Great Freedom

Great Freedom é visceral ao tratar da repressão sexual, dos desejos, dos sistemas de manipulação institucionais. Um prato cheio para os Foucaltianos discutirem a hipótese da repressão enquanto movimento criador de ações na microfísica do poder. O filme consegue também se sair digno na parte técnica, e o roteiro não se torna piegas, mesmo que envolva um romance, já que não deixa de focar no aprisionamento proveniente das instituições. É muito bom!

'Great Freedom' is a devastating portrait of love being born in the most unexpected of places. Sebastian Meise delivers a time-hopping story about a man imprisoned during different occasions in post-war Germany because of his "perverted" sexual preferences. If you've ever wondered what happened to gay men liberated from concentration camps, then this will give you a very cruel answer. With the masterful performances of Franz Rogowski and Georg Friedrich, 'Great Freedom' meditates about the effects of imprisonment and the always elusive search for meaning in people that feel like outsiders after a lifetime behind bars.

Imagine being imprisoned immediately after being released from a concentration camp. In the former for being Jewish and in the latter because you are homosexual. What could have run amok in a manipulative drama becomes an excellent feature that handles with delicacy but at the same time crudity an exploration of character that is much more complicated than it might first appear. Led by an exceptional Franz Rogowski who is becoming one of my favorite actors of the old continent, Great Freedom is a good movie but becomes a better one because of him.

Life was once quite different for the LGBTQ+ community years ago. The mere act of engaging in same-sex relations was a criminal offense in many now-progressive countries, an activity punishable by branding offenders as perverts and landing them in prison for extended periods. One of those countries was West Germany, whose draconian measures even went so far as to transfer homosexuals liberated from concentration camp incarceration to state imprisonment after World War II. The harsh, prejudicial treatment experienced by West German gay men between 1945 and 1969, when the nation’s laws against homosexual conduct were finally abandoned, provides the basis for this prison drama/love story told in four segments about the lives of four inmates, three of them gay and one of them more than a little curious. Director Sebastian Meise’s second narrative feature presents an unflinching look at what gay men were up against during the time, when the simple act of loving someone of the same sex could have dire consequences, especially for the outspoken who believed one’s love life was none of the state’s business. Despite some occasional pacing issues (undoubtedly deliberate though at times frustrating in its attempt at conveying the tedium of prison life), this engaging and heartfelt drama makes its case without being preachy or heavy-handed and features fine performances by Franz Rogowski, Georg Friedrich, Thomas Prenn and Anton von Lucke, along with some inventive camera work. It’s indeed heartening to see how far we’ve come in the years since then, but “Great Freedom” reminds us of how far we’ve had to journey in getting there – and how there are those in this world who are still subjected to this kind of needless abuse.

This movie is overwrought in its emotional manipulativeness and social preaching