Jerichow is a modernized, Teutonic film noir.

Sort of.

Let’s try this again.

Jerichow is an intellectualized exploration of greed and desperation.

Well, yes, it’s definitely that, too.

One more time.

Jerichow is full of surprises.

That pretty much nails it.

While it would be pretty easy, and also accurate enough, to sum up Jerichow as a loose interpretation of James M. Cain’s novel The Postman Always Rings Twice and the films that it inspired, it would also be a gross oversimplification of the emotional layers of the film. While Jerichow has much in common with the neo-noir genre from which the story was born, it also exceeds the generic tropes of the genre to become something much more intellectually intense, a film that speaks all at once about love, greed, betrayal, desperation, fear of death, fear of dependence, fear of abandonment, childish desires, and a longing for home (whether it be near or far). It is film noir transplanted six decades in the future and a full ocean away, set in a small, picturesque East German town where blue collar jobs have all but disappeared and the city is dying a slow death.

Jerichow opens with Thomas (Benno Furmann), a dishonorably discharged (for reasons unexplained) army vet who has just returned to his mother’s home, willed to him after her death. From this opening sequence the theme of money—who has it, who wants it, what one is willing to do to get it—is strong. Thomas’s former business acquaintances (of an unspecified field) are there with him, extending condolences and also a sincere regret that the money he owes must become an issue during this time. The way his former boss speaks to him is reminiscent of the sympathy and sternness one might use when speaking with a child who has done wrong, but who is otherwise a good kid whom you like and really don’t desire to punish. When the boss cleverly deduces Thomas’s hiding spot for his money—in a tin can in his old childhood tree house—it is clear that Thomas is being situated as a kind of child in this film; one whose behavior and perception of the world around him is child-like—simple, sincere, naïve.

Thomas soon meets Ali (Hilmi Sozer), a successful businessman in an area where the odds are against him, who also happens to have a fondness for drink. Thomas helps Ali out of a precarious situation, and so Ali offers him a job. It is through the course of his work that he meets Ali’s wife, Laura (Nina Hoss), a woman who initially treats him with nothing but disdain but who falls for him as he falls for her, in their equally wide-eyed, childish ways.

The basic plotline follows that of Postman fairly closely, until it diverges at the point of the murder plot. As Thomas enters their lives, he observes the strained relationship between Ali and Laura, and ultimately acts as a foil to them, providing an outlet for Laura’s domestic and internal frustration—or perhaps just acting as a playmate in this grown-up world of children’s games and children’s dreams.

Thomas and Laura are like a little kids playing games that are beyond their capacity to understand. They both hide money in places a child would, they run off to sneak kisses though always with the adrenaline-rush risk of being caught, and they plot a heinous crime as an extremist solution to an otherwise straightforward problem. They may be having sex, but there is little that is sexy about it—their sex is an act of desperation, of clinging onto a life they feel is rushing past them. Like children, they latch on to each other and refuse to let go. Thomas claims to love Laura though he knows next to nothing about her, and Laura later responds with “You can’t love, if you don’t have money!” Their understanding of the world is simple to a fault, the kind of naïve perception that one would expect from a child. Whether they are just shielded from or are completely oblivious to reality is never fully realized, though that reality comes crashing through loud and clear with the unexpected ending in which they must reap the consequences of their reckless trickster deeds.

Ali is the only character in the film who is portrayed as something of an adult, though even he is prone to child-like exuberance and overindulgence (such as the scene in which he channels “The Greek” from Postman when he dances drunkenly to Turkish folk music by the sea), and childish emotions (like his insane jealousy and suspicion of his wife, which causes him to follow her around town and beat her). Ali is otherwise a successful businessman who owns a nice home and has beaten life’s odds despite being faced with possible defeat at all turns, though he grapples with his own sense of displacement, feeling even well into middle-age like he is missing his sense of home, like he is living in a land that “doesn’t want him.”

With long looks and a sly thoughtfulness in his eyes, Ali may be a drunkard but he is no fool. He is much wiser to the world than Laura or Thomas who, despite their own tribulations, seem to never have fully developed into functional adults. But it isn’t until the end of the film, when Ali is faced with the imminence of his own death, that he seems to have a full understanding of life, and the horror of it. His final action is meant an eternal punishment for Thomas and Laura, that even though they got what they thought they wanted they must now live with the guilt for the rest of their lives, never really knowing who to blame and unable to seek forgiveness. Murder, as it turns out, is not child’s play.

Throughout the film, money is both a motivational force and a source of destruction. Thomas comes to town with no job, no money, and no work, and becomes dependent upon Ali for the money he pays him. Laura is equally dependent upon Ali and his money, after she married him and he absorbed her considerable (and unspecified) debts. Ali, in turn, is constantly on the lookout for people cheating him in his business, and is savvy to all their tricks as well as smaller strategies such as how to save money on gas while making deliveries. While the cast is very small—really only the three main characters—money plays the fourth silent role in the story. It is addressed in a way that is beyond simple greed; money here is a promise of independence, a new beginning, a source of betrayal, an act of desperation, a lifelong pursuit. These are not the kind of characters who rob a bank to get rich—they need, and want, and yearn, and they each conceptualize money as a means of achieving their goals. They are living in a post-Fordian economy which was in their lifetimes also still politically Socialist, and they are still unsure how to adjust. Ali, the only foreign-born character, is the only one adaptable enough to survive.

Much like a noir film, Jerichow is very quiet and minimalist. There are only three major characters, the settings are limited, the music used sparingly, the dialogue sparse. Much is communicated without words, forcing the audience to decipher the characters’ thoughts, actions, and motivations for themselves. It may strike a viewer as being emotionally detached from its characters or even intentionally elusive, but such determinations undermine the simple yet torrid raw human emotions that are the driving force of the film. Director Christian Petzold is not going to hand-feed you your analysis; he’s going to make you do the work yourself, but he gives you all you need to understand.

Jerichow is Petzold’s latest incisive offering, coming after his internationally acclaimed Yella. Considered by many critics to be one of the most talented and underappreciated filmmakers internationally, his films have a certain headiness that suit the arthouse crowd much better than a mainstream audience. Both leads, Furmann and Hoss, have worked with him on multiple occasions, and it seems obvious in their understated yet emotionally charged performances that this is a director who is able to conjure the exact kind of performance from his actors that his script requires, and they are more than happy to deliver it to him.

As a film, Jerichow is tight and controlled, revealing only as much as is necessary and at a carefully measured pace. The characters are each desperately searching for something—for independence, for home, for life. Deftly balancing a crime that is drained of its passion and replaced with something much more complex with a ground-level paradigm shift in global economy, Jerichow is indeed full of surprises.

Jerichow is now playing at the Detroit Film Theatre through Sunday, August 2nd. Check website for showtimes and ticket information.