Popular reviews

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  Review by Ethan ❄️ 3

  People of letterboxd I am respectfully asking y'all to wake up because you have been sleeping on Christian Petzold for over a decade now and the man deserves some recognition.

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  Review by Mario Melendez ★★★½ 1

  After having been left with that good feeling that Undine left me with, I have decided to embark again to see as well as talk about another film work of director Christian Petzold. I already knew Jerichow but I didn't remember that he had directed it and I had overlooked it... Until now.

  In it, we are told about the beaten path and how the fateful encounter between three characters takes place. Thomas, young and strong, has suffered a dishonorable discharge from the army. Ali, an affable Turkish businessman, has fallen on hard times but now his main concern is to make sure his bar employees don't cheat him. Laura, an attractive woman with a dark past, seems to find…

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  Review by Jack ★★★★

  Christian Petzold’s subtly seductive Jerichow is a cold, masterfully paced spin on the conventional love triangle that slowly unfolds in broad daylight. A striking noir-ish narrative full of pure tension and discomfort that Petzold executes so masterfully, with an exquisite performance from Nina Hoss to boot. Petzold continues to floor me with each film I watch. I’ll never understand how he’s able to end a film so perfectly!

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  Review by Austin Dale ★★★★

  My whole "WATCH EVERYTHING PETZOLD HAS EVER DONE" project is going swimmingly, thank you very much! I already hated capitalism but now I'm suspicious of everyone and I never want to fall in love.

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★½

  Jerichow is Petzold's most overt rethorical movie with every point underlined time and again and its Postman Always Rings Twiceself conscious almost adaptation couldn't be more clear, it don't quite have the mystery his best work can suggest, but it is remarkable strong sense of dissafection for all three parties registers strongly and he manages to find a very chilling balance between three leads. The scenes between Fürmann and Sözer are pretty great with the latter delivering one of the strongest performances in his ouvre.

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  Review by theriverjordan ★★★½

  Straight from the Christian Petzold school of: do people intentionally make horrible choices that ruin their own lives? Or does society force people into making horrible choices that ruin their own lives? 

  Either way, everyone in this movie is an absolute train wreck, but Petzold knows how to put a frame together so well that they’re still so pretty to watch.

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  Review by Arthur Pontara ★★★½

  🇺🇸 In English:

  Love, when you get fear in it, it's not love any more. It's hate.
  - The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain

  Inspired by James M. Cain's novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, Jerichow develops the love triangle between Laura, an unhappy woman married to a man who constantly oppresses her, and Thomas, an ex-soldier undergoing a process of social reintegration. In Christian Petzold's adaptation, in order to obtain the inheritance money and consequently Laura's complete freedom, the couple plans the death of the oppressive husband while trying to maintain a perfect alibi.

  In this context, Petzold's minimalist cinema brings a spontaneity to the plot that immerses us intimately in the characters' drama, largely due to…

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  Review by Philippe Leão ★★★★★

  Jerichow talvez seja o filme que, na filmografia de Petzold, encara o melodrama de forma mais frontal. Há na simplicidade pela qual o diretor costumeiramente encara sua imagem uma tensão (nos olhares) que se aprofunda e até as vias de um amor improvável, onde as emoções exageradas são exibidas sem medo, mas com o princípio realista ao qual o melodrama é capaz de se adaptar.

  Há um caráter voyeurístico no filme que Petzold se aproveita bem para intensificar a relação entre os personagens, mas também a polarização moral. O marido, no básico da estruturação do filme é aquele que impede que o amor seja concretizado, mas Petzold vai testando pouco a pouco nosso preconceito acerca dos acasos que nos surgem. O turco é vilão, o chinês rouba o bar, os imigrantes estão sempre querendo passar a perna, mas idôneos são os alemães? Qual o custo dessa paixão?

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  Review by Sean Gilman ★★★★½

  Wrote about this for InRo's Petzold Retro:

  Jerichow isn’t really an adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice, at least not any more than Transit is an adaptation of Casablanca or Undine an adaptation of The Little Mermaid. Christian Petzold doesn’t translate familiar stories to the screen so much as he climbs deep inside of them and digs out their hearts, smuggling crime melodrama into the quiet rhythms and forms of 21st century art house style. He strips the source material of all its baggage: James M. Cain’s brutal noir language; the Hollywood glamour of Lana Turner and James Garfield’s iconic performances in the 1946 Tay Garnett adaptation; the perverse suspense of the “will they get away with it?” thriller…

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  Review by Philippe Leão ★★★★½

  Mais uma vez é preciso dizer que Petzold parece conhecer o íntimo das problemáticas que permeiam seu país. O diretor envolve suas narrativas em torno de macro-acontecimentos, mas aponta suas câmeras para o espírito de seus personagens.

  Aqui temos a diáspora turca na Alemanha e um veterano na guerra Afegã-Soviética. Ambos constroem uma amizade que, porém, é posta a prova pelo romance em que o segundo estabelece com Laura (Nina Hoss). Laura é uma mulher amargurada, presa em seu relacionamento com o turco.

  Em uma cena em específico podemos traduzir em imagem aquilo que Petzold faz muito bem, com uma simplicidade ímpar. Nina Hoss anda de costas, a câmera expõe sua nuca e, passo a passo, encontra com seu amante. Essas sutilezas potencializam o íntimo, o espírito que permeia a obra do diretor alemão.

  A resolução para os problemas parecem nos anunciar a tragédia de forma linear, frontal. E é, mas as escolhas são outras.

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  Review by ashley ★★★★

  christian petzold here are my keys

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  Review by maneleeo ★★★★

  I was really thinking about diving in on the rest of Christian Petzold's filmography and here it came this Mubi special on him.

  It took a while to get it, but just like "Undine", "Jerichow" is retelling of a story on modern Germany. This time, it's "The Postman Always Rings Twice". Having seen Visconti's version, and also Tay Garnett's and Bob Rafelson's one, I was quite familiar with the cinematic adaptation of this story. However, Petzold brough german roots to the story and also made it his, twisting and turning what we know, creating a subtle, quiet and impactful film that is a great addition to the catalogue of one of Europe's most proeminent filmmakers of the 21st century.