Yella (2007)

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Although the way this film will end is probably there from the beginning anyone who complains about that is missing the point. The big pluses are the location, the atmosphere and the wonderful leading lady who was totally convincing as a bullied wife. Even viewed from the back she maintained her somewhat cowed attitude. I liked the hint at an unknown dimension of the spirit as she gained her freedom from her horrible husband. I also liked that the world Yella found herself in was strange and alienating but she adapted quickly because she was used to being pushed around. It's another film that demonstrates how much wiser and more satisfying European films are.

This is an attempt at an interpretation to a movie which I consider a highlight amongst the movies released in the last couple of years. Since an interpretation implies spoilers, my text is full of them. However, given the chance that I am wrong, the spoilers are dissolving by reading. Therefore, best read this text after you have watched "Yella".It is a gruesome picture that we can see in older European movies: The farmer grabs a ax and cuts off the head of the poor chicken. Whenever such a situation is portrayed truthfully, then one sees that the trunk of the chicken still flutters around for a good bit of time, before the heart stops and gives the final release out of life. All this you do not see in this movie, thanks the heaven, but the question arises what happens in the brain when the body is dead. Is it true that the death of the heart blows out the last gleaming of brain-activities, or is it rather so, that there are relays in the brain that gather all the present information together, not according to the logic of logic, but to the logic of our dreams, everything unreeling in enormous speed until the brain stops because the last feedbacks from the heart-streams who are still in the body, are ebbed away? After Yella is more or less hijacked by her former husband, he wants to kill him- and herself by driving with the car over a bridge and precipitating into the river. However, we see, how first Yella and then Ben come out, exhausted but alive. Interestingly enough, shortly after, Yella reaches the train that she wanted to take for getting to her new job: Not only was the place of the accident far away from the railway-station, but neither did she loose her high-heels in the water nor are her stockings dirty. The three "clue-men" she meets in and around her new job belong to the same type of men. In the hotel, nobody knows about the reservation of her room that she had made some days ago. In a conference with business partners she knows like a psychic that these partners are betrayers and have even profited from the bankruptcy of her husband. We also hear three times a noise like from an airplane after the cry of a raven. Every time the scene changes, like the acts in a stage play. Although it turns out that the manager who gave her the new job, has been fired meanwhile, she manages to jump from part-time job to part-time job in order to prove her that she is capable to manage her life without the "help" of her husband. However, when the film ends, one sees almost the same scenery as at the beginning, after the car with her and her husband crashed into the river. But there is now just one thing: Both Yella and Ben are dead. Obviously, this film by Christian Petzold is the attempt to reconstruct the fragile time between a lethal accident and the death, so-to-say a mental geography of the never-land between beginning and end of death. This is so fascinatingly done in this movie, that my recommendation is unlimited.

The story can be considered as simple as it gets I guess. The main character, Yella, tries to break away from her husband who is in a desperate state also due to a failed business. While he keeps stalking her, in an attempt to get a job and life of her own she teams up with a venture capital negotiator, who unfortunately does some not exactly legal side business on his own. As he's about to be exposed, the story comes to a crisis when she tries to support him with a blackmailing scheme.So while the core story is pretty straight forward, it's really the execution which sets this film apart. More specifically, this film succeeds in creating a real atmosphere through minimalistic dialog and camera work dominated by long still and slow panning shots, beautiful lighting and colors contrasting toned down reds and blues, and meticulous sound work which puts you right into the middle of things.The world created here is one of profound dissociation, where at each moment people seem to be able to relate to each other but can't quite, as everybody is just pursuing his own goals not freely but rather desperately driven and brutally exploitative in consequence.To support that atmosphere, the film also sports a couple of "magical" stunts which look like an attempt to give it a metaphysical touch. And especially the ending seems to put all past events into a context which wouldn't live up to the tension immediately preceding it. In fact, I found it a bit disappointing on first viewing myself, but it made sense on the second one when I realized that the film doesn't seek a closure which it couldn't satisfyingly present anyway.Altogether, I'd consider this truly great cinema. It likely won't appeal that much to a viewer who's still fine with run of the mill Hollywood cinema and TV shows, which basically reassemble the same material over and over again thanks to professional writing combined with lack of inspiration and present them in always the same ways, over edited, over color processed, over acted, over scored, over everything. Audiences on the other hand who can e.g. appreciate Russian or Japanese classics will find here a truly original addition to class contemporary cinema I'd say.

Petzold is a very controlled and composed film-maker. In this film, as in GESPENSTER, he uses this almost forensic calm and diurnal realism to explore metaphysical issues. So this film, which ostensibly takes place in the aggressive financial world of mergers and acquisitions, is also a film about death, the soul, and guilt. It is a great challenge to look at these intangible themes through the prism of a very tangible, concrete world - but this Petzold does achieve, with beautifully composed and controlled imagery, and even a nice line in wry, ironic humour. There are some great performances in the film - they draw you part of the way in, but nevertheless there is still some distance between viewer and film. This maybe results in a slightly cold viewing experience, but the film has stayed with me long after its end - it is a complex and highly rewarding work, if mainly in retrospect.