philipbrasor.com

With her debut film, German director Nora Fingscheidt demonstrates unequivocally that she isn’t fooling around. The title is a kind of inside joke among social workers in Germany, as it refers to a case that basically breaks the carefully wrought procedures that have been put in place to address public welfare situations as fairly and compassionately as possible. The case that crashes this system is Benni (Helena Zengel), a blonde 9-year-old girl, constantly dressed in shocking pink, who is prone to explosive fits of rage. Even as the movie starts, the public servants charged with her case are at the end of their ropes because they have run out of foster care facilities that will accept Benni, since she’s already been kicked out of most of them. The ostensible reason for Benni’s distemper is her being separated from her single mother, Bianca (Lisa Hagmeister), who, based on the few times we see her in action, seems constitutionally incapable of handling Benni’s mood swings, as she’s got two other younger children (from different fathers than Benni’s) to care for and a bad dose of low self-esteem that scans as borderline suicidal. Benni is at that age when she may be starting to realize that her mother can’t handle her, but in any event it doesn’t impinge on her virulent sense of abandonment, which always manifests as physical violence.

Mood swings imply that there are high moments, as well, and the film makes it clear that Benni has a native intelligence her case workers can’t quite exploit to their—and her—advantage. One of these workers, Micha (Albrecht Schuch), thinks he has a solution, and brings Benni on a tough love weekend to an isolated cabin where he often works with troubled adolescent boys. At first, Benni objects to the lack of creature comforts—no TV, no Wifi, no electricity, in fact—but she eventually responds positively to Micha’s attention, which is focused completely on her. The problem, of course, is that Micha thinks this form of therapy will somehow change Benni, but once she understands that Micha has his own family to return to and that he is only “doing his job,” she reverts to her core resentments. Micha is thus castigated by his colleagues for violating a signal code of his calling: Always maintain a professional distance. Micha has been indulging in what is called “a rescue fantasy,” and once Benni catches on she pulls back into her sense of being used by adults. 

The question viewers will ask themselves as they endure this punishing movie is, What can be done that hasn’t already been tried? Benni spends several sequences in a psychiatric facility drugged into catatonia, and it’s the only time the film calms down. Having run out of resources and answers, her main case worker, an astoundingly patient woman referred to as Frau Bafane (Gabriela Maria Schmeide), sees no alternative but to send her overseas to a special school where she will be a prisoner, though, truthfully, most of the foster homes we see in the movie practice their own forms of incarceration. The ultimate injury comes when Bianca, after breaking up with her latest boyfriend, agrees to take Benni back and the child is overjoyed, but then Bianca comes to her senses when she realizes her youngest son will somehow take after Benni, as if what Benni suffers from is contagious. (She does have a point, since the boy seems to idolize his half-sister.) System Crasher is unrelenting in its insistence that some people are not made for society, and while the onus falls on the failures of individuals, like Bianca, Fingscheidt does not try to blame the system. She gives these hard-working, well-intentioned people the benefit of the doubt. She just wants them, and us, to try harder. 

In German. Now playing in Tokyo at Theater Image Forum Aoyama (03-5766-0114).

System Crasher home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2019 kineo Filmproduktion Peter Harwig, Weydemann Bros. GmbH, Oma Inge Film UG (haftungsbeschränkt), ZDF

While many people have opinions about director Jonathan Glazer’s allusion to the current state of affairs in Israel/Gaza at the recent Oscars ceremony, fewer have remarked on Mstyslav Chernov’s equally powerful remarks when he accepted the Best Feature Documenary award for 20 Days in Mariupol. Glazer, who received the best international feature Oscar for Zone of Interest, was conflating the attitude that birthed the Holocaust to the way the world is now tacitly accepting the wholesale killing of civilians in Gaza, a view that is divisive. Chernov, whose movie is about Russia’s indiscriminate killing of civilians in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol at the start of Putin’s invasion last year, is not a filmmaker with a certain vistion, but rather a journalist, and so he is only interested in getting the truth out to the world, which is essentially what the movie is about. Right now, especially in the U.S., there is a difference of opinion as to whether Ukraine deserves to defeat its Russian invaders, but in any case Chernov’s footage shows that the atrocities are indisputable, and so those whose agenda is to somehow discredit Ukraine for whatever reason have nothing to say about the movie or Chernov’s chilling comment that he wished he had never had to make his film.

But he did have to make it, because that is his job. As a reporter for AP, Chernov and his video crew were in Mariupol when the invasion was launched, and he captures as closely as possible the violence visited on the residents of the city without really trying to determine their political stance, because all that matters during the 20 days recorded is survival, which is mostly a matter of luck. It’s clear that Russian planes and artillery are targeting civilian homes and public buildings, including hospitals (a preview of Gaza, as it were). This means Chernov and his crew are in as much danger as the people they are covering, and a good portion of the film is given over to the effort to just find a working signal to connect to the internet so that Chernov can send his footage to the outside world. Often he confronts people on the street who are fleeing from a bombed home or business. Sometimes they curse at him and call him a “whore,” but others understand: He has to show this to the world, so they talk to him and explain in horrifying detail the death or maiming of a loved one. Chernov shows the dead and mutilated bodies, which he doesn’t bother to edit—that will be done by the outside news media. “We keep filming,” he says during his typically hushed English narration, “and it just stays the same.” The carnage is especially distressing at a maternity hospital, where women are waiting to give birth. Many, along with their babies, die while doctors desperately try to save them. 

As Chernov explains at one point, Russian media tried to dismiss the footage by saying it was somehow staged, and you have to laugh at this ridiculous attempt at subversion of the truth. By its very nature, 20 Days in Mariupol defies critical analysis because it simply reveals what is happening without trying to uncomplicate the chaotic circumstances behind its creation. By that token, it is exhausting to watch, visceral in the most direct way, despite Chernov’s efforts to make it all coherent as a linear record of a historical event in the making. He also tries to contextualize what we are seeing, but if, like me, you find it hard to concentrate on the logistical and political ramifications of the attack because you’re despairing over the images, it only means you are watching it the way it was intended to be watched. You should be horrified and outraged. No other responses are valid. 

In English, Ukrainian and Russian. Opens April 26 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063).

20 Days in Mariupol home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2023 The Associated Press and WGBH Educational Foundation