shown behind Ali it has red siding. For me this shows the relationship with money they both have. Thomas is blue: calm. Ali is red: angry. This is congruent to the scenes showing Thomas and Ali’s negative interactions with their money. When Ali gets wronged he reacts with anger. He slaps Laura. He hates that some of his clients buy from someone other than him. While Thomas is calm. He works pulling cucumbers and then for Ali.
I found the movie to relate to the required reading; however I found both the film and first chapter of Bauman's book to offer many problems with little solutions. The excerpt "...the responsibility for resolving the quandaries generated by vexingly volatile and constantly changing circumstances is shifted onto the shoulders of individuals - who are now expected to be 'free choosers' and to bear in full the consequences of their choices. The risks involved in every choice may be produced by forces which transcend the comprehension and capacity to act of the individual, but it is the individual's lot and duty to pay their price..." (Bauman 3-4) sums up the sentiment echoed throughout the movie for me.
The film follows 3 miserable characters that have put themselves in their own destitute situations by decisions they have made. None of the characters actively seek to make constructive changes in their lives, but rather find comfort in their own self-loathing. This comes to a boiling point when Thomas and Laura scheme up a plan to murder Laura's husband Ali and Ali kills himself after discovering their plan.
Ali is a reasonably successful businessman who continues to hire cheats for employees which leaves him stressed and paranoid. This paranoia carries over to his personal life regarding his wife and her faithfulness.
Ali's wife Laura was in jail and accumulated a lot of debt before she met Ali. Laura married Ali to help pay off her debt, she even says in the movie she was a "bought wife."
The main protagonist of the film Thomas is a liar and a cheat. In the opening scene he is beaten up over a debt he owed. In the following scene he is not being forthcoming with a temp agency that is helping him look for work. To top it all off he is in the middle of an affair with Laura the majority of the film. These are consequential decisions people face in real life every day and he made the wrong choice every time. My guess is he is not in such dire straits by chance, but rather because he has been making poor decision after poor decision.
I have a hard time finding sympathy for someone who chooses not to help them self and each of these characters accepted their situations or fantasized about idealistic lives without considering the consequences.
Also, I didn't buy into the Thomas and Laura affair. It seemed the only connection they had was desperation. Thomas made a pass at Laura without even as much as a conversation and by the end of the film they were planning on murdering her husband together. I assume Laura was in contact with many people through Ali's business who could have helped her if the relationship was abusive or she wanted out, but she chose to find comfort in a homeless stranger living on welfare. This made zero sense to me.
Obviously I wasn't particularly fond of the characters or theme of the film, but I did like the camera-work, lighting, and acting. Each of the actors did a great job telling each character's story through facial expressions and demeanor. Although the characters didn't have much substance to them the actors did a good job of making the characters somewhat believable.
The cinematographer did a great job framing the scenes and using perspective to create different feelings. One scene that jumped out at me was the first beach scene. The beach scene was the first scene Thomas and Laura were formally introduced to each other in the audience's eyes and the scene ends with them dancing in the foreground while a drunken Ali stumbles away into the background. This was a foreshadowing scene that was done very elegantly and artistically. Another well-shot scene was when Thomas was in the forest looking through the window at Laura. I noticed the camera was quite a bit further behind Thomas which gave the audience the feeling that he was hiding yet vulnerable, a sort of forbidden love scene that the camera captured perfectly. I also noticed a reoccurring song when Thomas and Laura were together which reinforced the affair.
This is pretty solid but try to refrain from making everything about your (dis)likes. It's not relevant whether you (dis)like a character or whether you think a particular thing was well done, etc. Such personal judgments/expression of taste have no bearing on the CRITICAL ANALYSIS of the film that your readers are looking for. The really interesting question I think your post raises--but that I don't think you develop or address--is whether the FILM itself suggests the choices the characters do or do not make are really THEIR choices to make. In other words, your position affirms a certain ideology of predicated on the belief in everyone's ability to choose, no matter the circumstances, and that those choices make all the difference. That's your prerogative, of course. But what about the film itself? Does the FILM suggests this is the case or does it suggest something else w/r/t the question of "choice." Put differently: neoliberal dogma indoctrinates us with the idea that we can always choose etc, but does the film agree with this? How so? How not? And, does the film judge its characters for making poor choices, or does it suggest that those choices, while perhaps "poor" in an abstract, a-contextual sense, are in fact not really "choices" in the "free individual" kind of sense. Note that the questions I'm posing here are analytic questions about the object at hand--the film--that would get you away from your subjective view of things.
While watching the film Jerichow the idea that stuck out the most to me was the idea of being a “savior.” The first scene of the movie we see Thomas in a cemetery with a cross in the background which sets up this idea of being a savior. In the car while explaining why she can’t love him Laura even goes as far as to call Thomas a savior, in a very sarcastic way. This idea is exemplified in the movie several times. Thomas “saves” Ozkam several times (the car, the beach cliff, and the attempted assault). Now I believe this idea of being a savior was something Thomas embraced, he seemed to relish the role of “being a good guy” and that he was attempting to save Laura from this violent man that is Ozkam. However while Ozkam is clearly the antagonist in this film Thomas isn’t quite a protagonist. His true colors towards the end of the movie seem to shift from savior to jealous lover. The idea of jealously can be seen with his hiding spot in the lush green foliage. (Green obviously being symbolism for envy).
Bauman (2007) talks about this idea of being an anti-hero savior when discussing the American response to 9-11. While Americans believed they were doing the right thing by creating a “War on terror” the collateral damage they inflicted on the middle-east has become far more catastrophic. In this case Thomas is America who believes he is doing the right thing but ends up causing more damage by driving Ali to commit suicide. The interesting thing about this movie is how my emotions towards the characters all drastically flipped while watching the movie. Ali who is an abusive husband becomes a sympathetic victim in the end where as Thomas the likeable everyman and hero becomes a complex flawed anti-hero. I believe the director of this film did a great job at painting this contrast throughout the film.
While this idea was the main idea I wanted to focus on I did notice several things that if delved into could lead to some interesting discussion. • The Symbolism of the Car lighter • Laura’s red lipstick • How quick every love scene is between Laura and Thomas • How Laura and Thomas seem to almost match in their outfit (grey plaid shirts)
Now some of this may just be me reaching for symbolism where it doesn’t exist but I do think they are interesting discussions to have.
The economic question of love is at the heart of Jerichow. There are very few interactions in the film that don't have to do with gaining or losing capital. From the first moment of violence, where Thomas has his mother's savings taken due to a bad business venture to the final discussion Ali has with Laura, money is everything. The film doesn't let relationships become too bogged down with the complications of romantic love. Economic love is, for the most part, easier to understand. Laura is with Ali because he was has money and could save her from her job at the bar, which she describes with a single cryptically simple word: Bad. She sees herself as being owned by him and in many ways she isn't wrong. Her massive debt was passed on to Ali under the agreement that she and he would stay together. Money, the great equalizer, put her at a disadvantage and Ali was able to save her from the horrors of her past. Laura is given an opportunity to re-invent her life in a successful business; provided that she remains loyal to Ali of course. His financial success allows him to provide her stable employment, a fantastic home and the chance at love. Enter the hero Thomas who, despite his stunning looks and seemingly solid moral stance, is everything Ali is not. He’s poor, rugged, and lives in the dilapidated house of his deceased mother. He gains employment through happenstance and almost immediately shows why his previous business ventures might not have worked out. I was almost shocked at how quickly he started putting the moves on Laura, despite the gratitude that Ali showed by hiring him. He cannot be satisfied with getting back on his feet. Laura speaks a poignant line when she says “If it’s free you heroes are all gung-ho.” Thomas sees himself as saving Laura from this drunken, violent capitalist who has everything he seeks (I.e. A nice home, a job, a beautiful wife.) He has to perceive himself as the hero, because if he didn’t he might come to realization that he is actually every bit as jealous and possessive as the man he works for. As Fisher puts it on page 122 “It is all the rubble of an American Dream.” Ali is living out his dream and is too caught up in it to realize that his life is being pulled out from under him by disease and disloyalty on the part of those around him. Though I won’t say that Ali is necessarily the best husband in the world I will point out that he didn’t act the hero for free. He knew the costs of helping Laura and in his final sobering moments before his doom he even acknowledges that Laura is only with him because he essentially owns her financially. Only when he understands that his dream of saving Laura was robbed from him by a dishonorably discharged, failed business owner does he see the crumbled ruins of everything he has worked for. His decision to join the wreckage strikes me as Petzold putting the period on his strange story of role reversal. Petzold is “once again working against the binaristic forms of narrativization that have tended to dominate the representations of ethnic Turkish people in German cinema” (Fisher 125) In the case of Jerichow, Thomas (the native German) is the outsider invading Ali’s narrative.
