Summary:
This remarkable film by Sebastian Meise is not the typical prison film full of harassment, violence and brutal sex, but one where nobility and love can make their way through the cracks in a system where the lack of freedom looms over its protagonist inside but also outside of prison, thanks to a legal system that penalized homosexuality in Germany from 1875 well into the 20th century.
Review:
The film follows the three stays in a German prison of Hans Hoffmann, convicted of the application of paragraph or article 175 of the German Penal Code that considered homosexual relations between males illegal since 1875, whose penalties the Nazi regime intensified and that followed in force for several years in what was West Germany.
This remarkable film by the Austrian Sebastian Meise (winner of the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival) could be framed between two ironic situations, corresponding to the beginning and the end of the narrated odyssey. The first irony, related to the title of the film, is that the occupation of Germany by the allies did not mean freedom for Hans, since they continued to apply German law. The second (and risky on the part of the director and co-writer) will be left to the viewer's consideration.
Great Freedom takes place in different decades, almost entirely in the prison where Hans is serving his sentences, the way in which the director hits the jumps between the different timelines being original. There we see the evolution of his relationship with Viktor (Georg Friedrich) throughout those stays and his links with Leo (Anton von Lucke, whom we saw in Babylon Berlin) and Oskar (Thomas Prenn, actor in the series Biohackers) .
In a moving but harsh way and with such an Austrian dryness, the film shows us a protagonist willing to channel his desire and even love, with all the noble that it can imply, in the adverse conditions of the prison environment. But Meise's film is not that typical prison film full of harassment, violence and brutal sex, but one with men trying to help and also love each other through the loopholes that the system allows them and where the lack of freedom looms about the protagonist inside but also outside the prison and about the spectator.
Within a very good cast, the extraordinary performance of Franz Rogowski (Undine, Transit, Franz) stands out, capable of transmitting with gesture, voice and body (and its physical transformations) and with a concentrated sobriety all the suffering, the nobility and love of his Hans.
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