Tran­sit

The guy at the bar looks anx­ious when French police vans scream by out­side. It’s a not-unfa­mil­iar scene across today’s Europe and beyond, yet as our pre­sumed ille­gal migrant chats to the pal beside him, their shared news is that Paris is about to be sealed off, polit­i­cal fugi­tives are in dan­ger, and the best bet is to head for Mar­seille and ship out across the Atlantic.

How is it, then, that a sto­ry set in our own time appears to be stuck dur­ing World War Two? Look more close­ly, and the absence of smart­phones, flatscreen TVs and cur­rent news media flag up writer/​director Chris­t­ian Petzold’s most dar­ing styl­is­tic gam­bit yet.

His two pre­vi­ous offer­ings, Bar­bara and Phoenix, showed how Germany’s trou­bled recent his­to­ry still leaves traces on cir­cum­scribed lives, yet here he’s not just join­ing the dots between then and now, he’s cre­at­ing an auda­cious over­lay where past and present co-exist. It’s not quite as blunt as pro­claim­ing that yesterday’s Holo­caust is today’s migrant cri­sis, yet Pet­zold is cer­tain­ly keen for us to con­sid­er the com­mon­al­i­ties for those unfor­tu­nates on the receiv­ing end.

Escap­ing Paris for the south coast is step one for Franz Rogowski’s Georg, the haunt­ed char­ac­ter wor­ry­ing over his espres­so at the Paris comp­toir. Ger­man fas­cist forces are sweep­ing across France and he needs to keep one step ahead. A com­mu­nist-sym­pa­this­ing author’s sui­cide, how­ev­er, leaves him in pos­ses­sion of the dead man’s asy­lum offer from the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment – an unmiss­able oppor­tu­ni­ty, pro­vid­ing he also has a let­ter of tran­sit from the US con­sulate in Mar­seille, since his ship docks in New York en route.

Secur­ing the right doc­u­men­ta­tion soon involves a Kaf­ka-esque tus­sle with inter­na­tion­al bureau­cra­cy, while the allur­ing pres­ence of Paula Beer’s mys­tery woman on the sun-splashed streets of the old port city adds a roman­tic fris­son which will only get more com­pli­cat­ed. As the lost, the lone­ly, the hope­ful and hope­less con­gre­gate in Marseille’s back­street hotels and bistros, Petzold’s film cap­tures the des­o­late expectan­cy of lives in the bal­ance, peo­ple caught between pre­vi­ous iden­ti­ties they need to expunge and new for­tunes yet to be forged.

It’s a les­son in empa­thy for the state­less, and yet for all its infer­ences, both his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary, there’s a depth of yearn­ing in its heart that’s not so far from Bog­a­rt and Bergman in Casablan­ca. That Pet­zold man­ages to keep so many plates spin­ning is remark­able indeed, and while the result is more poised and cere­bral than swooni­ly sen­ti­men­tal, in Rogowski’s hes­i­tant decen­cy and Beer’s dam­aged seduc­tive­ness he has two riv­et­ing cen­tral performances.

After clos­ing the action on a exquis­ite grace note, there’s anoth­er sur­prise in the end cred­its, reveal­ing that the script was adapt­ed from not­ed Ger­man-Jew­ish author Anna Seghers’ 1944 nov­el of the same name, draw­ing on her own wartime expe­ri­ences flee­ing Paris and reach­ing Amer­i­ca on a ship out of Mar­seille. Petzold’s dar­ing treat­ment takes a lit­tle get­ting your head round, but its endeav­our serves as a telling reminder that her sto­ry remains brac­ing­ly relevant.