“Everyone here cheats on me.” I think that this line, said by Ali in reference to his vendors’ shady behavior, not only serves as a great (if not entirely subtle) foreshadowing to the inevitable affair between Laura and Thomas, but also connects well with this course’s theme “One cannot love without money.” As Ru Paul said, “If you don't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”. Mental stability, self-confidence, and emotional wisdom are the currency of romantic relationships. This type of love is essentially an exchange or amalgamation of resources both abstract and concrete between two people. In casual relationships you share your time, pocket money, present circumstances, and physical intimacy with your partner. In marriage you share a home, bills, the workload to pay for those bills, each other’s pasts, presents, and futures, one another’s families, most of your time, emotional burdens, your exclusive physical intimacy, and perhaps even children. “One cannot love without money” - while this statement is debatable in relation to paper currency, it is an inarguable truth in terms of what one has to give emotionally. In order to most effectively and healthily share “emotional currency”, both members of the relationship need to be open and equally invested in one another. Sadly, none of the main characters meet these requirements, yet all three of them are attempting to put or hold together some semblance of a functional romantic relationship despite their inner problems. Because of this, imbalance is inevitable, and in a case of imbalance, someone is always going to be cheated out of something. Ali is an abusive alcoholic, but also a shrewd business owner who isn’t averse to taking in and assisting those in need of a helping hand - so long as he benefits somehow from the interaction. He isn’t a bad person, but he isn’t a good one either. He takes and he gives. He is flawed humanity in all its drunkenly-dancing-on-a-beach glory. Ali, like most people, has the mentality that every circle of his life should maintain an equilibrium - he wants to receive a fair exchange for what he gives emotionally and monetarily. When that ideal balance is upset, he takes initiative to get some sort of revenge (such as firing vendors who try to double cross him). This also applies to Ali’s marriage with Laura - it seems at first like a mutually beneficial arrangement where she is safe from her debts and he gets to love someone. But no matter what, Ali cannot escape the fact that this exchange is totally unbalanced - he will never receive the equal amount of love he puts into the marriage because for Laura it isn’t a marriage about romance, it’s about safety. This isn’t her fault, nor is it Ali’s, it is merely the sad truth lurking beneath the surface of their haphazardly assembled relationship. A lie can only last for so long. Neither one of them is truly happy or satisfied with their marriage, but both of them fear what life would be like without the other. It would take an outside force to end their stalemate and set in motion the breaking of their relationship (which was arguably doomed from the start). Thomas is their catalyst. What better way to end a toxic relationship between two damaged people than by tossing a third self-isolating grab-bag of unsure emotions into the mix? I’m not entirely sure I’d call the frantic five second “let’s grope in a dark corner” sessions between him and Laura a true romance, it was the start of something passionate and potentially meaningful. All three of them are messes, but if any two are to form an almost equal equation together, it is Laura and Thomas. Both may have their boundaries and inner issues, but their struggles stem from similar places and their feelings for one another are close to equal. Neither one of them is cheating the other out of that much emotional currency. Does that mean they can love? I’m not ready to decide whether I think we can love without money or not yet. I do know, though, that we cannot truly love without an equal exchange of emotional currency.
It is said that this film Jericho is very loosely based on The Postman Always Rings Twice. I have not actually read the book or seen either of the movies, but reading the wikipedia page, i see the similarities and differences between the two stories. Much like in Jericho, in The Postman, there is a love triangle between a stranger, a woman, and her husband. The stranger and the woman fall in love almost immediately and soon conspire to murder the husband. Some of the most stark differences between the two narratives however, is 1). in Postman they murder the husband and in Jericho he kills himself, 2.) In Postman the husband is a much older man, in Jericho he is Turkish. 3.) In Postman, the story continues on after the husband's death while in Jerichow it stops right there. So, why did Petzhold choose to make these changes?I can only speculate. I'd say that Ali kills himself in Jerichow to better describe the place of the contemporary Turkish immigrant in Germany, a man who "lives in a country that doesn't want him with a woman that he bought." There have been thousands of Turkish immigrants in Germany since the reconstruction after WWII and yet they still find themselves as strangers in a strange land, their descendants trying to find jobs in this "post-Fordian" landscape. The fact that the German lovers do not kill him themselves, but instead drive him to suicide, says something quite bleak about the life a Turkish immigrant. And the fact that the movie ends with his death, and does not continue on with the story as the Postman does, further stresses the importance of Ali's character and highlights his death as the tragedy of the film.
Those are good questions, indeed. A research paper could take them up in detail, based on a comparative reading of Jerichow and the texts on which it's based (the novel and its earlier adaptations).
What I thought was very interesting was the play on, “you can’t love if you don’t have money.” In reality, even when you have money you still can’t have true love. Ali’s suicide was pretty expected due to the fact that he had no trust and he bought the only thing that didn’t “cheat” on him, which ended up happening. I just loved the play on what love actually is. Were Thomas and Laura really in love or were they just there for each other when they needed each other most? Their love is just as debatable as needing money for love. Another tricky thing was that sex as an act of love or violence? Because violence is so prominent in the film as well as sex, it seems as though they correlate sex with pain. I love that idea of love, pain and money because it is so true. Laura married for money, Thomas experienced pain to try and keep money and then agony to continue to get money. Ali ends up with heart problems because he has a “good heart.” I just goes to show that capitalism and money are just as corrupt as the souls who live to love and die for it.
One element of Jerichow that stuck out to me is the repeating images of isolation and "gating off" elements. Throughout the film Jerichow presents a place in German society where people are walled off from each other because of class, race, and power, the latter having the most focus in the film, as power seems to shift easily between the three main characters of Thomas (who we learn was discharged from the military, signifying a change in power even before the film starts), Laura, and Ali.
ReplyDeleteMany scenes depict boundaries either separating characters (scenes containing fences, such as the scenes where Ali spies of Laura at the Soda Dispensary or scenes where Thomas strides down the road opposite the side of Ali and Laura's home), or scenes where characters are creating boundaries (Thomas' building his fence around his home, Laura demanding Thomas bring the van around so she can't be seen by the neighbors). The idea of boundaries keeping others out, and those within safe was mentioned many times in today's reading of Bauman's book, the perpetuation of fear of others through isolation.
"Those of us who can afford it fortify ourselves against all visible and invisible, present or anticipated, known or as unfamiliar, diffuse but ubiquitous dangers through locking ourselves behind walls, stuffing the approaches to our living quarters with T.V. cameras..."
