Transit (2018)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Transit (2018) – C. Petzold

Director Christian Petzold’s decision to include purposeful anachronisms in this purported tale of Nazi Occupied France is certainly disorienting but ultimately it allows viewers the ability to generalise the WWII refugees’ plight to our current world.  In fact, maybe the movie takes place in a parallel version of our modern world ... or maybe it takes place in a futuristic world?  In any event, it seems real enough and that’s the scary part, because we are viewing a fascist state dedicated to “cleansing” its populace of certain people.  Our “hero” is Georg (Franz Rogowski), a German Jew who is fleeing France and needs a visa and transit papers (not unlike people seeking the same in Rick’s Cafe Americain down in Morocco). The Germans are closing in on Marseilles where Georg winds up and where most of the film take place.  Georg is lucky, however, and he accidentally manages to impersonate a dead writer and obtain his travel documents (to Mexico) and those of his wife, who is also in Marseilles seeking reconciliation with her husband (not knowing he is dead).  But during the wait for the departure date, the relationships that Georg develops with the people he meets start to change his motivations. For example, a young North African boy and his deaf mother who are also stranded in Marseilles (refugees more like those we know today, perhaps) garner Georg’s sympathy, as does a doctor who feels torn at the prospect of leaving his new love, who is visa-less.  But “stranded” is the operant word, as all of the characters we meet seem stuck in Marseilles (in an indefinite time period) with no definite escape, bar death.  Undoubtedly, Petzold wants us to reflect on the similar plight of those stateless souls currently in transit between hardships back home and barricaded borders in front.  Would we have treated those fleeing the Nazis the way we treat people fleeing similar humanitarian crises today?  The film cleverly gets the audience to puzzle out its mysteries by introducing them slowly (those anachronisms, the mysterious woman approaching Georg, the unseen narrator – who is it?) and saving one last emphatic mystery for the end which helps its themes to linger long after the credits have stopped rolling.