Wednesday, October 9, 2013

At times lovers are separated by age. Other occasions separated by race. On still other occasions, it is religion. Although in The Promise, Konrad and Sophie are of the same age, same nationality and same religion. The lovers are separated by an ugly put up of stone and barbered wire that turns out to be a mark of the cold war. In the 1960s in Berlin, nothing was more terrible than the realism of lovers, families and friends separated by what became identified basically as “the Wall.

Konrad becoming a well esteemed astronomer changed everything in his love life with Sophie. Although they make lots of promises for their future, the couple gets separated, with Sophie in the West and Konrad in the East. Sophie was pregnant at that time.

The film is politically biased. Family attachment weigh in, additionally to which, once Konrad’s father turns him in for planning to flee, Konrad is firmly watched as a security risk.  Konrad and Sophie keep connected for many years. They are separated by an official who cancels father-son visits. After the Wall came down in 1989, it was uncertain they may perhaps ever be a pair again although their vivid memories will constantly be reminiscent to them of how they were in their love life.

Margarethe von Trotta as the director assigned Konrad the role of a successful natural scientist as the film weaves personal events and history into a textile full of irony and emotion. Von Trotta does not deceive either side of her story, East or West. Politics and people mix, although nothing is white or black in investigating one of the several stories about the Wall.

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