So on and so forth. The characters isolating themselves from each other are using this to protect their own power, such as Ali peering through fences or using Thomas to weed out those who would question his power through embezzlement. Ali, a Turkish immigrant, understands that his class status is what separates him from his workers (as he's seen using immigrants for labor, as evidenced by the other Turkish and Asian workers), and uses those he can control to isolate those he cannot. That is where his power comes from, enabling himself to stay wealthy and disabling those from taking it away from him. The same can be said for his relationship with Laura, he perpetuates his power by threatening to use Laura's debts if she leaves him, and uses Thomas to see if she is cheating on him.
Of course, as Ali continually relies of Thomas he enables him to gain more power over him, finally culminating in the last scene where Ali realizes he has lost power over his wife, his closest employee, and his own health. Despite fighting against his power, perhaps Petzold is making a statement about the perpetuation of power over others with Thomas and Laura's attempt to kill Ali, despite them being victims of his own assertion of power. That's my two cents over the film.
I agree, I do think that the film is based around the idea of power and how it is used and obtained in the film. Throughout the film, the scene was always beautiful skies and birds chirping until the end of the film when a bunch of birds were flying around the beach at this time making a chaotic-sound. In which then Ali finds the car lighter that Thomas owns. Ali is rich and has the power to control his wife, and he gets away with beating his wife, if she leaves she gets nothing.
Delete“The savior always shuts up and gives up,” as Laura told Thomas because she knows how powerful of a man Ali is. Ali becomes obsessed with the idea that Laura is cheating on him so he stalks her and eventually puts an end to it when he finds her with another guy.
‘There are no terrifying new monsters. It’s drawing the poison of the fear’- Adam Curtis. The insecurity and uncertainty of individuals is what makes them no longer in control. Ali knew that he was no longer in control with Laura and that his power would soon diminish because he knew he was dying.
Also, this relates to Baumans book because it is important to recognize the power of the state. States that are considered global elites, are not stuck, whereas states that are not elite are stuck. Those states that don’t have power are the states where individuals live in fear, similar to Laura, who lives in fear that she will never get to pay off her debt.
At the end of the film, Ali realizes that his power of being wealthy and rich cannot give him what he wants. What he wants is for his wife, Laura, to love him for who he is even though he knows she married him for his money. The people in Germany do not want him living in Germany therefore leaving Ali unhappy and sick. Ali used his money to manipulate people (Laura and Thomas) to get what he wanted. When he realizes that he can no long obtain his power because he is dying, he ends up killing himself in the car while driving it over a cliff.
I felt the same as you, Andrew. The main characters, though physically close, never shared mundane feelings with each other to show a development of trust over time. When Laura and Thomas share their first intimate moment while dancing they had not previously had any connection to show a closeness more than two acquaintances would have.
DeleteWhat Laura and Thomas feel for each other has no true substance underneath the physical attraction, so the scene when Laura made a cup of coffee for Thomas creates a tense moment. They can't have a normal moment together because they both have created walls around themselves. So, even though Laura shares her troubled past with Thomas it isn’t a way for them to grow closer, but a reason for her to go back to Ali.
It isn’t for a lack of trying that they aren’t able to be vulnerable around each other; Laura invites Thomas to a supper she made. She wants to change but she also understands that there are limitations when she tells Thomas, “You can’t love; you don’t have money. That’s something I know.” She is trying to love Thomas like he says he loves her, but what she loves in him is the ability to forget her personal struggles for a while. When she remembers them she goes back to Ali knowing he is the only one who can truly help her.
All of this can be attributed to Petzold’s theme of mobility. In his interview he says, “This unmoving movement, this immobile mobility, I think, is something, a place, an uncanny place, that has emerged as a fundamental condition of life in the present: a new form of loneliness of the traveler.”
The characters are trying to escape themselves through each other and in worldly materials. I find this especially true, like Emily said, in the nature scenes. For instance, the cut of the ocean after Thomas rescues Ali. The juxtaposition of the calm and tranquil water is very different from the characters’ states. They seek out the natural forces around them to cover their own acts. Another example is when Thomas sneaks through the woods to have a brief moment with Laura.
In the Cineaste interview with Christian Petzold, Petzold explains that “people are poorly prepared for modern life and always carry archaic remainders of another life. It is these people who are being pushed out of societies or are put in motion, but they do not even know where to go, where all of this is supposed to lead. They consequently end up in transitional spaces, transit zones where nothingness looms on one side and the impossibility of returning to what existed in the past on the other. These are the spaces that interest me” (Abel 6). I found that this particular interest of Petzold’s is the driving force for Thomas’s experience in Jerichow.
DeleteThomas is stuck between his past as a dishonorably discharged war veteran and his venture towards an unknown future. I’d like to make reference to Andrew Huggins’ comment about how Thomas is at a loss of power because of this dishonorable discharge. It seems as though Petzold intended for Thomas’s transitional space to exist in order that he might search for a new source of power. Additionally, there indeed is an impossibility for Thomas to return to what existed in the past, due to his discharge.
I find that Petzold’s “transitional spaces” are places where characters in his films have the most defining moments. By defining moments, I mean that these are the things where characters (or even just humans in general) decide who they are going to be. They may be thrown into an emptiness of “neither here nor there,” but their opportunities to choose their destiny become nearly limitless here. I think this is why Thomas chooses to pursue his love for Laura. He is at a place where he is lost, and because he is lost, he has less fear of taking risks.
Now, I’d like to again point out the idea of power shifts in the film. One notable moment is after Thomas has found out that Laura is being abused by Ali, and he is driving her home. The camera angles here play a significant role in identifying new possessions of power. In this scene, Laura is lying down on the floor while Thomas is sitting in the driver’s seat (the driver’s seat is also significant because it shows that Thomas has taken control of his life). The camera angles in this scene are looking up upon Thomas and down upon Laura. It is clear that at this moment, Thomas has more power than before, and he also has more power than Laura. We also can infer Laura’s desperation for Thomas and her internal conflict due to her need for money (and therefore her need for Ali). Because Laura is at such a conflicted place, her power is lessened. Thomas, however, now realizing how terrible Ali has been to Laura, decides to take power into his own hands in order to protect her and love her.
There were two particular shots in the movie that really stood out to me, but it wasn't until I read Andrew's response above that I figured out exactly what made them significant: they were displays of power. The two shots I'll analyze in this post are the following:
DeleteThe first is from the very beginning of the film when Thomas returns to his deceased mother's house along with the men to whom he owes money. Thomas enters the house first, and stands alongside the door as the two other men enter. The men, coming in from outside are lit in full (if my memory serves me correctly), while Thomas is only a black figure in profile. He remains at the door in that exact stance for a few brief moments after the other men have exited the shot.
The second shot I want to look into is one of the last in the film. The three main characters, Thomas, Laura, and Ali, stand in a perfect triangle, with Laura and Ali on the cliffside.
In the first shot above, we are given one of our first real clues as viewers of Thomas' character. The contrast of the men, lit as they come inside, and Thomas, in the dark, gives a foreboding sense of Thomas' lack of control, or power, over the situation at hand. This is enhanced by the act of remaining at the door. It not only reads as defeat, but also as acceptance of defeat before it has come to pass. From this shot, though the viewer is only gaining a glimpse of Thomas's character traits, it sets up his lack of power.
This is greatly contrasted in the second shot I'll discuss. When Thomas, Laura, and Ali are standing in a triangle, it is unclear which of them is the top point of the triangle, which I would translate to holding the most power. Each has some sort of power both over and under the other two by way of debt, love, or employment (which could be argued in this case to be a debt owed). For example, Laura is indebted to Ali, yet loves him less than he loves her (giving her power over the relationship, as we discussed in class today); Thomas is Ali's underling for employment purposes, but he is physically more powerful. Because the power between the three characters is ultimately balanced, the viewer cannot tell who will act first and be the one with the decision-making power over how the three of them will proceed.
