If you don't know the name Rosa Luxemburg, you may want to do
some internet search before reading this review. She is
the legendary socialist agitator with the nick name
"Bloody Rosa" (German: Blutige Rosa). She was a leader
of the German Communist Party and was later assasinated
during the failed Spartacus Revolt of January 1919.
The annual commemoration of the murder of Luxemburg and
Karl Liebknecht (who was assasinated at the same time)
on the first weekend in January was a tradition in the
former German Democratic Republic (East Germany), and
even today attracts up to 100,000 people.
Monument to Karl Liebknecht & Rosa Luxemburg built
by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a sombre modern
architecture I encounter in my architecture class.
This monument was later destroied by the Nazi regime.
OK. enough background, now the movie review (contains
detailed plots, stop right here if you don't
want to be ruined for the movie)
This movie concentrate the timeline between Rosa's arrest
in Warsaw and her death in Berlin. Most of the accounts
happened in Berlin, invloving party politics for SPD, German
Party of Social Democracy. You need to kind of familiar
with the sitation to appreciate the movie. Some synopsis here.
Karl Kautsky, leading theoretician of the Second International
and running the newspaper. Mentor of Rosa, but departed since
Kautsky want to remain in the SPD leadership and Rosa drift
left. his wife, Luise Kautsky,was a close friend of Rosa
Luxemburg. Their mutal letters were published after Rosa's
death. Both of them live in the same district, Berlin-Friedenau.
August Bebel, cofounder of SPD, prefer palimentary politics instead
of revolutionary means.
Leo Jogiches, long-time friend and sometime lover of Rosa, murdered
while trying to find Rosa's murderer.
Clara Eissner, best friend-in-arm of Rosa, later founded KPD,
German Communist Party.
Paul Levi, Rosa's Lawyer and comrade. later compiled memorial
book of Rosa.
Now the movie traces through her most formative periods using the
format of remembering her years in the prison after the
WWI. She grew up at a lower middle-class family in Poland,
where she tried to teach her maid how to read and write when
she is still a child, no more than 10 years old.
This counts one of the most touching moment of the whole
movie for me. Then she met her lover of her life, Leo who
she treated more as a comrade than a romatic lover. The
movied is filled with poetic words taken out from her letters
from prison which is both beautiful and touching, portraying
a woman with a very delicate heart even tough her belief is
unshakable. She can be distraught after suspecting and confirming
the unfaithfulness commited by Leo during his escape from
Poland to Berlin. She can be the romatic sweetheart when embracing
the much younger lover, Kostja Zetkin. She can be the ranting
agitator when she is on the podium rousing the revolutionary
zeal of the proletarians. And she can be the confiding friend
when she is trying to provide a Tolstoy book, Anna Karenina to
a prison maid. In all, this movie profile this extrodinary
woman from multiple facets. You can tell from the story line
and rythme that it is directed by a woman. Only a female director
put so much emphasis on a garden scene, a military exercise when
sauntering in the woods, women's right issue in the dinner table
and final touch of a river glittering in the moonlight. Brava!
indeed. Von Trotta is still very active in today's German Movie
and TV industry, I am looking forward to seeing more works like
this one.
Also the music score is awesome, especially when Rosa is on
the podium, the music seems to follow the contents of her
speech attentively. Good work.
The movie is released by New Yorker Video in VHS in 1994.
