What’s so funny about acclaimed auteur Christian Petzold? A lot, it turns out
Christian Petzold is no stranger to the Berlin International Film Festival. Over the years, several of the German director’s movies have unspooled at the prestigious international gala, to great praise.
But when the lights went down this February for the premiere of his latest, the bittersweet character study “Afire,” he was greeted by an unusual reaction.
“The whole screening hall is laughing,” Petzold marvels over Zoom, quickly clarifying, “and they’re laughing with the movie, not about the movie. This was a new experience for me.”
The filmmaker behind some of the most incisive character studies of the last decade — the Nina Hoss-starring political thriller “Barbara,” the “Vertigo”-like post-Holocaust psychodrama “Phoenix,” the refugee chronicle “Transit” — has been celebrated for his drum-tight narratives, thematic complexity and investigations of identity. But his work has rarely been overtly funny. Until now.
Although it explores the anxiety of global warming, “Afire” is mainly a tart comedy about artistic pretension and male insecurity centered on Leon (Thomas Schubert), a haughty, socially awkward novelist on summer holiday with his friend Felix (Langston Uibel). Leon is working on his second book, which he hopes will build on the success of his smash breakthrough. But storm clouds are swirling, both figuratively and literally: The friends’ getaway is intruded on by both Nadja (Petzold regular Paula Beer), an enigmatic free spirit who’s also staying at their vacation house, and a raging forest fire in the distance that threatens to creep closer.
Oh, and one other thing: Leon’s forthcoming literary masterpiece sounds dreadful. (Its title? “Club Sandwich.”)
The romantic and environmental upheaval that ensues doesn’t, on its surface, seem like fertile comedic ground — which is what Petzold thought as well when he wrote the script. Then came the first read-through with his cast.
“When we did the table read, there was just nonstop laughter,” actor Schubert says during a separate interview. “He was really surprised by that, because he didn’t necessarily see it that way. At the same time, he was relieved because we’d found the right tonality for the story.”
Schubert, a longtime fan of Petzold, had been slightly intimidated about meeting the director. But those concerns faded quickly. “He’s very open and lighthearted — and he loves to tell dumb jokes,” says Schubert. “I’ve never met a person that knows more jokes than he does. ... You always find him at the center of a party, just talking.”
Speaking to The Times, Petzold exudes a jovial, animated demeanor, an energetic state inspired, in part, by the fact that this is the first interview he’s given since being sick for a week with strep throat. (“I’m talking too much,” he needlessly apologizes at one point. “Seven days of loneliness in bed.”) The idea that he’s made his first comedy pleases him. But although “Afire” may surprise his admirers, he claims he’s always had a lighter side. It’s just finally come out in his work.
“It has something to do with my education at the Berlin film school,” he suggests. “The beginning of the ’90s, when I was a student there, we were surrounded by German cinema which is based on comedy — really bad comedy, I must say. ... So our reaction was, we’ll make very hard movies, very melodramatic movies. But my whole life, I was a fanatic for musicals and comedies. I love Jacques Demy, ‘Singin’ in the Rain,’ all the Howard Hawks movies. I like how Hawks’ movies, the dialogues are like fights — they’re boxing. You learn so many things about space, about timing, about rhythm.”
Just as Petzold didn’t realize how funny “Afire” was until his actors showed him, he also wasn’t fully cognizant that Leon’s pathetic attempts to present himself as a serious artiste were, really, a unconscious plumbing of Petzold’s own early career struggles, when he followed up his well-received debut with a strained dud, 1996’s “Cuba Libre.”
Did that realization change his relationship to Leon? “I think mostly you have to hate this character, because you hate yourself for this behavior,” Petzold responds. But he was ultimately able to view Leon with compassion, grateful to no longer be like that callow, young misanthrope chasing fame and accolades, making himself look ridiculous as a result.
The process of dreaming up and completing “Afire” (the story first occurred to him as he was battling COVID-19 in 2020) has left him in a reflective state, pondering his past. His recent bout of strep throat reminds him of his coronavirus-addled mind-set back then.
“When you are ill and in bed, you remember all the bad things you have done in your life,” Petzold says. “The things when you were 13.”
He had a mischievous streak as a kid. “I feel a little bit ashamed — I was the clown,” he says. “I was always lying.” At school, he’d trick classmates into thinking he’d seen movies that were too old for them to watch in the theater, like “The French Connection,” inventing on the fly what that crime film was about based on a few publicity stills. His friends never realized the deception, enthralled by his ability to weave a tall tale.
“Later when I saw ‘The French Connection,’ I was astonished that I was totally right,” he declares, laughing.
Harun Farocki, Petzold’s late friend and frequent writing partner, often encouraged him to make their scripts funnier. But Petzold always resisted. “He was one of the funniest guys I ever met,” Petzold says of Farocki, who died in 2014. “He loved jokes. He loved comedy. But when he [wrote] a comedy scene with me, the scenes were really bad. ... I had to cut them out.”
To illustrate his point, Petzold references a film he saw recently. “‘Silver Linings Playbook’ is a fantastic comedy, but there’s no jokes — there’s just situations,” he explains. “This is something Harun [couldn’t] do — he’s always writing jokes. It’s like if someone is on stage telling jokes. This is not cinema.”
When Petzold was sick, he recalled his childhood summers and how summer in the movies often represents new possibilities. “Afire” has the spirit of Éric Rohmer, the French filmmaker of masterful, often libidinous conversation pieces whose work Petzold revisited during his illness. But it’s telling that Leon, obtusely obsessed with his disastrous book, can’t fully embrace the amorous potential of his surroundings. He’s an observer rather than a participant, someone always on the outside looking in at the meaningful bonds those around him are forming. It’s a feeling Petzold understands from his bygone summers.
“I love the summer,” he says, but adds, “I never was in Spain or at the sea — I was always in the German Democratic Republic. It was a summer without sand, without sails, without good food, without Coca-Cola.”
And yet, it sounds like he wouldn’t have traded it for the world. “There were kisses, there was dancing,” he says fondly. “There was shyness and shame.”
And there was a girl. “I had a summer love,” he confides. “I remember her always when I’m ill. But I don’t want to meet her again. I remember, three years ago when I [was scouting locations], I was in this region in Germany where my summer love from 1979 is living. I’m looking in the telephone book — I saw her name. Then I stopped everything.”
Why didn’t he try to make contact with her? Petzold prefers the memory to the reality. “You have to start dreaming,” he says elliptically. “If you are always [concerned about] reality, everything will die. So it’s better not to call her.”
The latest movie from the German writer-director Christian Petzold (“Phoenix,” “Transit”) is a smart, smoldering drama about a woodland retreat gone awry.
Delivering his first crowd-pleaser — albeit a sobering, thoughtful one — does not appear to have emboldened Petzold to continue pursuing comedy. His next project, he says, is a “German kind of horror movie.” Even so, the warmth of that roaring laughter for “Afire” in Berlin has stayed with him.
“Melodrama makes you lonely in the audience,” Petzold says. “Comedies, you are a group — you are the collective. This was the first time I was part of a collective with a movie [of] my own.”
Petzold smiles. “I’m not Preston Sturges,” he says. “But that feeling when you are not alone — when you are safe in a group — that’s fantastic.”
In “Afire,” the world burns, but the possibility of renewal emerges. Even the foolish, self-absorbed Leon eventually gets a shot at redemption and a hope that he can change his ways. By looking back, Petzold has moved forward — his sense of humor very much intact.
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