I appreciate that in this discussion thread you all seem to be in conversation with each other on the same basic topic of power, even though you approach it differently, with different evidence etc. A couple of things: when citing or paraphrasing a text please provide page number and source (if source isn't clear from context). And, make sure to WORK WITH the quotation you offer. In other words, don't just cite something and move on but weave the essence of the quotation's meaning into your comments ("What this means for the film is that..." What the author is saying is that .... And this is important w/r/t the film because....). Finally, please proofread before posting: you do need to make sure your prose is clean in terms of grammar and spelling. Only because these are blog posts doesn't mean the rules of the English language don’t apply :)
DeleteMegan: great post!
DeleteCase, I appreciate the nice close reading you offer of a couple of scenes! Well done!
DeleteNate Smith
ReplyDeleteIn the movie Jerichow, I found a quote Laura says to Thomas interesting.
“One cannot love without money,” Laura said.
Laura and Thomas have a very secretive and passionate relationship. Even though Thomas is a man of few words, his feelings toward Laura are evident very early in the film. When Laura starts to develop feelings for Thomas she as well “test” his feelings for her by revealing her baggage, she shares with $146,000 in debt, her two years spent in prison and that she is essentially owned by Ali who’s prenuptial agreement would leave Laura with virtually nothing. Laura uses her baggage and sob story as a defense mechanism and as a way to screen people in her life. She knew revealing the negativity in her life would either push Thomas away or show that he was going to be her “savior.”
Laura feels that because she is in such great debt, she is incapable of love. Her debts puts restraints on her ability to get close to others for fear of burdening them with her past.
Thomas is actually in Laura’s same position of loving without money even if that is unknown to both of them. Thomas begins working for Ali with nothing in his pockets. Ali shows Thomas kindness when Thomas has no support system. Thomas is given responsibility and a steady job working with his hands. He proves his worthiness to Ali using his martial arts skills to get them out of undesired transactions. At this point in Thomas’s life he owes his fresh start to Ali. Because Thomas has this debt to Ali, he cannot truly love Laura, being with her jeopardizes his employment and friendship with Ali.
Every character in the film endures some form of the struggle to get ahead in the hopes of a better life. From the cashier at the food truck that begs not to be discovered pocketing cash from the register, or the group of field workers harvesting cucumbers on their stomach over the sounds of heavy machinery. Each character felt the need to make ends meet because having more money is a controllable. It would alleviate some fear and more tangible than love.
In Bauman’s “Liquid Modern Life and its Fears” he writes, “Fears prompt us to take defensive action and gives immediacy and tangibility to fear. It is our responses that recast the sombre premonitions as daily reality, making the world flesh.”
The concept of love without money and the fear without either applies universally in life. If we cannot take care of ourselves, we cannot possibly hope to care for others. Money and love drive our desires. We seek opportunities in the hopes of getting ahead despite risks and we feel the backlash and strain in our relationships when money or love become the source of conflict. Every individual wants to experience some form of love and the fear of never having or being enough dictates what role love plays in our lives.
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DeleteI highly agree with you on your analysis on Laura. About her defense mechanism as a way to screen people in her life. However, I would disagree that Thomas cannot truly love Laura because of his debt and friendship with Ali because he kept coming over to their house to spy on her. To me, I think that the reason Thomas was trying to maintain his friendship and loyalty with Ali was to not jeopardize his relationship with Laura. Also, he is afraid that Laura will get hurt if Ali ever finds about her affair with him.
DeleteThe class was introduced to this film – or Laura's quote – as the inspiration for the course's title, "One cannot live without money." As such, I was anticipating money's importance in the film before we began watching it.
ReplyDeleteBy the film's conclusion, it was clear that these expectations were met. It seemed to be the case that money was the plot's focal point. The vast majority of the important events in the film are transactions of some sort or another, while the plot is framed in the context of running a business (something that money dictates as well).
You've already mentioned a couple of the main events in the plot that are dictated by money. Laura revealing her massive debt and Thomas' encounter with the stealing cashier are events, dictated by money, that affirm characters' relationships to one another (Thomas to Laura and Thomas to Ali, respectively).
There were two additional events I noticed that merit special discussion. They stuck out because of the sad-sounding musical score that accompanied them. All of the scenes that had music – whether it be diegetic or not – were pivotal.
Anyway, these two scored scenes were when money was taken from the main characters. At the beginning of the film when Thomas' creditor found his money in the treehouse and near the middle when Ali found Laura's secret cash, the extra-diegetic score clearly showed the some characters just went through a major loss.
What that money means to them, or to the viewer, is an entire discussion in itself. Like you said, it could represent the ability to love. Or, it could mean something like power. In any case, the characters lose something important.
"A lot of commercial capital can be garnered from insecurity and fear," Bauman said. An alternative reading of this passage could say that one needs money to be safe. It certainly seemed to be the case that both Thomas and Laura would have been in a safer situation if they had more money. It isn't difficult to imagine how much better their lives would be if they had some cash.
Great association with the diegetic sounds. I couldn't remember when the classical string score came in the beginning but definitely remembered it when Laura forks over her money to Ali. I also noted that the diegetic sounds that typically came from a stereo or radio were mixed to be louder and play over sort of like a soundtrack than from the natural source they were supposed to be playing from. This includes near the end when Thomas and Laura develop the idea to get rid of Ali on the cliff and a group of children are singing joyfully, it echos over all the other sound in the scene. I hadn't seen music used like this in a film recently. I don't really think I liked how out of place the pop, tango, or rock radio music fit in the film but I do understand its importance and why it was included that way.
DeleteAs a response to both Nate´s and Drew´s topic, it is easily discernable that one of the main thematic concerns is money and its real-life influence in individuals and their choices, particularly romantic ones. After all, the film´s pace and interactions are dictated by the rhythm of money: starting with a major monetary loss through Thomas, slowing down to earn money through hard labor, maintaining timing through Ali´s business, and then disrupting it through Laura´s monetary strains. The constant mentioning of sums, the images of money, the implied exchanges from goods to money, and the direct dialogues about money make it inescapable—mirroring the reality of its inescapability.
DeleteHowever, while I agree that the importance of money is directly associated with the relationship between characters and the love triangles, I think this is only the premise. Yes, the isolation, the boundaries, the mazes, and mixed messages alter the way the relationships develop, but there cannot be relationships before there are individuals. Behind distancing mechanisms, troublesome relations, and murdering desires, there is a sense of self. As individuals Ali, Laura, and Thomas exist outside of one another. They are complicated by other factors outside of their interactions. For example, Thomas has some problematic history with the guys that take his money at the start; Laura has her own dark past, as does Ali.
Consequently, examining the self-loathing that comes from basing self-worth into a monetary sum is as important as remarking on the role of money in the ability to love or to perform that love into actions. Laura’s self-doubts and hesitations are directly related to a solid reality where money dictates her romantic relations, and also who she is as a person, how she values herself, and how others value her.
This internal struggle seems reflective of what Petzold, on describing his first year studying cinema, described as being “a permanent state of crisis for me” (5), one which him and his group “eventually…”thematized” (5). He talks of struggling to find his voice to theorize his approach and how this hindered his ability to make films. I think, similarly, the ambivalence to find the self before finding love or mediums to express it, is the crisis Petzold thematized. The self gets convoluted together with other factors to the point of disappearing. It begins experiencing through others, just like Ali does, it seems a way of searching back for the individual within.
At two instances on the film, there are sounds of nature merged with music—at the beach, the waves crash while the radio plays, similarly, at the house, the radio accompanies the birds singing. This discordant symphony is the same element at play, in my opinion. It is a crisis of experiencing in a new environment, of testing the waters, and creating the most adaptable self for the new environment. Capitalism thrives on individualism and egocentric monetary gains and their subsequent expenses. It makes sense the system would target the individual first to gain better control.
