A fictional, non-chronological account of the life of the scientist, adventurer and industrialist Lukas Berlinger. The key dates and central events include Berlinger's birth in 1914, his friendship with Johannes Roeder, who was the same age, his marriage to Marlit in the early 1930s and Roeder's joining the NSDAP in 1936. As a chemist and "scientist important to the war effort", Berlinger was not required to go to the front during the Second World War, but it was slowly discovered that he was helping persecuted people to escape to Switzerland. Pressure from the Gestapo cost Marlit her life, and Berlinger fled to South America. It was not until 1968 that he returned to the western part of Germany. He meets Roeder again, who is now a senator and has become rich as a "building tycoon", and meets Maria, a teacher almost 30 years his junior, who looks strikingly similar to Marlit.
Acting
Elsner's dual role—same face, entirely different souls.
Direction
Non-linear structure that mirrors trauma's circular grip.
Cinematography
South American exile: lush prison, gorgeous purgatory.
Director
Bernhard Sinkel
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of 1970s West Germany's 'Vergangenheitsbewältigung'—filmmakers wrestling with parental Nazi collaboration through fiction.
Hannelore Elsner reportedly asked which twin died first to calibrate Marlit's fragility against Maria's steel.
DE
