“Transit” – Moving [MOVIE REVIEW]
Franz Rogowski in TRANSIT. Courtesy of Music Box Films Writer/director Christian Petzold is a master of allegory, irony, and complexity. He is also a gifted interpreter of novels, adapting them so that new meaning and depth rises out of the pages. Such was the case of “Phoenix,” his allegorical story set in post-war Germany and based on Le Retour des Cendres (Return from the Ashes), a failed novel by Hubert Monteilhet. As I wrote in my review when the film came out, Petzold and his longtime writing partner Harum Farocki constructed a metaphor for German and the German people as they struggled to deal with their guilt and complicity in the extermination of the Jews. It was Farocki who brought Transit by Anna Seghers to his attention. A novel set in Marseille in 1942, it describes the desperation of a transitory population running from their homelands, desperate to escape the crushing and relentless path of the Nazis as they overtake France and tighten the vise on refugees and citizens alike. Farocki’s family had lived this story, having fled the Sudentenland shortly after his birth. He and Petzold started work on the adaptation and, like the novel, its first draft set the story in…
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