I’m a huge fan of Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls (1962), so how could I not be interested in a recent German film that was supposedly inspired by that enduring cult classic? Yella (2007) is the third film by writer/director Christian Petzold and it won two awards at the Berlin Fim Festival and four Lolas at the Germany Academy Awards (aka: Deutscher Filmpreis). Lola is Germany’s version of Oscar, named in honor of three German actresses: Marlena Dietrich (who played Lola Lola in The Blue Angel), Barbara Sukowa (playing the titular character in Fassbinder’s Lola), and Franka Potente (Run, Lola, Run). In Yella, Nina Hoss, playing the title character, definitely earns her Lola for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role by carrying the film from beginning to end and being in almost every scene – keeping our interest all the way as she reveals many different and surprising dimensions to her character.

We first see Yella on a train returning to Wittenberge, located in former East Germany and just northwest of Berlin on the banks of the Elbe river. She has been offered an accounting job in Hanover, and is returning to this small and depressed town to say goodbye to her father. Also there to meet her is Ben, a pestering ex-husband who seems love-sick and despondent. Ben is persistent and shows up later on Yella’s father’s doorstep to offer her a car-ride to the train station. As they are crossing the river he drives off the bridge, crashing the car into the water. Amazingly enough, both Yella and Ben seem to survive, and pull themselves to the muddy bank. Ben collapses. Yella still has a train to catch, and she does.

Viewers familiar with Carnival of Souls will already know that things are not quite what they seem. Those same viewers should not seek Yella out with the hope that this very German bit of business, shot in color, will somehow replicate Harvey’s magic. Carnival of Souls had gothic visuals, beautiful black-and-white cinematography, and was shot in various haunting locations (the organ factory, the church, the abandoned Saltair amusement park, the deserted stretches of road), it is very much about that divide between the living and the dead.

Yella, on the other hand, looks at the divide between East and West, between modern capitalism and modern ghost towns, and the title character represents both. She is torn between “the flexible and drifting world” (as Petzold puts it) and the old-fashioned stay-at-home world. The color cinematography does evoke some haunting images (of trees, reflections, memories), but the locations are dominated by interior shots (trains, cars, offices).

I spent a year in Hanover and know it has many evocative and haunting locations, so I was disappointed that Yella did not capitalize on these to create a more interesting world for me to inhabit. But, well, I guess that’s what you get when you substitute organ players who are drawn to abandoned amusement parks with accountants who are drawn to office buildings and spreadsheets.

In looking up information on Wittenberge (and the broader issue of East Germany) I came across an article whose byline mentioned how “millions have moved west, leaving semi-derelict ghost towns and growing hostility.” Furthermore:

Some have likened what has happened to a once friendly “company takeover” of the east by the west that has turned hostile. Certainly those in the west resent having poured over £1,000 billion into what has become an economic black hole; while those in the east are disillusioned that this investment, much of it in infrastructure, has failed to prevent huge job losses. But the truth lies deeper than economics. It has its roots in a split in the German psyche — a fundamental difference in mentality that exists between those living on either side of the former border, once so brutally enforced by the DDR that over 1,000 of its citizens were killed trying to cross it.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/christine_toomey/article395779.ece

The above article is fascinating insofar as how much it reads as a template for Yella describing, for example, how for the youth in the area of Wittenberge believe “that their only hope of a job lies across the river” – “And yet they express a strong sense of nostalgia – ‘Ostalgie,’ as the Germans have dubbed it – for the East German way of life their parents knew.” It’s a long article with many other insights that illuminate Yella’s world, and it certainly deepens my appreciation for the film. I just wish Petzold had done more with the weed-infested crumbling buildings surrounding the “largest clock in continental Europe” in Wittenberge. And while I realize that accountants might not have much time for the old churches of Hannover, it would have been nice to at least have gotten some glimpses of the train station – it dates back to the 1870′s but was remodeled for the Expo 2000 and it could have thus added to Yella‘s message of the divide between old and new. Still, Yella works on its own level, thanks in large part to a great performance by Hoss and for what it has to say about the mysteries of a still-divided German psyche.

cover for the up-and-coming DVD release.

Yella recieved a limited theatrical release by The Cinema Guild that began last summer and is still winding its way through select markets, it comes out on DVD on Feb. 24th. Ryan Krivoshey, at The Cinema Guild, also just told me that: “I spoke to Petzold when we just acquired the film and he was definitely inspired by Carnival of Souls. He told me it was one of his favorite movies, that he remembers watching it in Germany, in dark film clubs, many times as a teenager. He also mentioned the novel An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge as one of the roots for both Carnival and  Yella.“