Amnesia (2015)
Directed by Barbet Schroeder

Film Review

Barbet Schroeder's first directorial offering in seven years (following his ill-received thriller Inju) is a nostalgia piece which sees the director return to Ibiza, the location of his first film More (1969), for a thoughtful character study that probes the relationship between Germany's affluent present and its far from honourable past.  The sobering dichotomy is reflected in the two main characters - a reclusive old woman named Martha and a young musician named Jo - who, implausible as it may seem, develop a close and tender relationship in spite of their belonging to completely different worlds.  Jo is very much a product of the new Germany, but Martha lives in the past, unable to forgive her country for the horrors it unleashed on the world during the Second World War.  Martha's insistence that past atrocities should never pass from mankind's collective consciousness has a resonance with Alain Resnais's Hiroshima, mon amour (1959).

Amnesia, the film's title, alludes to a state of forgetfulness about Germany's past that Martha fanatically believes in but which turns out to be far from true.  Just because she bears the shame more than many of her compatriots doesn't mean that Germany does not still carry the scars of its Nazi past.  A standout (albeit ludicrously overdone) scene in which Jo's grandfather (Bruno Ganz) pummels Martha's naivety with some grim home truths helps to set the record straight, whilst reminding us that Germany's past is still very much a part of its present.  Schroeder was never the most subtle of filmmakers and sometimes his over-egged didacticism gets in the way of what might otherwise have been a powerful contemplative drama.  Fortunately, an uneven and occasionally complacent script is redeemed by strong performances from the two lead actors, Marthe Keller and Max Riemelt, helped by some alluring location photography from veteran cinematographer Luciano Tovoli.

Film Synopsis

Ibiza, at the start of the 1990s.  Jo is a twenty-year-old musician from Berlin who is keen to get involved with the electronic revolution that has only just got under way.  To get himself started, he intends to work as a disk jockey at the Amnesia nightclub.  One evening, Jo enters the life of Martha, a woman who has lived alone, in her home that overlooks the sea, for forty years.  Jo becomes fascinated by Martha's solitude and the two seemingly ill-matched people soon become friends.  Yet Jo is puzzled by the mysteries that surround Martha's solitary existence - the cello that she no longer plays, her native language which she refuses to speak...  As Jo draws her into the new world of techno music, Martha is about to shatter his certainties...