After the collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the Baltic Sea Island of Usedom, located in Pomerania and divided between Germany and Poland, suddenly became a melting pot of cultures and people hitherto undreamt of by the people who lived and worked there beforehand. In the wake of this, director Heinz Brinkmann, who was born in West Pomerania, made the 1993 documentary Usedom: Life on a German Island (unreleased in the United States), as something of a tourist-y exposé of the island’s charm. Twenty-five years later, he returned to the idea that the island might hold some fascination as a filmic subject, and now we have Usedom: A Clear View of the Sea, a reflective and idiosyncratic documentary sequel.
The film also arrives with the burden of defining the legacy of its maker. Brinkmann died in April 2019, after the documentary was released in Germany but well before it received distribution anywhere else. One can feel that a very different Brinkmann made the newer film, which was in production while the man was in his late sixties, than made the older one, when he was in his early forties. The people have changed, too, and a subtle hint of just how different they and their attitudes are arrives upon our realization of why the director interpolates a lot more footage from the earlier film than we’re anticipating: Usedom right after the Wall fell was a different place than it is now.
Brinkmann’s chosen style of documentary here is almost intentionally artless, with the director wandering around Usedom with a standard-definition camera, interviewing a few significant people here and there, and occasionally providing a slideshow of historical photos and archival footage (with sleepy narration provided by Hans-Uwe Bauer). It isn’t all that different from the type of shorter documentary one receives at a museum showcase, stretched twice over to reach the length of a feature. Even still, the director manages a degree of depth into this island, its people and the history that informs its culture that is appreciable and unexpected. It helps, too, that the interview subjects are generous about their history with and love for this place.
A hotel concierge recounts how she and her sailor husband, with her résumé in tow, came to this island on a whim to look for work, and now they live in contented comfort with a daughter attending school. The manager of the hotel misses his days working in the Middle East, but after years of searching for the right fit, he settled nicely into his position on Usedom and regrets nothing. Another man has built something of a fish empire on the island, having capitalized on the promise of the strait that runs through the island city, splitting it into the tourism section of Swindemunde and the industrial Świnoujście.
There are other interview subjects here, some with whom we spend a lot of time and others who simply pass through the narrative that eventually forms: that of warring ideas of what the island’s utility or function truly is. The mayor of Heringsdorf (where Brinkmann was born and raised) laments at the fact that no one sought the advice of the surrounding cities to build a gas terminal on the Świnoujście side of Usedom. He fears the retribution of terrorist activity in a region still rife with geopolitical conflict. Others disagree, such as a major developer who believes that the intersection of tourism and industry will spell success, even if one of those institutions fails.
Brinkmann’s intentionally artless approach does mean that the trajectory of the documentary is without shape for a lot of its runtime. In all, though, Usedom: A Clear View of the Sea achieves what a worthy documentary is meant to achieve. It introduces us to an interesting topic and sympathetic people.
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