Kai Stenicke’s German drama The Trial of Hein, which takes place in an isolated fishing village, has a vaguely mundane period setting, but its concerns are thoroughly modern. We are introduced to the eerie background through the eyes of the main character, Heinrich, or Hein (Paul Bosch), a skinny young man who returns by boat for the first time in 14 years. However, no one in the village seems to recognize him. Especially not his mother Mechthild (Irene Kleinschmidt), whose dementia is worsening. Hayne is put on trial by the village elders to prove his identity, and the result is a revealing drama that, although the subject is rather clumsily stated, is an intimate and dispassionate exploration of the nature of experience and recollection.
Following its debut at the Berlinale in February, the film, which premiered internationally at the Emerging Directors/New Works Showcase, will be distributed in North America by Strand Releasing.
The first thing that stands out about the film’s quaint setting is that its cramped quarters consist entirely of outdoor apartments. As Hae-in walks lightly down the unpaved road, he receives suspicious looks from fishermen working outdoors and their wives and daughters peeking out from their sparsely furnished, stage-like houses. Each visible wall consists of only two, showing the exposed wooden interior, and the rest is left to our imagination. When Hae-in finally steps into his childhood home, even its comforts are exposed.
Heide’s sister Heide (Stephanie Amarel) is too young to remember him, so only childhood friends Greta (Emilia Schule) and Friedemann (Philippe Froissant) can be reasonably certain who he is. Greta is convinced she is telling the truth. However, Friedemann fearfully averted his gaze. There’s something unspoken between them and he doesn’t want to admit it. Part of the fun of the film is discovering why Friedemann acts the way he does through flashbacks of his childhood that Hein imagines in the space around them—though it wouldn’t be a huge spoiler to call The Trial of Hein a closeted youth movie.
This central theme, drawn from Stenicke’s own experiences as a queer filmmaker, is dramatized through a narrative of interrogation. Although shot with a hand-held wandering camera, each frame is composed with very formal control. The villagers ask Hayne and various other witnesses to recall past events, but each witness seems to have a vastly different perspective. Although most people remember Hayne’s childhood as happy, his memories are far from rosy. It would be very easy to draw a didactic line to explain this contradiction, but Stenicke takes a more nuanced approach, for example by viewing the townspeople as completely ignorant and Hein as an enlightened fugitive. It turns out that Hein’s memories are accentuated not only by longing and melancholy, but also by the instinct of self-preservation.
Following the flow of each family’s residence, the village courtroom becomes a kind of amphitheater, imposing a sense of external performance on the participants, while at the same time being exposed to the elements. Although born out of budget constraints, this Brechtian approach warrants a closer reading of each physical and emotional façade, forcing us to ignore the stoicism of Boce’s calculating and crumbling leads. His concept of Hain is that of a man trained by years of wandering the city in search of his true self.
“Trial of Hein” doesn’t have to do much else to explain itself, between its production design and exhilarating lead performances, so much of the exposition feels overkill. It’s a card game with recurring secondary metaphors, plus semi-intelligible rules for guessing and bluffing, representing deception and shifting perspectives.
However, despite these imperfections, the film is fascinating. The longer the story, the sharper it is, while its flimsy diegesis (from the artificial sets to a few fake beards) calls into question the personal and political truths the village is grappling with. The setting may be outdated, but it speaks to the present, as the villagers’ conservatism of treating outsiders and misfits as invading pathogens manifests itself in rejection, suspicion, and persecution. The antidote to this harmful instinct is a kindness that seems to exist only behind closed doors, in hushed whispers, or in the corners of our memories. In “The Trial of Hein,” Stenicke strives to find and cultivate that kindness, making the film a worthwhile dramatic exploration of how memories and experiences change deep within a person.
