Time flies either you're having fun or not and here we are once again, when the Athens International Film Festival takes once more place in the centre of Athens. With feature and short-length movies from all over the world, both premieres as well as films that compete for the Golden Athena award, the 24th Athenian festival has something for everyone.
The first - and biggest surprise- of the night comes at the beginning when this particular viewer (who avoids trailers in general) realised that the story may take place in WWII but it is set in present day. Our protagonist, Georg (Franz Rogowski) walks among contemporary cars, lives in modern apartments and runs away from modern-looking policemen, yet, everything he does or is occupied with is more 40's-like. For example, all the refugees want to escape to the US by ship, their passports, transits and clothes are old-looking, the bureaucracy shown on film (even though not many things have changed along the years) is based on things happening during that era and the heroes never use modern appliances such as computers or mobiles.
This anachronism may be inventive and imaginative, it is however quite disturbing and diversionary. Whether the main reason behind this choice was either to show how identifiable those people's stories are, or to make a connection with the rise of neo-nazism today, or even to prove how much war and its consequences are the same no matter when such a big event takes place, I'm not sure. Nonetheless, even after I got used to this interpretation of WWII, I couldn't get past the various plot and - specifically- character holes that we came across.
You see, Georg is involuntarily mistaken for a dead writer who is either famous or powerful enough to easily obtain the necessary papers to travel to Mexico. Georg wants to take advantage of this situation but always finds things to make him stop and think what he is leaving behind. And even though some of these things, such as a late friend's wife and son, seem important (those two people could easily be his new family as his paternal instincts wake up when Georg is around the boy) eventually they do not affect neither the protagonist nor the story. They are just there.As for other characters, such as the dead writer's wife, Marie, who we early on find out that has left her husband, she is presented as a love interest but such an inexplicable one. Marie (Paula Beer) has not only got a relationship with a successful doctor who also wants to flee to Mexico, but is simultaneously looking for her ex-husband without whom she does not want to leave the country, and to top it all she starts a relationship with Georg.
This all might be a problem with the source material but having not read the book and judging solely the movie, these inexplicable moments and character behaviours took away from my enjoyment of Transit which may be beautifully acted and interestingly presented, yet somewhere along the way it lost its point.
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