A good ending can smooth over a lot. If a film has a conclusion that feels deeply satisfying – a strange cocktail of surprise and inevitability – then the viewer is quicker to forgive any potential missteps that were made in order to get there. There is also a danger of an ending being too good, as such a terrific final scene might overshadow all the build-up to get there. Phoenix, the greatest film by German filmmaker Christian Petzold, arguably has an ending that is too good. It is usually all anyone remembers about the film, a postwar drama set in a smoldering Berlin where cynicism and despair are the pervasive moods. There are touches of noir in Phoenix, although it is less of a mystery and more of a melodrama where everyone is too shell-shocked to say what they really think, or feel. By ending on a note of raw emotion, even beauty, it is a welcome salve for the wringer that Petzold puts us through. Yes, the ending is fantastic, and yet it would not be satisfying without the patient, inexorable buildup to it.
When we first meet Nelly (Nina Hoss), she has bandages covering her face. An American border guard asks to see what’s under them during a routine crossing, and he immediately regrets the decision. A Jewish concentration camp survivor, we learn that Nelly underwent facial reconstructive surgery from a bullet wound. We never see her “old” face except in pictures, so we have little sense of the surgery’s success, and Nelly carries herself with the trauma of a survivor. She has a thousand-yard stare, and her stiff body movement suggests he expects a Nazi guard to scream at her at any given moment. Hoss’ performance may seem exaggerated, especially since the other characters in the film are more at ease with themselves, but we come to realize that ease is a kind of lie. The central theme of Phoenix is how deep that delusion goes.
Eager to restart her old life, Nelly wants nothing more than to reunite with her husband Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), who did not accompany her to the camps. Something strange happens, however, when she finally goes to see him: he does not recognize her, saying he looks uncannily like Nelly but not quite there (her hair is grey, bags still under her eyes from the surgery). But more importantly, she does not correct his mistake. She tells him her name is Esther, and he cooks up a scheme to defraud the government in order to nab her inheritance. Like many of his other films, Petzold does not spell out what his characters are thinking, which makes us only more curious about what they want. Why does Nelly create this elaborate ruse for Johnny? How come he cannot see what is right in front of him? These questions get answered by the end of the film, just in ways neither of them would expect.
The look and atmosphere to the film is not unlike Casablanca, although Petzold shoots in color that can be downright vibrant in the right moment. His vision of Berlin, a husk of its former self, is like a crater where survivors seek refuge through vices, a kind of escape from the reality of what they just endured. There are scenes of Hoss wandering through bombed out communities, barely comprehending what happened to her old neighborhoods, while the jazz club The Phoenix – where the film gets its title, and where Nelly/Johnny worked a singer/pianist duo – has the same kind of seductive look and loose morals that you might find at Rick’s gin joint.
Not everyone is happy with this postwar arrangement: Nelly’s friend Lene (Nina Kunzendorf) looks around Berlin and only sees death – she feels deeply unwelcome, and the elimination of Nazis are little solace to Jews who are barely tolerated. Lene wants to go to Palestine, the only place she thinks could be her home, whereas Nelly is not ready. This subplot is a clunkier part of Phoenix, a way to consider a different kind of postwar survivor’s guilt, and yet it resolves in a way that is crucial to understanding the impasse between Nelly and Johnny. It is through Lene that Nelly comes to understand a deeper kind of loyalty, as well as the sting of betrayal.
All these feelings build toward the ending, a downright bizarre situation that starts with bitter irony and ends on a note of hard-earned triumph. Johnny stages a “reunion” for himself and Esther – who is “pretending” to be Nelly – at a train station. You might recall that train stations are among the most romantic settings in movies, a place where lovers say tearful goodbyes or reunited after long periods apart. Petzold weaponizes the setting against us, then further turns the screws when Johnny and Nelly perform a small concert for Johnny’s friends. We do not fully understand their Nazi sympathies, and yet Petzold films them with quiet judgment, making them look as snobby as they are vulgar. In a moment defined by artificiality and self-deception, something authentic starts to happen. Nelly begins to sing.
At first, she sings the jazz standard “Swing Low” nervously, as if any connection to her past life is too painful. But then, Johnny and the others be damned, she starts to sing for herself. Her voice lifts, and she finds a soulfulness that no one else, not even Lene, could see in her. It is at this point when Johnny looks to Nelly’s forearm and sees the serial number tattooed there, irrefutable proof he’s been an ass this whole time. In fact, his misunderstanding is even worse than that, and even though Hoss’ singing is remarkable, Zehrfeld’s blank, devastated face is where Phoenix finds its true power. Nelly endured unspeakable trauma and found herself on the other side. It is Johnny and his friends, “good Germans” who harbor the misconception that things can go back to normal, that must undergo a deeper kind of healing. Like its title, Phoenix ends on a note of resurrection. A new Nelly forms from the ashes of postwar Berlin, and this time, she cannot take her husband or countrymen with her.
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