The docu-Drama “Brecht” by Director Heinrich Breloer, was premiered at the Berlinale and is now coming into German and French television. The Film offers a new perspective on the Poet Bertolt Brecht.
“I believe that we all have different images of Brecht around with us,” says Director Heinrich Breloer – the is certainly hardly speak. At the Berlinale in February, the Director had presented his own views on Brecht for the first time. On the big screen the world premiere. Now Brecht is coming “” in France to the cinema. In Germany, the Film at the broadcaster “Arte”, and to see a little later in the case of the ARD is one of the television events of the year 2019.
Brecht – the fictional and real on the canvas
Director Heinrich Breloer (along with his 2013 late colleague, Horst Königstein), the inventor of the so-called docu-drama, a now well-established hybrid of feature film and documentary. Breloer has taken it in the past few years in this Genre to some of the championship and often celebrated and excellent films – political, historical and cultural figures and events.
After the Berlinale Premiere: Director Breloer and his two Brecht-actor Tom Schilling and Burkhart television appearances
The docu-Drama is of professionals – if it is successful precisely because of its “open Form” praised: Show these movies but the “reality” behind the fiction. Or, in other words: they enrich the film document by means of a additional playful level. It was, of course, suggest that Heinrich Breloer in the German poet Bertolt Brecht.
Brecht’s theatrical vision: Against the art of Illusion
Also, Brecht was an advocate of an “open” artistic and designed stage culture: The audience should not weigh in the safety of an Illusion. “So, like Brecht, makes the actor on the ramp, and step ramp to talk about their roles, and thus the Illusion breaks, so there is this distancing also, if I break the game with the documentation,” says the film’s Director about the content and the Form of his new film.
Tom Schilling plays the young Brecht, Leonie Benesch plays Elisabeth Hauptmann
The viewer’s experience of Brecht in the first part of the three-hour docu-drama during the Weimar Republic, in which he rises to be a Star of the German theatre: first as a young lad, at the Gymnasium unpatriotic essays to the Best, then as a wild, young Poet-genius who is celebrating with the play “Baal” and the theatre as an emotion machine.
“The Threepenny Opera” was to the theatre classic
Then Brecht is presented as an already established writer for the stage: as the author of the plays “drums in the night” and “The Threepenny Opera”. The eventually evolved to the biggest theatrical success of the Weimar Republic. At the end of the first part of “Brecht” is the date 1933, the coming to power of the national socialists. Brecht is on the way to his first exile to Prague.
Burkhart television appearances shines as the older Brecht
The second part of the film shows the Poet in the early post-war Germany: In the GDR, Brecht of the a is celebrated as a great Innovator, the other with-sceptic clothing look eyed. That Brecht has been doing in both political Camps of friends and enemies, with works of Heinrich Breloer inconclusive: in the case of his admirers and the audience on the one hand, and the GDR bureaucrats, and guardians of the socialist unity thinking on the other side.
Controversial political figure in the events of the day: Bertolt Brecht
A man, all can agree, is not Brecht his life, at any time and in any place. Also in the market-oriented Federal Republic of the postwar period, there was both a promoter as well as a strong Front against the Poet who regarded himself always as a “Communist”.
Adele Neuhauser shines in the role of Helene Weigel here as mother Courage in Breloers Film
What is Heinrich Breloers two-piece also highlights a brave cinematic retelling, the private side of the poet, Playwright and political activist. Like a string of pearls on the theme “Brecht and the women” can be found throughout the 180 minutes of the movie. The seal Genie is in the process of Breloer quite a critical light – as a Woman-despiser, but as a woman friend who cares about morality and compassion but little.
Film theme: women at his side
“Friends and co-workers, who have seen the Film, my,” Heinrich Breloer “that need to be thought through again and again at #MeToo. It was almost inevitable.” One can vote confidently. Elisabeth Hauptmann, Ruth Berlau, Marianne Zoff, Paula Banhölzer, Regine Lutz, and of course, the actress Helene Weigel – all of them accompanied the Poet for years of his life. They often lived in isolation with him. And they all suffered probably more or less violently under Brecht.
A sceptical view of the time: Bertolt Brecht
That Breloer not turn away the view, but instead, both of which are elegantly linked together – work, life, and love, and poetic Finesse is one of the Strengths of the film. Nevertheless, the Film “Brecht might not like” to each. Some of the views of the Private is, perhaps, to intimate, to appear in person – so many years after the death of the poet.
Other, it should be just right, that Brecht is brought to a little from the Base. Like the Director said? “I believe that we all have different images of Brecht around with us.”
“Brecht” is on the 22.03. on Arte and on 27.03. to see in the ARD, scheduled to start at 20:15.