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Created Aug 06, 2014 10:14PM PST • Edited Feb 24, 2024 09:49PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Precious few movies about life in communist countries have made an impact in America. Barbara should be one of them. It’s a compelling drama – and a sexy one – about a glamorous doctor torn between two men and the different lives they represent. It’s also an insightful lens into the grim realities of life when the East German government imposed total control over its citizens. No it’s not The Lives of Others, but it’s close.

   Nina Hoss & Ronald Zehrfeld are quietly charismatic as urbane doctors who find themselves banished to the hinterlands by their cynically totalitarian government. Big name actors in Germany, they each have the moviestar’s gift of making us care about their outcome. Thus, we wish for their characters to get together.

   Extremely cultured and terribly stultified, they are not only admirable and sympathetic, but symbols of what had become of their country and the entire Soviet Bloc. Set in 1980, when many in the United States and Western Europe had foolishly accepted that Evil Empire (the apt name bestowed a few years hence by President Reagan), Barbara lays bare how self-defeating and evil communism really was.

   Thus, the heroine has reasons to be embittered. That bitterness tees up the main dramatic arc: her realization that she could make a life with her fellow doctor, notwithstanding the temptations of freedom. The combination of personal and political makes for a compelling, sexy and fascinating drama.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Nina Hoss is transfixing as the title character, an urbane beauty and first rate doctor. Hoss is currently being seen on American movie screens as Philip Seymour Hoffman’s trusted colleague in A Most Wanted Man.

   Ronald Zehrfeld plays her forced colleague and overseer at the hospital to which she’s exiled. Zehrfeld is apparently a major German TV star according to his IMDb profile. He’s got a great look and easy-going charm that translates well to the big screen.

   Supporters

   • Mark Waschke as her wealthy West German lover
   • Rainer Bock as the Stasi Officer who keeps her under the government’s thumb
   • Jasna Fritzi Bauer as a tormented young woman

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Good 3.0

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Brilliant filmmaking: The heroine stands out front of a hospital, watched thru a second floor window, after a girl is taken away, at which time the sun got markedly brighter, the shadows darker. Subtly perfect, that.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play Great 4.0

    Well constructed screenplay:

    • Reading Huckleberry Finn to a young girl creates a parallel narrative of another escape.
    • Uses radio reports from the 1980 Moscow Olympics as an audio backdrop, reminding us of those Soviet Olympics boycotted by the United States and dominated by steroidal freaks from East Germany and other Soviet Bloc countries.
    • A romantic triangle forms, gets challenged and turns the film into a classic romantic drama.

13. Music Very Good 3.5

    At Last I’m Free by Chic forms an appropriate benediction for the closing credits, being of the moment when the movie is set, lyrically on point and from the free West.

14. Visuals Great 4.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.7

17. Sex Innocent 1.4

18. Violence Fierce 1.8

19. Rudeness Salty 2.0

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

    Barabara’s fascination stems from its unvarnished view of life in the “worker’s paradise” that was the Soviet Bloc. For instance, the government sent people hither and yon, like conscripts in a civilian army. People lived in government assigned apartments. Fellow citizens spied on one another. The Stasi secret police could drop by anytime to search a dwelling and to search people, including body cavity searches.

    Repression aside, Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp plays a fascinating role in the movie.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.5

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0