Wonderfully offbeat film!

Please don't spend money on this.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Barbara is a German film by director Christian Petzold about a woman doctor living in East Berlin, under control of the Soviet allied government before the fall of the Berlin Wall. In a terrific performance by actress Nina Hoss, Barbara is very talented doctor, but is being punished for trying to go to the west. The job she's placed in is quite undesirable, and she live under continual harassment from the Stasi secret police, one officer of which is particularly harsh on her, so it's understandable quite mistrustful of strangers. But even so she dedicates herself to her patients, as much as she can within the societies confines. She wants very much to keep trying to go a freer Europe.The relationships Barbara has with her new supervisor Andre, who might have more than one motive to be near to her, is truly fascinating and complex, and I would say the best part of film. She wants to distance herself from him and her other colleagues at first, for reasons which are later justified, but also finds she cannot isolate herself either. She has emotional connections with a few patients, she treats, one of which is a particularly disturbing case of a girl who ran away from a work camp who's initially difficult to the other doctors but Barbara finds a way to connect. At home she's usually alone, unless there's a terrifying surprise visit from the Stasi. But she has engagements elsewhere other than home or hospital that show the full range of a woman she is.If this isn't on the level of the a few other modern masterpieces about east European life behind the Iron Curtain in the last decade of the Soviet Union—I'm thinking of The Lives of Others, and 4 Month 3 Week & 2 Days—it's a extremely admirable and smart one that comes close, which shows human desires in the face of repression and the fear one lives under in such society. It's part thriller with romantic elements, but more so it's a human look the interaction between several different individuals in this society where ones fated role dictated by the society can be very hard to escape.

Tightly plotted, emotionally involving and highly recommended. Also a subtler, less melodramatic portrayal of the East German surveillance state, IMHO, than the better known "Lives of Others." Great performances, especially by Nina Hoss as our tightly wrapped, chainsmoking heroine and Ronald Zehrfeld as a fellow doctor who's gotten himself in a similar fix (exiled to the windswept Baltic coast and kept under the thumb of the Stasi, or at least says he has). The depiction of the Stasi apparatus, from the vigilant concierge in Barbara's crappy apartment building to the grim-faced security chief, was pretty much as expected, though I was surprised that Barbara's lover, a prosperous-looking "Wessi" with a Mercedes and a driver, seemed to be able to cross over to the East with impunity. This is one of those films where every detail contributes to the overall tone without being obvious or didactic; even a charming scene where Barbara helps the driver's girlfriend, a cynical local girl, pick out a wedding ring from a catalogue seems to make a political point. The buildup to the final resolution is suitably suspenseful, but, as other reviewers have pointed out, the moment where Barbara smiles for the first time is the film's real climax. Didn't have the problems with the soundtrack or the subtitles that some Netflix viewers have reported.

At first I just enjoyed the movie and would have rated it decently. Then it ends! The movie had quite patiently laid out a plot with many questions not yet answered, in fact including the main factor indicating of what created all this woman's circumstances. The story proceeds and develops creating more questions than answers. We slowly learn a bit about each character and a deep shell they are in, but often not the cause, the Communist system they live in. Which you suspect is all just preparing you for the twist and reveal at the end of the movie, illuminating all. It seems to be unwinding and a sub plot ends, adding a few more unanswered questions, much is hanging in the air and she unexpectedly returns to work. Then it ends! -- And you wonder ???Then you realize it was not the plot the director was trying to tell, he had pulled you in with no intention of satisfying the plot. Then you think, ah yes! Character and development, they did a wonderful job of that, although they really didn't change much as you would expect in a love story, but you learned who they may be, bit by bit, as the system forced them to not expose character. They were just remote cogs in the cruel bureaucratic wheel as it turned.You figure again, maybe not, as you really only learn wee bits and pieces about them, more questions than answers, but see the deep, sharp, cold, forced personality adaptations and voids caused by the political system in those times, which we actually see little of in the movie, although much hinges on it. Maybe it's that he was trying to tell? Ah! you see it and realize you haven't enjoyed a movie that much in some time. You didn't need all the necessities. It had all it needed, including no last line. Rich.Oh yes, wherever they made this movie it was beautiful.

Barbara (2012)A somber, tightly scripted, almost old-fashioned film. I can picture this in black white, or a movie not only set in 1980 but shot then, too. I mean this all as a compliment.It's key to know that this is Communist East Germany, a closed country under Soviet influence and generally struggling to keep up with West Germany. The doldrums depicted, and the lower quality of medical care at this small provincial clinic, are very real. The title character is a downtrodden doctor who was caught trying to escape to the West, and was sent to the boondocks as punishment. And she is periodically searched by the authorities, who go through her apartment, her body cavities, her entire personal life while she passively waits. It's awful. And very real.There is a steady vague story line showing Barbara's contacts to sympathetic Germans, and it seems one or two of them are visiting now and then from the West. Clandestine meetings with money (and sex) continue in the woods, but these are minor points in her steady work as a doctor in the clinic.More important, it turns out, is the cute and steady-handed male doctor who runs the clinic. She doesn't trust him. If he asks questions out of curiosity she isn't sure if he's a spy or just a nice guy. We aren't sure either. His life is simple and has simple pleasures, and he likes her and tries to make her open up and actually smile, which turns out to be the hardest thing in the whole movie.Barbara's plans to escape seem to be threatened by her job commitment, which she can't shirk because it'll draw attention to her irregularities. And so things go in this windy, North German countryside. It's so beautifully, patiently wrought, you have to watch and wait, just as passively as Barbara. It's sad, for sure, and yet there are these small glimmers. For one thing, there is the idea that no matter what your circumstances there is always the ability to be good and to do good. The male doctor is the example of this, and Barbara begins to see something more genuine at work than her own superficial (we assume) strivings for a consumerist West.It's odd to see such a balanced and yet truthful view of Communist Germany. The oppression is real and bad, but the strivings of regular people (doctors and others) make hope possible. I loved this movie, even though fairly little happens, and there are few turns of the plot that are clearly for dramatic impact more than an integral building of character. But these are small caveats. The total effect is simple and penetrating, with a beautiful ending.