Ali is one of the most interesting characters I have ever seen in a film. In my opinion, he is a man who is full of fear, delusional, and abusive, but at the same time, he resonates an aspect of human “beings” that we can certainly sympathize. Near the end during a conversation with Laura, Ali says his most profound line in the film, “I live in a country that doesn’t want me, with a woman that I bought.” To me, this line captures two important societal issues Petzold tries to address in the film—fear and money.
ReplyDeleteAli’s role in the film is best describe as ironic. As a man who is well equipped with managing skills, he is not able to manage his most important asset—Laura. Moreover, it is critical to examine Ali’s relationship with Laura, with a quote the class is interested in, “One cannot love without money”. It is apt to think of money in the film not as the physical piece of paper we give for goods, but as a notion of exchange, and in this case, love is exchanged for services. Laura is only with Ali because he has the means to take care of her and her debts, and in return, Ali receives a sense of romantic love.
Their marriage union is arguably a façade and a case can be made that Ali indeed acknowledges this, but he is numb to it. In my opinion, he drinks to escape the realization that Laura does not love him, and he is paranoid because he wants to be sure that Laura is keeping up with her end of the marriage contract. If Laura cheats, their contract no longer has value and in an economic sense, Ali is investing in something worthless. This is his biggest fear not just with Laura, but with all aspects of his life as he expresses to Thomas, “Everyone here cheats on me.” Certainly, a line that is a foreshadowing of Laura cheating on Ali with Thomas.
A quote in Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Times resonates with Ali’s fear, “Unable to slow the mind-boggling pace of change, let alone to predict and control its direction, we focus on the things we can, or believe we can, or are assured that we can influence” (11). I think that Ali has known about his heart condition for a long time. This is where we can sympathize with Ali. In my opinion, Ali’s disposition in the film is driven by the knowledge that he has a life threatening condition and it is something he cannot control, which scares him. The infidelities in Ali’s life leaves him with no control over his relationship, his business, and his existence. In society, it is arguable that uncertainty is the driving force of fear. I think that Petzold captures this notion brilliantly, by having Ali instill fear into his employees as a mechanism to have control over his business, and a notable scene is of course with Chein Taung—the Vietnamese immigrant who was pocketing change for himself.
The statement that we are all interested in, “One cannot love without money” is certainly an uncomfortable notion, but it is worth exploring. Petzold explored it with a story that is illuminating as it highlights that love can be an exchange, and essentially, love can be measured and weighted—in Ali’s case, Laura’s love is worth around 142,000 dollars. The film also captures the notion of fear of uncertainty. I did not discuss this, but Thomas is also an example of this notion as he exemplifies living a life of uncertainty with an unstable job and no family. Overall, it is irresponsible to not sympathize with Ali because at some point, one has experience the same kind of paranoia that Ali displays in the film. The key is not letting that fear of uncertainty dictate our lives. If one lives through a lens of fear, life seems to have a degrading quality to it, and one does not want to end up like Ali driving off a cliff.
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DeleteKhoi--this is an excellent post! Thanks for the good work :)
Delete"Jerichow" is a quiet movie, if not a silent movie, but not in the typical use of the term. Unlike the films of the early twentieth century, which were silent completely and out of necessity, with no symbolic significance, "Jerichow" is partially silent out of choice in order to convey a message.
ReplyDeleteThe "silence" of "Jerichow" is evident from the beginning, as two minutes goes by before the first word of the film is spoken. There are similar "long" pauses in dialogue throughout the film, including many of the scenes in which Thomas is driving with Ali. The "quiet" nature of the film is also evidenced by the lack of "loud" scenes. There are no bustling markets, frustrating traffic jams or rowdy bars. Even the inside of the airport is quiet. The loudest scene may very well be near the beginning, when Ali and Laura are driving down the road at night with the music blaring, a scene that lasts only a few seconds.
Finally, the silence is reflected in the character of Thomas, who generally speaks only when spoken to. When he does respond to someone, he generally does so in a direct and no-nonsense manner. For instance, when he answers a question, his answer is often simply, "Okay."
This silence is intentional and reflects the emphasis on the individual in capitalism. There are no loud scenes because there are very few scenes with more than three people. This is a manifestation of the transition from a community-oriented society to an individual-oriented society inherent in capitalism (Bauman, 2).
Thomas's relative silence in his interactions with others is a result of that individualistic characteristic of capitalism and displays the affect of capitalism on individuals' personal lives. As Zygmunt Bauman writes, "Social life changes when people live behind walls, hire guards, drive armoured vehicles, carry mace and handguns, and take martial arts classes" (Bauman, 9).
Knowing that Petzold’s films explore economic transformations and how they are related to desire, it’s interesting to watch this develop in Thomas’s character. As the film progresses, Thomas goes from completely broke, to eventually gaining employment picking cucumbers. As the film continues, Ali hires him and it is at this point we watch Thomas start to make bolder decisions. As Ali offers more responsibilities to Thomas, his attraction towards Laura intensifies.
ReplyDeleteThere is a point when Thomas and Ali sit in the van near an intersection and Ali asks, “where would you put a store?” as the two discuss, they notice Laura sitting at the intersection. As Jaimey Fisher points out in Contemporary Film Directors on page 4, this is the point Petzold shows us that love and economy intersect. Fisher’s concept would relate to how Thomas’s intensified actions towards Laura are connected with increasing responsibilities from Ali. As Thomas economically transforms, so too does his desires.
I see the house that Thomas wants to rebuild as a metaphor for not only his financial status, but struggles we face throughout life. Most of us certainly want to make goals and as for Thomas, he wants to rebuild his mother’s house. By the end of the film we know the house unfinished. There is a constant concept of struggle Petzold wants us to see. There is one point Thomas tells Ali he stayed up all night refinishing a door, but it’s at that point that Ali offers him even more responsibility, which eventually distracts him from the house and leads his focus to Laura. This is the last we hear of Thomas working on the house.
I noticed how Petzold creates small scenes used to connect certain aspects of each character. For example, midway through the film, we watch Thomas as he sweeps out the delivery van after a days work, later in the film, after we learn Laura is also broke, she is seen sweeping the van in a similar fashion from a similar viewpoint.
Petzold also seems to use music to build concepts behind each character. Many times we hear a more somber string ensemble played with individual scenes of Laura and Thomas. This idea might even be better noted when all three are at the beach during the scene we see Ali dancing to more upbeat tunes, then afterwards he leaves frame while Laura and Thomas begin dancing to more slower intense music. Ali is obviously the one with money while Laura and Thomas are face financial struggle.
In the beginning of Jerichow, Thomas is knocked out and lays unconscious for hours outside his mother’s home and is awakened when a doe wanders by and checks him out. The deer represented a peace and innocence to the situation, as it was the power of money that he didn’t have that put him in a conflict that resulted in his assault. After Laura and Ali embrace and kiss after he catches her cheating on him with the beverage guy, the camera cuts to Thomas watching from the woods 50-100 yards out. He’s almost like the deer in the beginning of the film; silently watching from a distance and then wanders back into the trees and greenery without a sound. Thomas is observant and swift which is demonstrated in his ability to act quickly when he stops an employee from attempting to stab Ali.
ReplyDeleteLaura and Ali also exhibit animalistic characteristics. Laura is always very shy and timid. Her small stature is always emphasized such as when she’s sitting on the floor of the front seat of the service truck, she folds herself up into that tiny space and her sunken eyes gaze up at Thomas. Many instances in the film she tries to blend in or remain out of sight, hiding in the shadows. When her and Ali are fighting outside, he stands on the porch with his arms crossed facing her while she stands further away on the dirt, rubbing her arm nervously and not able to stand her ground. Ali reminded me of a vicious animal in the first scene he appears. After he wrecks his car, he has blood all over his mouth and face as if he had just got done eating his prey. He also throws Laura around like a rag doll and it’s very clear that the employees of the different shops he manages are intimidated by him.
