Beyond the Multiplex

In recent years, there's been a trend among younger Germans identified as "Östnostalgie," or nostalgia for the former Communist regime in East Germany and its alleged simplicity of life. Donnersmarck didn't start out trying to counteract this, but he's glad if he did. "That tendency angers me quite a bit. It's so ungrateful of people, frankly. They don't appreciate the liberty that they've been given through the demise of the dictatorship. It's really silly to long for its return, and in fact it's quite dangerous." Affectionate TV presentations of East German life has led, he says, "to the fact that young people now don't even understand that it was a dictatorship. There has really been a distortion of history, and I hope my film does something to correct that, I really do.

"There's a current of opinion like that, not just in Germany but all over Europe: Communism wasn't so bad, we were fighting for a good cause. This was a system that killed and tortured people who wanted to leave! We're in danger of forgetting that."

Donnersmarck spent part of his childhood in the U.S., and when I invite him to compare the East German security state with the post-9/11 paranoia of American life, he hesitates a little. "It's true that when you come to America as a foreigner now, it feels harder and colder than it used to. You're treated as something between a dissident and a dangerous herd of cattle. There's something so unbending, so ideological, about the feeling of America now.

"Maybe it's not my right as a European to say this, but from my perspective, what's going on in your country is very un-American. America was always about giving power to the individual and not the state. Suddenly, you're allowing the government to wiretap anybody they want, essentially. And you didn't put up much of a fight about that! Many of us in Europe couldn't understand that. We had always looked to America as an example of not giving too much power to the state, and now you've given powers to the state that we never would."

"Pan's Labyrinth" Along with various other film critics, I was convinced that Picturehouse's plan to sneak Guillermo del Toro's anti-fascist fantasy out at the tail end of the holiday season might backfire. The movie is an odd blend of elements, the historical and geographic setting is fairly obscure, and it's got subtitles. Dudsville, right? OK, so nobody's paying me for my marketing expertise, and here we are 25 million bucks later and only a little bit smarter. "Pan's Labyrinth" has gone from geeky underdog to blogged-against and overhyped Oscar favorite in about two months. Well, listen. I really like this movie, but no, it won't stand up to the combined works of Mizoguchi, Bergman and whoever your favorite no-budget splatter director is. It's still thrilling and scary and satisfying, and I'll never forget sitting in a roomful of sunstroked, zoned-out critics at Cannes, cheering and crying like teenagers. So let's watch del Toro collect his Oscar and enjoy the experience for what it is.

"Water" Well, I don't know if they have VH1 in India, but now I know what it might look like. Deepa Mehta's languorous Romeo-and-Juliet tale has positively rapturous cinematography -- it re-creates the look and feel of 1930s India on sets built in Sri Lanka -- and beyond that here's what's interesting about it: 1) Hindu fundamentalists tried to stop it, I guess not because it looks like a perfume commercial but because it depicts the terrible fate of widows in traditional Hindu society. 2) It wouldn't have been eligible in previous years, because it's a Canadian film made in Hindi, and before 2007 a film had to be in a principal language of its home country. This is a sensible shift that should open Oscar's doors to all kinds of outcast films. 3) The two leads, Lisa Ray and John Abraham, are drop-dead gorgeous, although they look a whole lot more like "Subcontinent Idol" contestants than like a lower-caste widow and a Brahmin intellectual in pre-revolutionary India. "Water" is so supernaturally pretty that it does exert a powerful spell, for a while. It handles tragic and serious material, but does so in a completely conventional, even simplistic manner. Which might make it the outside candidate here, if Academy voters for some reason turn away from "Pan's Labyrinth."

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