Freud’s Last Session

Freud and CS Lewis

Sigmund Freud and CS Lewis probably never sat down and had a conversation about the existence of God, a disclaimer at the end of Freud’s Last Session tells us, but that hasn’t stopped director Matt Brown and co-writer Mark St Germain (who wrote the play on which the film is based) from shaping a what-if drama about the event. We’re in London in 1939 as war is about to break out. Freud has recently arrived from his beloved Vienna, having been chased out by the Nazis because of his Jewishness. He has cancer of the mouth and only weeks to live – he’d opt for assisted suicide (a postscript also tells us) only … Read more

Hinterland

Detail of the expressionist set design

Horizons aslant, perspectives askew, Hinterland borrows freely from German Expressionist cinema to put a new (old) spin on familiar material. “The war is lost,” intones a sombre voice in German as the lights come up. We’re in Austria after the First World War where a soldier just back from an extended stretch in a Soviet prisoner of war camp is acclimatising himself to life back in Vienna. He was a cop before the war and now he’s back on home turf he’d like to be again. Which is handy because there’s a killer on the loose, offing people in floridly extravagant ways – one man pinioned to a post by a large number … Read more

Staudamm

Friedrich Mücke and Liv Lisa Fries

Unspectacular in an almost nonchalant way, Staudamm tells its story slowly and poetically, which is all the more remarkable when you consider its subject matter – a high school shooting. This one took place in a sleepy village in Bavaria and proceeded otherwise in classic US style – kid stalking the corridors letting off rounds in a slow and methodical fashion, killing many, before he too was brought down by a police bullet out by the dam (The Dam is the English language title) where he’d fled, in what looked like a pre-planned bit of suicidal “come and get me, suckers” bravado. Staudamm is about the aftermath rather than the event itself and … Read more