Dietrich Brüggemann’s relationship box “Nö” is the rare example of an experimental comedy in German cinema.
It is not often that German films win main prizes at major foreign festivals. Dietrich Brüggemann was believed to be surprised when he received the directing award in Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic last month. After all, this relationship, family, and even whole-life drama, like most of his films, depends crucially on two things that are supposedly reluctant to travel abroad: language and humor.
The formal restriction to 15 scenes resolved in plan sequences gives the play with words even more a stage. It starts with the two-letter word of the title, which is far too seldom used in written language. “Nope” is the answer of Dina, played by Anna Brüggemann, to the suggestion of her friend Michael (Alexander Khuon) to give it a try with separation. In the last scene this dialogue will be repeated again in the opposite direction. But according to Wolfgang Borchert, there is only one thing in life-threatening situations: “Say no!”
Between the scenes of the couple relationship, which are separated by long periods of time, life also pulls out other stops. An imperious patriarchal father (Wolfgang Zischler) says goodbye to life ungraciously, and a patient on the operating table (Rüdiger Vogler) speaks to Doctor Michael. What a mischievous coup to cast the two main actors from Wim Wenders’ perhaps best film together again, albeit in separate scenes. So while watching you involuntarily project its title onto this work: “In the course of time”.
Dina also receives unexpected help in her job as an actress. At a psychological stage seminar she is urged by a Pina Bausch-like lecturer to declare war on the unloved side of her self. Brüggemann underscores this haunting reflection on the sometimes abusive compulsion to renounce self in the performative arts with his own film music. Even at his “crime scenes”, he liked to reserve part of the limited budget for an orchestra rental.
Restrictions encourage
Brüggemann is a rare multiple talent among the filmmakers of his generation. A classically composed art song that can be heard at a funeral scene is also impressive. Perhaps filmmakers with fewer talents have an easier time fulfilling the desire for homogeneous, aesthetically stringent works of art. Perhaps that is why he is always looking for formal restrictions that one can rub against.
In dialogue with the genre expectations of the “Tatort” series, he achieved his greatest successes with audiences, for the minimalist art film “Kreuzgang” he and Anna won the Berlinale Script Bear.
At the same time, however, something prevents the Brüggemanns from honing their films until the corners and edges are ground down into pleasing curves. These 15 scenes are not all of the same quality, not every joke ignites, some dialogues seem over-orchestrated. In addition, the episodic form involuntarily means that the scenes compete with one another like their own short film festival. But what you get for it is something unique in German cinema, an experimental film comedy. A cinema that polarizes but does not exclude anyone from the outset.
As a couple of authors, the Brüggemanns walk in the footsteps of Erich Kästner, Hans Fallada and Thomas Theodor Heine. In their cinematic medicine boxes, the remedies are hidden next to bitter pills and placebos. This is not the worst cinematic therapy. Something always helps. Even if it is not always immediately clear what against.
Nope. Germany 2021. Director: Dietrich Brüggemann. 119 min.