Thomas is a man of few words. He speaks only when spoken to and never seems to initiate conversation even when alone with Laura – their physical attraction speaks for them. We don’t see them really talk until Ali leaves and Laura opens up about her past in prison, debt, and the reason she married Ali – he had money. When Laura cries out “One cannot love without money. That’s something I know,” I couldn’t tell if she was referring to herself as being unworthy of love or to Thomas as he could not love her because he didn’t have money to make them happy.
Being broke isn’t the only thing Laura and Thomas have in common. They’re both dishonorable people. Other than the obvious that they are having an affair, Laura’s an ex-convict and Thomas was dishonorably discharged from Afghanistan and it’s unclear what they did. They both seek freedom and to be with each other without the consequences or guilt associated in her infidelity and his friendship with Ali. In the end, when Ali catches and shames the two of them, I saw it almost as a curse, could the two of them ever be happy knowing that Ali had found out and killed himself the same way they had planned to kill him even while he only had a few months to live.
After watching the movie, Jerichow, I noticed that the issue of money was constantly brought up. Everyone had a fair share of money problems. According to the movie, Thomas was a retired veteran that was left jobless and in debt. This connects to today’s major problem where veterans were left homeless and unemployment. Laura, on the other hand, is also in debt and had to forcibly marry Ali, a wealthy Turkish businessman. Ali’s problems with money were also brought up in the movie. He starts to feel betrayed by his own laborers and is became fatally ill. Even with the money and good treatment, he still can’t be cured. Ali also had major trust issues where he would end up spying on his own wife. He does not trust his employees as well and said “Everyone here cheats on me” Although he was wealthy, he seems like a very depressed person and an alcoholic. This indirectly conveys a message that money can’t buy you happiness.
ReplyDeleteAnother message that I’ve picked up from the movie was that love always comes with a price. Love is a negotiation or part of a deal according to Laura. The reason that she married Ali was to clear her debt and then, when she had an affair with the manager of the soda dispensary, they made a deal that they would split their profits in half. To me, that is not love. So, when she finally falls in love with Thomas, she does not know how to handle it because she was so used to associating love with negotiations and deals. She sees Thomas as unworthy because “he lives like a bum” (quote by Laura). He would not be able to provide for her and save her from her debts which added to her dilemma of being with him.
When it comes to the cinematic quality of the movie, there were a number of unique techniques that the director used that is uncommon. The angle of the camera was always either taken from a far or really up close. When it comes to depressing scenes the camera tends to be in an angle far from the character. Along with that, the movie uses very few background music or extra-diegetic music. Therefore, the expressions and actions were more emphasis to compensation for the minimal use of background music. There were a lot of silent scenes in the movie that gives a very depressing feel to the viewers. It gives us time to digest what happens.
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DeleteI agree with the point you make about one of the messages about love always comes with a price. I would also say that for Laura to stay with Ali would come with the price of Laura's happiness.
DeleteWhere I do disagree slightly is about the cinematic quality of the film. I think most of the depressing scenes ( Laura giving Ali her money, and Thomas losing his money in the beginning) the camera angles were close up on the characters. I don't think many of the camera angles in the film were uncommon. I do think you were very right about effect of the lack of background music or extra-diegetic sounds.
Although the quote from this movie was “One cannot live without money”, I think that a more appropriate term is power. Yes, money did play a pivotal role in the story line of the film, but it represented more than just psychical currency. This is what stood out to me the most; throughout the entire film we are able to watch the different exchanges of power and watch how it changes the characters’ subsequent actions as well as consequences.
ReplyDeleteIn the beginning of the film we see Thomas lose what little power he has left over his life, as a broke dishonorably discharged solider. He accepts his powerless, moneyless state. He doesn’t actively try to change it but he doesn’t seem to really mind it either.
Then there is Laura who is almost powerless too. What I found the most interesting is just how much power she allows to be taken away from her. She gets trapped in this marriage because Ali took on her debts, as long as she stayed with him, but works full time for him and she seemingly makes no money from it. When she had put some money away for herself, Ali makes sure to take it away. So in Laura’s situation, money is absolutely interchangeable for power.
In the film Ali seems to have the most power until the end where we actually learn he has the least. He has the most money, he asserts his power over his wife by physically harming her and keeping her debts looming over her head, and bossing Thomas around. However, his health failing and leading to his unavoidable death, Ali has absolutely no power in this circumstance. This is why I think that his drinking and the problems that this has caused him is a constant theme throughout the movie.
There is really nothing that Thomas seems to care about until he develops feelings for Laura, but in my opinion Laura never fully developed feelings for Thomas, thus having power over him. She uses him to create that plan to get her out of her marriage with Ali but as soon as she learns that Ali is already dying and ready to give her all that she wanted to begin with, she doesn’t need Thomas anymore and tells him to leave without any explanation to him. Ali learns that he has no power over his wife after he finds Thomas’s lighter, which also means he has no power over Thomas either.
So in the end of the film it is Ali who has the least amount of power and once he realizes this he does the only thing that he has power over and kills himself. Obviously money plays a substantial role in this film but money is just one form of power throughout the storyline and proves that sometimes we don’t have the power that we think that we do. Everyone is powerless in some way or another, it is impossible to have complete control. Look at the stark opposites of Thomas and Ali. Ali appears to have complete control over everything because of his wealth and status, but ends up having control over nothing. Where as Thomas appears to have control over nothing, when he actually ends up having control over Ali simply through the racecar lighter.
What I noticed about "Jerichow" was how much green there was throughout the entire film. The color green symbolizes a lot of things about the movie. The natural surroundings alone had so much green in it. The towel that Laura uses toward the beginning of the movie is green. The crates in the warehouse where Ali and Thomas find Laura and the warehouse worker were green. It seemed in just about every scene there was some object that was green. The three main symbols of the color green in the film were money, jealousy, and safety.
ReplyDeleteMoney is the most obvious symbol of the green. With the quote from Laura about that there is no love without money and her enormous debt, money played an integral part of the film. This aspect has already been mentioned in earlier comments, but I don't think anyone pointed out the scene when Ali told Thomas to order from one of his vendors that he thought was pocketing money. This is one of the first instances that we get about Ali's desire for money. Or that he felt cheated.
The second symbol of the color green relates to jealousy. Green is a color that represents jealousy. So, this makes sense why the color green was visible throughout the film. Ali was constantly worried about Laura cheating on him, which she was. Jealousy is an emotion that can cause people to do anything. It lead to Ali stalking Laura, being abusive toward her and his death.
The third symbol of the color green is safety, which I included because I found it ironic. Although green represents the other two symbols I listed, it's also an indicator of safety. The reason I felt this is ironic is that I never felt any of the characters were safe during the film. Whether I thought Ali would catch Laura and Thomas or if Ali was going to fall to his death when he was drunk cliffs. In the book, Liquid Times, the author states,
"Unable to slow the mind-boggling pace of change, let alone to predict and control its direction, we focus on things we can, or are assured that we can influence: we try to calculate and minimize the risk that we personally, or those nearest and dearest to us at the moment, might fall victim to the uncounted and uncountable dangers which the opaque world and its uncertain future are suspected to hold in store for us." (Bauman 11).
This relates to Ali at the end. When he told Laura that he was dying and he wanted her to have the company, that her debt would be taken care of and she would have the help of Thomas. He just wanted the safety of Laura, the main thing that was nearest and dearest to Ali.
I think this film shows how three different people react differently to similar situations. While Thomas, Ali, and Laura all face different specific problems, they all face problems that come along with money, love and power.
