Germany, Year Zero: A Look at Post-WWII Germany

Few filmmakers have taken on the task of telling the stories of what the German people went through right after World War II. It's true that it's easy to look at the enemy and dehumanize him and not desire to empathize with him. After all, dehumanizing the people who almost took over the world and would have taken one's freedom makes it easier on others. It's much easier to hate rather than try to understand. Roberto Rossellini dared to take on the dubious task and succeeded with his Germany, Year Zero, the last film of his war trilogy (which includes Rome, Open City). As with most Italian Neorealist filmmakers of the time, Rossellini employed mostly amateur actors and filmed on location for the 1948 film. The first half of the movie actually has more of a newsreel, documentary look to it, with its long takes of war-ravaged Berlin.

The story focuses on an impoverished German family, the Kohlers, struggling to make ends meet in an apartment home owned by another better-off family, the Rademachers. There's the bedridden father, who persists that his eldest son, Karl-Heinz, register with the authorities after having fought in the German military to the end in order for him to get his food ration card. Karl-Heinz does not want to give himself up, as he feels he would have to, and his sister, Eva, is pressured by her friend to prostitute herself to men, which she refuses to do and instead only seeks the company of men to get cigarettes. Then there's Edmund, the main protagonist, who is the youngest and a twelve-year-old boy trying to find work, despite his age. The stress and constant struggling leads Edmund onto a dangerous path, forcing him to try to deal in the black market. He comes across his former schoolteacher, who seems to have pedophilic tendencies and is not so innocently interested in his former pupil. This strange and deceiving schoolteacher remains loyal to the Nazi party, and he is in possession of a record with a speech by Hitler, which he gives to the young boy so that he can try to sell it to American soldiers. When Edmund succeeds, he gives the money to the former schoolteacher, who gives Edmund a small cut of the profit. Edmund then spends a day and a night with a teenage boy and girl who have experience swindling people out of money.

Edmund's father insists that the family would be better off without him, as he thinks of himself as a weighing burden that holds his children back. He is often heard saying how much better it would be if he would just die. His children would rather not hear such talk, but it eventually affects Edmund, pushing him to make a grave mistake....

All in all, the film is a bleak, depressing look at the lives of people devastated by war and poverty. Although Rossellini himself would hold that the last installment of his war trilogy was an objective depiction of the German people, the film clearly paints a picture of sympathy and compassion. Germany is seen in a different light, which no other filmmaker dared to confront us with at the time, and there is still some difficulty in the present day to confront the world with it. It also depicts guilt and its destructive, dooming nature; its ability to condemn the individual suffering from it more than any outsider could. And perhaps the boy, with all his anguish and self-condemnation, represents an entire nation suffering from anguish and self-condemnation. The title of the film underlines the very turmoil a nation right out of a war was dealing with and its struggle to rebuild and rehabilitate. After the war, Germany was to start from scratch.

Rating: 4/5 stars

Top 10 Female Vocalists, Part I

A while back I posted a list of top 10 male vocalists in two parts, but I never did get around to making a top 10 female vocalists list. I figured that it's about time. And just like last time, they are in no particular order.

1) Marianne Faithfull
It's safe to say that Ms. Faithfull hasn't gotten the credit she truly deserves, despite her distinct and incredible voice. She's often been overshadowed by her (in)famous escapades with her equally (in)famous ex-boyfriend, Mick Jagger. Apart from that, her voice is also not considered to be very conventional or even "pretty," for lack of a better word. Although there was a time when her voice was that of an innocent, fragile lark in her younger years when she first began her career as a pop singer, it was greatly altered due to drugs, laryngitis, and smoking. No more was the soprano, bell-like voice; it had been replaced by a gravelly, lower-pitched alto. Her vibrato, not as bright, had become almost crone-like. Her voice, overall, became much more expressive and distinct. And I much prefer it that way.

2) PJ Harvey
One of the most admirable traits about Polly Jean Harvey is her ability to evolve and experiment. Not since her second album have two of her albums been alike. Although she naturally has a bluesy alto voice, she plays with it to achieve specific results. In her latest albums, she's made a dramatic change to her voice by raising its register and giving it a more straightforward feminine, vulnerable sound. Although I prefer her earlier sound, her newer sound has character and surprises the listener with her broad range and evolution. Harvey has often been compared to Patti Smith, but I feel her vocals are much more subtle than that.

3) Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday and Marianne Faithfull, although from different eras and different genres, have some things in common. Both had/have gone through a lot in their lives, and as a result, their vocals had/have suffered. Billie Holiday's whiskey-soaked croak was a result of years of heroin addiction and hardships, and Faithfull's isn't all that different. The illustrious Lady Day once described her voice as a sort of trumpet in her younger days, which was an apt comparison. As the years progressed and her real-life blues overtook her life, however, it became like thick honey or butterscotch with a heavy dose of melancholy and some subtle coolness.

4) Kate Bush
She has a four-octave range and a unique, idiosyncratic style. Need I say more? Turthfully, her strange soprano vocals should annoy me or not please me a whole lot, but they work. They work very well.

5) Liz Fraser
The singer from the Cocteau Twins is intriguing for a few reasons. For one, her voice is pretty idiosyncratic and you often don't understand what she's singing exactly. Then there's her range. She's exactly what a siren would sound like. She's known for her mouth music, which means it doesn't really matter what she's saying in her songs; it's more about the feeling the sounds and enunciation convey. And Massive Attack's "Teardrop" would be so different without her.