Christian Schwochow’s 1970s-set period drama explores the Cold War division of the country, whose legacy is still felt within Germany today.
The film’s protagonist is Nelly Senff (Jordis Triebel), a chemist and single mother living in East Berlin, who one day with the aid of an accomplice and some false papers sets out with her young son to journey to asylum in the West. Before crossing the border, she is subjected to a humiliating interrogation and strip-search by officious East German border guards, an ordeal that seems more rooted in spite than anything else. The audience is thus primed for their escape to the west to bring relief from this everyday oppression.
However, the film quickly shifts into a portrayal of the daily life of an Eastern Bloc refugee, with overbearing government reproducing the conditions they previously lived under. Assigned to a “reception centre” for defectors, Nelly and her son Alexej are confined to a run-down apartment in a bare concrete block house that resembles the city they fled. Nelly is caught in a seemingly endless bureaucratic maze, attempting to gain the various forms and signatures which will grant her full citizenship. In the current political climate, in which most migration into Europe is treated as economic in nature and viewed with suspicion and outright hostility, this is a bracing reminder that mistreatment of immigrants has always been with us.
Along with this she must deal with further “debriefings” from the Western authorities, who are suspicious of her story. A cloud hangs over Nelly in the form of her former lover, a married Russian scientist who died in mysterious circumstances. Her interrogators latch onto this in the belief that she can grant them valuable intelligence from behind the Iron Curtain. Nelly’s personal sense of betrayal and abandonment becomes fully entangled with the casual dishonesty and manipulation of the spy game. As the questioning continues, her relationship with American intelligence agent John Bird (Jacky Ido) becomes more and more ambiguous, as both parties become unmoored from their standard roles and try to work out their feelings for one another.
The film veers between several different plot threads and thematic concerns, unsure on which one it wants to commit to.
Nelly finds a few friends within the centre, including a political defector named Hans (Alexander Scheer) who becomes a father figure of sorts to Alexej. The young boy, played in an engagingly unselfconscious performance by Tristan Gobel, is still a true believer, wearing his Young Pioneers uniform to school and repeating the stories of anti-fascist resistance he was taught. This improvised family unit holds together for strength against the privations of the refugee centre and the spectre of Nelly’s dead lover, never seen onscreen but hanging over all the characters, like the East Germany they supposedly left behind.
The film veers between several different plot threads and thematic concerns, unsure on which one it wants to commit to. Depending on the scene, it can be a thrillerish Cold War spy story, or a romantic drama about two stateless people finding solace in each other, or a portrayal of paranoia . The various elements pull against each other, with only Triebel’s performance as Nelly, by turns hard-bitten and vulnerable, to hold it together.
As German filmmakers explore the the division of their country, a trend emerges of presenting the personal stories of people caught up in the times. Films such as GOOD-BYE LENIN or THE LIVES OF OTHERS look behind the larger political and historical events to focus on individuals. WEST follows in the footsteps of these films, while not quite reaching their heights.