ReplyDeleteThomas is confronted first in the movie. His cool, calm, nature is shown when they guy comes looking for the money Thomas owed him. When he does find the money his reply is, “I needed it to repair the house.” This shows Thomas’ nature when relating to money. He doesn’t run over to confront him. He just lets him walk back and reacts calmly. Thomas needs money, but doesn’t allow it to make him beg. He simply works.
On the other hand, Ali seems to worry about everyone trying to slip one past him. He is always on the lookout for someone cheating him. He says he has a “good heart too,” when talking to Thomas, but his true character comes out in the next line: “Next time, stir fry him.” This shows Ali’s use of his power over other people.
Laura seems to entangle love and money. She decided to marry Ali because he had money and was the first respectable guy who she dated. She puts an emphasis on money that puts her at odds with her own debts. When she finds a way to sneak money behind Ali’s back she then entangles sex with it. The same goes with her and Thomas’ relationship. When they begin to get close she brings up her debt.
One last thing, in some scenes a train is shown going by in the background. In the scenes where it is behind Thomas it has blue siding, but when it is shown behind Ali it has red siding. For me this shows the relationship with money they both have. Thomas is blue: calm. Ali is red: angry. This is congruent to the scenes showing Thomas and Ali’s negative interactions with their money. When Ali gets wronged he reacts with anger. He slaps Laura. He hates that some of his clients buy from someone other than him. While Thomas is calm. He works pulling cucumbers and then for Ali.
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DeleteI found the movie to relate to the required reading; however I found both the film and first chapter of Bauman's book to offer many problems with little solutions. The excerpt "...the responsibility for resolving the quandaries generated by vexingly volatile and constantly changing circumstances is shifted onto the shoulders of individuals - who are now expected to be 'free choosers' and to bear in full the consequences of their choices. The risks involved in every choice may be produced by forces which transcend the comprehension and capacity to act of the individual, but it is the individual's lot and duty to pay their price..." (Bauman 3-4) sums up the sentiment echoed throughout the movie for me.
ReplyDeleteThe film follows 3 miserable characters that have put themselves in their own destitute situations by decisions they have made. None of the characters actively seek to make constructive changes in their lives, but rather find comfort in their own self-loathing. This comes to a boiling point when Thomas and Laura scheme up a plan to murder Laura's husband Ali and Ali kills himself after discovering their plan.
Ali is a reasonably successful businessman who continues to hire cheats for employees which leaves him stressed and paranoid. This paranoia carries over to his personal life regarding his wife and her faithfulness.
Ali's wife Laura was in jail and accumulated a lot of debt before she met Ali. Laura married Ali to help pay off her debt, she even says in the movie she was a "bought wife."
The main protagonist of the film Thomas is a liar and a cheat. In the opening scene he is beaten up over a debt he owed. In the following scene he is not being forthcoming with a temp agency that is helping him look for work. To top it all off he is in the middle of an affair with Laura the majority of the film. These are consequential decisions people face in real life every day and he made the wrong choice every time. My guess is he is not in such dire straits by chance, but rather because he has been making poor decision after poor decision.
I have a hard time finding sympathy for someone who chooses not to help them self and each of these characters accepted their situations or fantasized about idealistic lives without considering the consequences.
Also, I didn't buy into the Thomas and Laura affair. It seemed the only connection they had was desperation. Thomas made a pass at Laura without even as much as a conversation and by the end of the film they were planning on murdering her husband together. I assume Laura was in contact with many people through Ali's business who could have helped her if the relationship was abusive or she wanted out, but she chose to find comfort in a homeless stranger living on welfare. This made zero sense to me.
Obviously I wasn't particularly fond of the characters or theme of the film, but I did like the camera-work, lighting, and acting. Each of the actors did a great job telling each character's story through facial expressions and demeanor. Although the characters didn't have much substance to them the actors did a good job of making the characters somewhat believable.
The cinematographer did a great job framing the scenes and using perspective to create different feelings. One scene that jumped out at me was the first beach scene. The beach scene was the first scene Thomas and Laura were formally introduced to each other in the audience's eyes and the scene ends with them dancing in the foreground while a drunken Ali stumbles away into the background. This was a foreshadowing scene that was done very elegantly and artistically. Another well-shot scene was when Thomas was in the forest looking through the window at Laura. I noticed the camera was quite a bit further behind Thomas which gave the audience the feeling that he was hiding yet vulnerable, a sort of forbidden love scene that the camera captured perfectly. I also noticed a reoccurring song when Thomas and Laura were together which reinforced the affair.
This is pretty solid but try to refrain from making everything about your (dis)likes. It's not relevant whether you (dis)like a character or whether you think a particular thing was well done, etc. Such personal judgments/expression of taste have no bearing on the CRITICAL ANALYSIS of the film that your readers are looking for. The really interesting question I think your post raises--but that I don't think you develop or address--is whether the FILM itself suggests the choices the characters do or do not make are really THEIR choices to make. In other words, your position affirms a certain ideology of predicated on the belief in everyone's ability to choose, no matter the circumstances, and that those choices make all the difference. That's your prerogative, of course. But what about the film itself? Does the FILM suggests this is the case or does it suggest something else w/r/t the question of "choice." Put differently: neoliberal dogma indoctrinates us with the idea that we can always choose etc, but does the film agree with this? How so? How not? And, does the film judge its characters for making poor choices, or does it suggest that those choices, while perhaps "poor" in an abstract, a-contextual sense, are in fact not really "choices" in the "free individual" kind of sense. Note that the questions I'm posing here are analytic questions about the object at hand--the film--that would get you away from your subjective view of things.
DeleteWhile watching the film Jerichow the idea that stuck out the most to me was the idea of being a “savior.” The first scene of the movie we see Thomas in a cemetery with a cross in the background which sets up this idea of being a savior. In the car while explaining why she can’t love him Laura even goes as far as to call Thomas a savior, in a very sarcastic way. This idea is exemplified in the movie several times. Thomas “saves” Ozkam several times (the car, the beach cliff, and the attempted assault). Now I believe this idea of being a savior was something Thomas embraced, he seemed to relish the role of “being a good guy” and that he was attempting to save Laura from this violent man that is Ozkam. However while Ozkam is clearly the antagonist in this film Thomas isn’t quite a protagonist. His true colors towards the end of the movie seem to shift from savior to jealous lover. The idea of jealously can be seen with his hiding spot in the lush green foliage. (Green obviously being symbolism for envy).
ReplyDeleteBauman (2007) talks about this idea of being an anti-hero savior when discussing the American response to 9-11. While Americans believed they were doing the right thing by creating a “War on terror” the collateral damage they inflicted on the middle-east has become far more catastrophic. In this case Thomas is America who believes he is doing the right thing but ends up causing more damage by driving Ali to commit suicide. The interesting thing about this movie is how my emotions towards the characters all drastically flipped while watching the movie. Ali who is an abusive husband becomes a sympathetic victim in the end where as Thomas the likeable everyman and hero becomes a complex flawed anti-hero. I believe the director of this film did a great job at painting this contrast throughout the film.
While this idea was the main idea I wanted to focus on I did notice several things that if delved into could lead to some interesting discussion.
• The Symbolism of the Car lighter
• Laura’s red lipstick
• How quick every love scene is between Laura and Thomas
• How Laura and Thomas seem to almost match in their outfit (grey plaid shirts)
Now some of this may just be me reaching for symbolism where it doesn’t exist but I do think they are interesting discussions to have.
