Transit is a German film. This drama genre film is inspired and adapted based on the novel by Anna Seghers using the same title. The film was chosen to compete in the 68th Berlin International Film Festival. The film Transit is directed by director Christian Petzold who also co-wrote the screenplay. This 101-minute film is under the auspices of several production companies such as Schramm Film, Neon Productions, Arte France Cinema, ZDF / Arte.
Some of the characters are played by; Franz Rogowski as Georg, Paula Beer as Marie, Godehard Giese as Richard, Maryam Zaree as Melissa, and Ronald Kukulies as Heins.
Transit tells the story of the fate of refugees, namely when fascism spread. At that time, a German refugee named Georg fled to Marseille. Games Online dan Offline
He ran away using the identity of the dead and transited using the paper he was carrying. Living among refugees from around the world, Georg falls in love with Marie, a mysterious woman who is looking for her husband.
The woman’s husband, his identity has been stolen.
“Transit” is essentially about a man caught in purgatory considering the lives he could have had as a writer, doctor, father, lover before he’s allowed to move on to the next phase. He even reads one of the writer’s stories about a man waiting to get into Hell only to be told that he’s already there.
However, Petzold is too much of a romantic to allow Marseilles to become Hell. The already-great film reaches another level when Georg and Marie finally meet up. As she wonders why her husband never responded to the letter that she sent him, Georg becomes fascinated with her beauty, almost convinced he can save her. But if he leaves with her, he leaves behind the boy to whom he’s become a father figure. So much of “Transit” is about people connecting and disconnecting. It is about the impact of fracture on both sides as one person asks who forgets first, “He who is left or she who is left behind?” And the impact of broken relationships is amplified by a sense that the world around these people is about to collapse. Who do you hold onto when the walls are coming down? Who do you choose to be when crisis knocks on the door?
Petzold’s “Phoenix” was steeped in noir visual language, and this story could have been told in the same smoky, neon-lit style, but he conveys a lot of “Transit” in the bright light of Southern France, adding to the sense of confusion and disconnect that defines the film. Georg sometimes looks like a time traveler, and one could be forgiven for thinking this is a story of a Jew fleeing the Third Reich until Petzold drops in a shot from a surveillance camera or of a modern automobile. It adds both to the sense of purgatory—the idea that this is a man who doesn’t belong and isn’t sure where he’s going—and the feeling that Georg is lost, not just in place but time. When he connects with Marie, it almost feels like he’s connecting for the first time in his life, and yet this connection is based at least partially on a lie. Even in his truest moments, he is not exactly himself. He is a fill-in for a missing father or a missing husband.
Rogowski elevates the film by nailing a very difficult part—it’s purposeful that Georg is in every scene in that it adds to the overall sense of confusion to limit our perspective to only his. Instead of presenting Georg as the cipher he could have easily become, Rogowski makes fully three-dimensional a protagonist who feels both classical in his Kafkaesque dilemma and yet also relatable in his emotions and actions. It’s a great performance.
As he did with “Phoenix,” Petzold completely sticks the landing, concluding with an almost mirror image of his last film’s perfect closing shot. It’s an ending that is both hopeful and uncertain. In other words, it captures the tone of a film about a man stuck between Heaven and Hell, and the stories he becomes a part of while he’s there.