Director: Burhan Qurbani
Starring: Welket Bungue, Albrecht Schuch, Jella Haase, Annabelle Mandeng, Joacjim Krol
Distributor: German Film Festival
Runtime: 183 mins. Reviewed in May 2021

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Rating notes: Unclassified

Berlin Alexanderplatz, by Alfred Doblin, is one of Germany’s classic 20th century novels. It was published in 1929, filmed in 1931. It is a story of Berlin and Germany between the wars, before the rise of national socialism and Hitler as Chancellor. In 1980, it became a 14-part television series directed by one of the star directors of the time, Rainer Werner Fassbender. This was the time of the divided Germany, adapting the basic outline of the novel, and its characters, to the period.

This version, running for three hours, brings narrative and characters into the 21st-century.

The central character is Francis (in the original novel, a prisoner being released from jail). This time (and the film opens with two people struggling in deeper waters), Francis is a refugee crossing the Mediterranean, escaping from Guinee-Bissau, arriving in Berlin, no documentation, some guilt about the drowning of his partner during the crossing, labouring in a vast tunnel engineering project, makeshift accommodation with the fellow workers.

This picture of African refugees and their plight, coming to Europe, trying to survive, is part of today’s headlines. It is all the more convincing with the strong presence throughout the film, substantial, in the performance of Welket Bungue, a Portuguese-Guinean actor-director.

The voice-over tells us that Francis is a good man, wants to be good, but experiences difficulties, temptation, succumbing, reforming, a comment that life doesn’t seem to want him to be the good man he desires.

The film is divided into five chapters, with Francis arriving in Germany, his becoming involved in the world of Berlin drug dealing, gangsters and burglaries, falling foul of the dealers, hospitalised, friends finding him accommodation with a young prostitute…

The other main character in the film is Reinhold (Albrecht Schuch), a sinister and wily dealer, manifesting ever more manic, even demented behaviour, a tempter, a manipulator, Mephistopheles. (And one might see some intimations of Othello, Francis is Othello, Reinhold as Iago.)

Over the three hours, we are immersed in this Berlin world, especially in clubs and some cabaret (echoes of Berlin in the 1920s and 30s). We have sympathy for Francis. We regret his lapses and bad choices – but, ultimately, he is a man of principle who will be able to survive whatever the Berlin of the future brings him.

Peter Malone MSC