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DeleteThe economic question of love is at the heart of Jerichow. There are very few interactions in the film that don't have to do with gaining or losing capital. From the first moment of violence, where Thomas has his mother's savings taken due to a bad business venture to the final discussion Ali has with Laura, money is everything. The film doesn't let relationships become too bogged down with the complications of romantic love. Economic love is, for the most part, easier to understand. Laura is with Ali because he was has money and could save her from her job at the bar, which she describes with a single cryptically simple word: Bad. She sees herself as being owned by him and in many ways she isn't wrong. Her massive debt was passed on to Ali under the agreement that she and he would stay together. Money, the great equalizer, put her at a disadvantage and Ali was able to save her from the horrors of her past. Laura is given an opportunity to re-invent her life in a successful business; provided that she remains loyal to Ali of course. His financial success allows him to provide her stable employment, a fantastic home and the chance at love.
ReplyDeleteEnter the hero Thomas who, despite his stunning looks and seemingly solid moral stance, is everything Ali is not. He’s poor, rugged, and lives in the dilapidated house of his deceased mother. He gains employment through happenstance and almost immediately shows why his previous business ventures might not have worked out. I was almost shocked at how quickly he started putting the moves on Laura, despite the gratitude that Ali showed by hiring him. He cannot be satisfied with getting back on his feet. Laura speaks a poignant line when she says “If it’s free you heroes are all gung-ho.” Thomas sees himself as saving Laura from this drunken, violent capitalist who has everything he seeks (I.e. A nice home, a job, a beautiful wife.) He has to perceive himself as the hero, because if he didn’t he might come to realization that he is actually every bit as jealous and possessive as the man he works for. As Fisher puts it on page 122 “It is all the rubble of an American Dream.” Ali is living out his dream and is too caught up in it to realize that his life is being pulled out from under him by disease and disloyalty on the part of those around him.
Though I won’t say that Ali is necessarily the best husband in the world I will point out that he didn’t act the hero for free. He knew the costs of helping Laura and in his final sobering moments before his doom he even acknowledges that Laura is only with him because he essentially owns her financially. Only when he understands that his dream of saving Laura was robbed from him by a dishonorably discharged, failed business owner does he see the crumbled ruins of everything he has worked for. His decision to join the wreckage strikes me as Petzold putting the period on his strange story of role reversal. Petzold is “once again working against the binaristic forms of narrativization that have tended to dominate the representations of ethnic Turkish people in German cinema” (Fisher 125) In the case of Jerichow, Thomas (the native German) is the outsider invading Ali’s narrative.
Well done!
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ReplyDelete“Everyone here cheats on me.” I think that this line, said by Ali in reference to his vendors’ shady behavior, not only serves as a great (if not entirely subtle) foreshadowing to the inevitable affair between Laura and Thomas, but also connects well with this course’s theme “One cannot love without money.” As Ru Paul said, “If you don't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”. Mental stability, self-confidence, and emotional wisdom are the currency of romantic relationships. This type of love is essentially an exchange or amalgamation of resources both abstract and concrete between two people. In casual relationships you share your time, pocket money, present circumstances, and physical intimacy with your partner. In marriage you share a home, bills, the workload to pay for those bills, each other’s pasts, presents, and futures, one another’s families, most of your time, emotional burdens, your exclusive physical intimacy, and perhaps even children. “One cannot love without money” - while this statement is debatable in relation to paper currency, it is an inarguable truth in terms of what one has to give emotionally. In order to most effectively and healthily share “emotional currency”, both members of the relationship need to be open and equally invested in one another. Sadly, none of the main characters meet these requirements, yet all three of them are attempting to put or hold together some semblance of a functional romantic relationship despite their inner problems. Because of this, imbalance is inevitable, and in a case of imbalance, someone is always going to be cheated out of something. Ali is an abusive alcoholic, but also a shrewd business owner who isn’t averse to taking in and assisting those in need of a helping hand - so long as he benefits somehow from the interaction. He isn’t a bad person, but he isn’t a good one either. He takes and he gives. He is flawed humanity in all its drunkenly-dancing-on-a-beach glory. Ali, like most people, has the mentality that every circle of his life should maintain an equilibrium - he wants to receive a fair exchange for what he gives emotionally and monetarily. When that ideal balance is upset, he takes initiative to get some sort of revenge (such as firing vendors who try to double cross him). This also applies to Ali’s marriage with Laura - it seems at first like a mutually beneficial arrangement where she is safe from her debts and he gets to love someone. But no matter what, Ali cannot escape the fact that this exchange is totally unbalanced - he will never receive the equal amount of love he puts into the marriage because for Laura it isn’t a marriage about romance, it’s about safety. This isn’t her fault, nor is it Ali’s, it is merely the sad truth lurking beneath the surface of their haphazardly assembled relationship. A lie can only last for so long. Neither one of them is truly happy or satisfied with their marriage, but both of them fear what life would be like without the other. It would take an outside force to end their stalemate and set in motion the breaking of their relationship (which was arguably doomed from the start). Thomas is their catalyst. What better way to end a toxic relationship between two damaged people than by tossing a third self-isolating grab-bag of unsure emotions into the mix? I’m not entirely sure I’d call the frantic five second “let’s grope in a dark corner” sessions between him and Laura a true romance, it was the start of something passionate and potentially meaningful. All three of them are messes, but if any two are to form an almost equal equation together, it is Laura and Thomas. Both may have their boundaries and inner issues, but their struggles stem from similar places and their feelings for one another are close to equal. Neither one of them is cheating the other out of that much emotional currency. Does that mean they can love? I’m not ready to decide whether I think we can love without money or not yet. I do know, though, that we cannot truly love without an equal exchange of emotional currency.
ReplyDeleteIt is said that this film Jericho is very loosely based on The Postman Always Rings Twice. I have not actually read the book or seen either of the movies, but reading the wikipedia page, i see the similarities and differences between the two stories. Much like in Jericho, in The Postman, there is a love triangle between a stranger, a woman, and her husband. The stranger and the woman fall in love almost immediately and soon conspire to murder the husband. Some of the most stark differences between the two narratives however, is 1). in Postman they murder the husband and in Jericho he kills himself, 2.) In Postman the husband is a much older man, in Jericho he is Turkish. 3.) In Postman, the story continues on after the husband's death while in Jerichow it stops right there.
ReplyDeleteSo, why did Petzhold choose to make these changes?I can only speculate. I'd say that Ali kills himself in Jerichow to better describe the place of the contemporary Turkish immigrant in Germany, a man who "lives in a country that doesn't want him with a woman that he bought." There have been thousands of Turkish immigrants in Germany since the reconstruction after WWII and yet they still find themselves as strangers in a strange land, their descendants trying to find jobs in this "post-Fordian" landscape. The fact that the German lovers do not kill him themselves, but instead drive him to suicide, says something quite bleak about the life a Turkish immigrant. And the fact that the movie ends with his death, and does not continue on with the story as the Postman does, further stresses the importance of Ali's character and highlights his death as the tragedy of the film.
Those are good questions, indeed. A research paper could take them up in detail, based on a comparative reading of Jerichow and the texts on which it's based (the novel and its earlier adaptations).
DeleteWhat I thought was very interesting was the play on, “you can’t love if you don’t have money.” In reality, even when you have money you still can’t have true love. Ali’s suicide was pretty expected due to the fact that he had no trust and he bought the only thing that didn’t “cheat” on him, which ended up happening. I just loved the play on what love actually is. Were Thomas and Laura really in love or were they just there for each other when they needed each other most? Their love is just as debatable as needing money for love. Another tricky thing was that sex as an act of love or violence? Because violence is so prominent in the film as well as sex, it seems as though they correlate sex with pain. I love that idea of love, pain and money because it is so true. Laura married for money, Thomas experienced pain to try and keep money and then agony to continue to get money. Ali ends up with heart problems because he has a “good heart.” I just goes to show that capitalism and money are just as corrupt as the souls who live to love and die for it.
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