The Architects [GDR 1990]

Die Architekten
Director: P. Kahane
Cinematographers: A. Köfer, C. Prochnow

Filmed during the end of 1989, at the time the Berlin Wall was being opened, this is, like No End, a film with a distinct sense of being about a world that is about to come to an end. Like A Nameless Band, it is also a film about the perils of compromising one's principles; but unlike in that film, the principles being compromised here are not to corruption but rather to socialism itself. In one sense it is a film out of time, because it takes place some time in the late 1980s and does not directly portray the political events transpiring; but in another sense it is entirely about what was taking place, because it is a film about disillusionment and the rejection of socialism.

The film revolves around a group of young, creative architects and its leader, whose attempts to innovate and go beyond the conventional mould are frustrated by conservatism and economic rigidity. Kahane draws a parallel between this experience and the experience of directors, having to continually compromise with superiors in the creative process. The film is replete with shots of identical-looking buildings, almost appearing to mock the idea that architects with creative ideas could exist in such an environment; one wonders if Kahane was also making a subtle commentary on the films made by some of his colleagues.

There is a clear sense that things are fixed and rigid in the way things are done. This is both because of the attitudes of individuals, who have simply always done things the same way (monuments must be uplifting, buildings must be made of prefabricated components), and because of the economic costs of retooling production lines to make non-standard components. But this latter also seems to be a question of priority; the priority is heavy industry, particularly given the economic crisis, not innovation or creativity. Inevitably, we are shown many examples of young people who have started out with great aspirations to change things, to make something new, who have become worn down and disillusioned until they simply give up.

The protagonist's wife is also a major symbol for this. For he himself symbolises the compromise involved in living in the system--he almost seems to symbolise the system itself at one point. That is, the breakup of their marriage happens while he is working hard and sacrificing, while he thinks everything is fine because her basic needs are met. But in fact, she says it is not her basic needs that matter, it is other things--spontaneity, new things, change--and this lapses tellingly into complaint about how everything is always the same, except that sometimes there are no onions in the supermarket, sometimes the price of a sweater goes up. She is reduced to tears by GDR television, she is seduced by the West not because of material wealth or political ideals but simply because she feels utterly undeveloped as a person, as if she is wasting away without any possibility to realise her own potential. Her husband asks her if she thinks things are easier in Switzerland, and she says no; but that does not seem to be the point.

Indeed the same motif is repeated on every level and at every stage in this film. Socialism involves continual compromise with the establishment, which is rigid and slow, and not able to respond to the needs of people to develop creatively. The one exception to this is when the protagonist appeals to the Free German Youth for help condemning his superiors for not giving room to creativity. They are utterly responsive and in fact are able to get his project reinstated. This, along with the belief, repeated half-heartedly by the protagonist himself, that things can be changed if one just participates, reflect a contradiction of the system: it promises exactly the things it is not delivering. It is a kind of neurosis.

However, I am not sure that the film's criticism is all entirely appropriate. In particular, there is a moment in which the architects are coming up with their design and one of them says 'We are censoring ourselves, they don't even have to do it for us'. That is, they are making decisions based not just on what they think is right but what they think is feasible. But this kind of criticism--similar to some of what is said in Camera Buff--in itself is really neither here nor there. For in any society anywhere in the world, people have to make decisions based on what is feasible. In a capitalist society architects must respond to the whims of their clients too.

The difference, as is perhaps legitimately suggested, is a cultural one. For whatever reasons, the GDR depicted in this film has become stultifyingly uniform. The destruction by the architects of their own model resembles a bit too much for comfort the destruction of sculptures by the artist in Strawberry and Chocolate. And the statement is similar: if socialism destroys individual initiative and creativity, it destroys the very thing which gave it life to begin with. But the conclusion is different; for in this film, the only resolution is to give it up, because it cannot be changed.

Apart from this theme there are a few other interesting aspects. One is the depiction of sexism. One woman says she was turned away from work as an architect because she was a single mother; another is told young women have a conflict between working as a professional and 'family planning', to which she responds that she has a solution to family planning--a condom. So there is an open statement that certain bureaucrats expect women to stay home and raise children, and that women are not very happy with this.

This is on the whole a film which treats a familiar and very grave theme within socialism, but because of its historical context the treatment is particularly given to the conclusion given by GDR history itself. It is an interesting film both for the historical moment in which it was made and for the way in which it frankly deals with these issues. Like Kieślowski's films of the 1980s, it is rather depressing in its conclusions but nevertheless interesting for the same reasons.