The Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper noted with surprise that German director Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s Demmin Cantos, his first film in a quarter of a century, had been rejected by the Berlinale Forum. The then-artistic director of the Berlinale, Carlo Chatrian, was even questioned about it in the Bundestag, as Die Welt reported. Although Chatrian deferred to the Forum’s independent selection committee, he did note that Demmin Cantos (or Demminer Gesänge) was “different” from Syberberg’s earlier works.
Syberberg made his name in the 1970s as a more experimental member of the New German Cinema when compared to better-known colleagues such as Fassbinder, Herzog and Wenders. He became famous for what Die Welt called the “definitive” cinematic portrayals of quintessentially German subjects: King Ludwig II of Bavaria (Ludwig – Requiem für einen jungfräulichen König, 1972), Karl May (1974), the Wagner family (Winifred Wagner und die Geschichte des Hauses Wahnfried 1914–1975, 1975) and his most famous work, Hitler, ein Film aus Deutschland (1977).
Not having seen these, I can’t say how ‘different’ his latest (and possibly last) production actually is. What is clear, however, is that Demmin Cantos is a very personal work. Born in 1935, Syberberg was nine years old when he saw the town of Demmin “burning on the horizon” at the end of the Second World War. The town had become famous for possibly the largest mass suicide in German history – around a thousand women killed themselves and their children in fear of the approaching Red Army. Syberberg uses fragments from Martin Farkas’s documentary Über Leben in Demmin (2017), which deals with the subject.
Syberberg survived, fled to West Germany in 1953 and moved back to Nossendorf, near Demmin, a few years after Reunification, where he restored the old family estate that had been expropriated by the communist regime.
Demmin is a small German town in the north-eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern with a shrinking population – young people prefer to leave the remote place which is full of GDR Plattenbau flats. Syberberg’s return was therefore in itself something of a political act.
In Demmin Cantos, the silver-haired Syberberg documents his rather heroic attempts to breathe new life, at least temporarily, into Demmin’s desolate central square. Attempts which, culturally and socially, must be deemed an impressive success. Politically however, as Syberberg himself disappointedly concludes at the end, they seem to have had little effect – the financial and architectural follow-up needed to permanently revive the old market square still hasn’t materialised.
This square is not only the heart of the town, but also of the documentary. There’s a church which, almost miraculously, survived the war and the fire of 1945. In 1995, the old Rathaus or Town Hall was rebuilt. But the surrounding prefab flats and the empty lots remaining since 1945 mean Demmin’s central square still feels soulless.
Syberberg’s first idea, together with old friends he refers to as “survivors of 1945”, was to resurrect one vanished side of the square, restoring its historic façade and the square’s original dimensions. By printing photographs of some of the old buildings on a large canvas, and having a theatre painter recreate another building, then adding historical information, Syberberg and his collaborators manage to recreate a sense of social cohesion and even a festive atmosphere in this temporary reimagining. A similar effect is achieved by the temporary reconstruction, with scaffolding and giant life-size historical photographs on either side of the corner building, of the former Café Zilm, which used to dominate the market, as some older residents remember. Syberberg states: “Someone who won’t take this part of the market into account, has not understood the market. And without the market, the city will not be.”
More happens, including an open-air performance of Friedrich Schiller’s Die Räuber by a Berlin theatre company, a church performance of Mozart’s Requiem by a local citizen’s choir, and renowned architects (including Alexander Schwarz and Peter Haimerl) presenting plans for the square – plans which, as noted above, have yet to result in any political action.
If that sounds like enough to fill 214 minutes, it isn’t. It is easy to sympathise with Syberberg’s commitment and to admire his achievements. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to watch him scroll through his online diary (at Syberberg.de) while filming it with a handheld cam, as he does for long stretches of Cantos. Scrolling through websites is even more tiring when you’re watching someone else do it, by hand, irregularly, for minutes on end (sometimes in double exposure with other shots), with lots (and I mean lots) of photos showing similar images. Really, how many photos of scaffolding being erected or bystanders looking at it do we need?
Syberberg’s voice-over is, again, sympathetic, but slow and repetitive, as is the presentation of information throughout the film. I love slow cinema, that’s not the issue. I’ve watched much longer, much slower films with a sense of breathlessness. But the information presented in Demmin Cantos, and the form chosen (the shaky camera and abrupt editing both underlining the personal aspect of the film – you never forget it’s Syberberg holding the camera – and undermining any kind of flow that might develop within it), could have easily been edited into a standard-length feature.
Another, more interesting weakness of the documentary is Syberberg’s treatment of German-Russian relations. Along with the revival of the market, Syberberg seeks reconciliation with the former liberators turned occupiers – a subject that was taboo in GDR times. Therefore, as part of the film programme in the temporary Café Zilm, Syberberg plans to show not only Fritz Lang’s Frau im Mond (1929), with its connection to Wernher von Braun’s V-rockets which were built locally in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, but also Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966), in order to show the people of Demmin about how great Russian culture “can be and always has been”.
If the latter remark sounds a little insensitive at the moment, we must remember that Syberberg is taking on a very different kind of historical relationship with Russia, and is coming from a very personal place. His general avoidance of the subject of Demmin’s Nazis and neo-Nazis (referring to the latter simply as demonstrators dressed in black, as opposed to the more colourful counter-demonstrators) can reasonably be explained by a desire to depoliticise the historical reconstruction of a communal space.
But for someone so aware of the traumas of Russian occupation, to then admiringly show a Russian classical concert given at Palmyra (intended to celebrate Putin’s involvement in the Syrian civil war) is more than questionable. The concert was conducted by Valery Gergiev, whom Syberberg shows in a lengthy YouTube clip with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, which actually broke with the director after his refusal to denounce Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Then to lament, as Syberberg does, how undertaking cultural projects with the Russians is now prohibited and, most disturbingly, to speak of “war in Europe again among Russian brothers,” instead of an invasion of the sovereign Ukrainian nation by the Russian military – then, yes, I’m afraid that, however well-intentioned, his attempts at historical reconciliation with Russia miss the mark.
Germany 2023, 214 minutes
Director Hans-Jürgen Syberberg
Production Syberberg Filmproduktion
Producers Hans-Jürgen Syberberg
International sales Filmgalerie 451
Script Hans-Jürgen Syberberg
Cinematography Hans-Jürgen Syberberg
Editing Hans-Jürgen Syberberg
Music Mozart, Bach, Brahms
With Karl Schlösser, Marlies Hamann, Alexander Schwarz, Peter Haimerl
