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THE LEGEND OF RITA Send This Review to a Friend
The waves of history can engulf idealists cast aside by changing political needs, and German director Volker Schlondorff, long a filmmaker with a social conscience, dramatizes such complex forces in "The Legend of Rita." The screenplay on which he has collaborated with Wolfgang Kohlhaase examines what happens to Rita and her comrades who are terrorists fighting in underground actions against West Germany during the Cold War but are co-opted and used surreptitiously by the East German government when forced to flee to the Communist sector. Once the Berlin wall is down, Rita is expendable, and she is shocked to learn of duplicitous dealings that have been going on all along.
The film thrives on a very astute performance by Bibliana Beglau as Rita, backed by several other solid performances, including one by Martin Wuttke as her Stasi handler and Nadja Uhl as her friend Tatjana. Schlonforff concentrates on the human story behind the revolutionary actions and the toll that it takes for those who start with a vision of a way to make the world better but end badly, some in battle, others by betrayal both by those who use them and by the shift in the political landscape.
The combination of drama and character study is potent, and in the hands of a director with a fascination for history and social commitment, the subject becomes an absorbing one with a very human face. There is harsh realism in the depiction of daily life as Rita, who has abandoned the movement in disillusionment, changes the identity under which she lives and works. As for Beglau, she certainly earned the best actress award she received from the Berlin Film Festival, and "The Legend of Rita" stands among Schlondorff's best.
Political films are rare in America, which is all the more reason for seeing this import. A Kino International release.
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