Monte Verità - Film Review German Film Festival 2022

Post

Subscribe

Posted 2022-05-24 by Jen ⇒ follow

Monte Verità - Film Review (German Film Festival 2022)

Monte Verità is based on the true story of the world's first hippie commune, and stars Maresi Riegner, Max Hubacher, Julia Jentsch, Hannah Herzsprung, Philipp Hauß, Joel Basman, Tiana Distefano and Alina Distefano. Directed by Stefan Jäger, it runs for 115 mins and is screening as part of the German Film Festival which runs May - June. See www.germanfilmfestival.com.au for details.

Monte Verità (Mountain of Truth) was the name of the local 'nature healing sanctuary sun sanatorium', and was a well-known meeting place for the life-reformers, pacifists, artists, writers and supporters of various alternative moments in the first decades of the 20th century. Three hundred and twenty one metres above sea level in the Swiss canton of Ticino it lay in the municipality of Ascona.

The film is set in 1906. Hanna Leitner a young mother of two is suffocating from her bourgeois life and its social constraints, and what has been diagnosed as asthma. She abandons her husband Anton and her daughters, and flees to the sanatorium at Monte Verità to go into therapy with Otto Gross. A picturesque retreat, she meets an eclectic group of artists and alternative people who have formed a community, searching for healing and a utopia.

There in the idyllic countryside of southern Switzerland, Hanna finds relief for her lungs, she finds her voice, and her passion for the art of photography. Soon enough she is faced with reality and a heart wrenching decision to be made. Can she return to her family without giving up on herself?

Maresi Riegner plays an inexperienced, very young, timid wife very well. To the believable point, you want to shake her by the shoulders and ask her to grow a backbone. That's just a testament to her great performance and an insight to the times she was born into. You suffocate with her, and over time as the film rolls out, you start to breathe, spread your wings, find freedom and peace, and grow with her. Her physical presence matches the changes she experiences as she dresses and shows signs of a freer outdoor lifestyle as the story progresses, and her photography shows life and movement.

The film is a work of fiction, but it does employ a series of real-life bohemian intellectuals in the film like the young writer Hermann Hesse, dancer and choreographer Isadora Duncan, founder of the commune and women's rights pioneer Ida Hoffmann, Dr Otto Gross, the father of so called 'psychosexology', and the mysterious Lotte Hattemer. The artists' colony is idyllically represented with beautiful surrounds, and presents a moment in time where transformations were possible and freedom sought after, a moment that was revolutionary for its time. It's a beautiful lyrical film that's a joy to witness.