{"id":1187035,"date":"2026-04-01T05:04:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T12:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/?p=1187035"},"modified":"2026-03-31T16:55:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T23:55:58","slug":"christian-petzold-miroirs-no-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/christian-petzold-miroirs-no-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Dystopia and Repair: Christian Petzold\u2019s Miroirs No. 3 Reflects Germany\u2019s Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

One day when he was home with his sick four-year-old daughter, filmmaker Christian Petzold flipped on a James Bond movie \u2014 and noticed she was enraptured.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has a theory about why: \u201cJames Bond can destroy everything,\u201d Petzold muses, \u201cand he doesn\u2019t have to clean it up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Petzold\u2019s latest film Miroirs No. 3<\/em> is \u2014 like all of his films \u2014 about the clean-up. The German filmmaker has spent two decades of arthouse filmmaking examining his country\u2019s fractured relationship with its brutal history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barbara <\/em>(2012), <\/em>for which he won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival, told the story of an East German physician trying to flee West while being tailed by the Stasi. Transit<\/a> <\/em>(2018), another darling of the Berlin International Film Festival, starred Franz Rogowski as a refugee in a present-day fascist state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The darkness of these movies might make you assume Petzold will conform to the stereotypes of the serious European director. But, like his films, the writer-director brims with warmth and generous curiosity. We\u2019re barely into our conversation before he\u2019s offered me part of his raisin scone \u2014 \u201cBetty might have made this!\u201d he comments as he breaks it in half.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Betty is a character in Miroirs, <\/em>a film that examines the existential questions Petzold has long  explored. He is interested in how people, especially women, survive in quietly dire circumstances. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It stars Petzold\u2019s frequent collaborator, Paula Beer, as Laura, a young piano student who survives a car crash in the German countryside. Rather than return home to Berlin, she decides to recuperate with Betty, a kind stranger played by Barbara Auer. The two form a surrogate mother-daughter relationship as they restore Betty\u2019s charming, if slightly dilapidated, home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miroirs No. 3<\/em> Director Christian Petzold on Two Types of Cinema<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"MIROIRS
Miroirs No. 3 director Christian Petzold<\/em>. Photo by Christian Schulz\/ Schrammfilm<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Miroirs <\/em>studies the silent maintenance that women do to keep things together \u2014 Petzold\u2019s rejection of the inherent wastefulness of capitalist consumer culture \u2014 and how quickly a home can fall apart in the shadow of tragedy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have two types of cinema now,\u201d Petzold says. \u201cCinema that desires dystopia, and cinema that desires repair.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miroirs <\/em>belongs to the second cohort. After the film\u2019s premiere at Cannes, some journalists were surprised by what they perceived as a detachment from contemporary politics. But Petzold has grown weary of didactic films that lecture audiences about things they already agree with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter 1945, the English and the Americans came to Germany with a mission to reeducate us.\u201d Petzold explains. \u201cThat heritage lasts through today \u2014 we have movies where, from the first moment, you know who\u2019s bad, who\u2019s good. The characters say sentences that feel written by journalists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, it would be a mistake to call Miroirs <\/em>apolitical: The past is felt painfully in each frame. History resides in the unspoken trauma that lingers in Betty\u2019s house, and in the rusted tractors of the car repair lot where Betty\u2019s husband, Richard (Matthias Brandt) and son, Max (Enno Trebs) work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The men earn money by removing the GPS trackers on luxury vehicles, and conduct their business with a tight-lipped secrecy that recalls Petzold\u2019s previous films about survivors of police states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe old structure would have been the father and son.\u201d Petzold explains. \u201cSomething from the Bible. But Laura and Betty have rebuilt their world, and it\u2019s all food, culture, books, nature. You never see Betty and Richard\u2019s room. The house has no male traces.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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