TRANSIT: The Hell We Have Been in for a Long Time

Ruken Doğu Erdede

After Barbara (2012) and Phoenix (2014), Christian Peltzod completed his trilogy called ‘love in the times of oppressive systems’ with Transit (2018). Adapted from Anna Seghers’ novel, written and set during the Second World War, the original story has been transported from wartime to today’s Marseille. By the reason of anachronistic use of time and space, Transit has risen an important question about the substantial relation of history with present time.

TRANSIT: The Hell We Have Been in for a Long Time

After Barbara (2012) and Phoenix (2014),  Christian Peltzod completed his trilogy called ‘love in the times of oppressive systems’ with Transit (2018). Adapted from Anna Seghers’ novel, written and set during the Second World War, the original story has been transported from wartime to today’s Marseille. By the reason of anachronistic use of time and space, Transit has risen an important question about substantial relation of history with present time.

The film starts with a scene where two men talk about escaping from generic fascists who are on their road to Paris. Although the conversation reveals very familiar words from the Second World War condition- Germany, Nazi occupation, concentration camps- camera pans to the window of the cafe where we see a street view from today’s Paris. Modern day police cars are passing one after another. This anachronistic use of time dizzies audience's perception of diegetic time of the film: Are we in 1940s or 2010s? Does subjective time of the past interrupt objective of today or vice-versa?

Petzold explains his view about usage of intermingling subjective and objective time in Transit ,

In the structuralist theory there are two words:the one is metaphor and the other is metonym. The metaphor means one over the other, and metonym, one beside each other. I think history is not just [layers hands on the top of one another] over and over and over, it is also something where in the same time you have the old and the new things together. You have the subjective and the objective in the same moment: this conception I try to bring into Transit. (Petzold, 2018)

From this point fort, I want to rise the question of which periods of time are put beside each other and what this metonym reveals?  


Analog Times, Familiar Fears, Transparent Bodies

In Transit, Europe is under the occupation of generic fascists. A Jewish audio technician named Georg (Franz Rogowski) undertakes the identity of a recently dead communist author after accepting a job to deliver his personal documents to the Mexican Consulate in Marseille. He immediately takes the chance of getting visas of the dead author. But, real challenges start after that. First of all, he should get transit visas and, moreover he should deal with dead communist author’s wife (Marrie) who searches for her husband in the streets of Marseille.

While the time is limited, Consulate buildings are full of illegal refugees, and there is a possibility of blowing up George’s trick of getting the writer’s identity, tension of the film rises. In one of the most tensious moment- when Consulate officer asks George about his last written story- George delivers one of the most catchy part of Segher’s novel which is a great summary of the situation refugees have been going through: ‘What can I expect here? You know the fairy tale about the man who died, don’t you? He was waiting in Eternity to find out what the Lord had decided to do with him. He waited and waited, for one year, ten years, a hundred years. He begged and pleaded for a decision. Finally he couldn’t bear the waiting any longer. Then they said to him: ‘What do you think you’re waiting for? You’ve been in Hell for a long time already.’ ( Segher, 1944)

Thenceforth, the transit city Marseille becomes an eternal hell, if we borrow the term of Agamben it becomes a ‘zone of indistinction’, a place where the loops of time brings hopelessness. Georgio Agemben evaluates Western political history as the history of generating of Homo sacer. Homo sacer (Latin for ‘the sacred man’) is a figure of Roman law: a person who is banned, may be killed by anybody, but may not be sacrificed in a religious ritual. (Agemben: 72, 1995) Put it into another words, these people (homo sacre) are rendered to a ‘bare-life’, they are outlaw citizens, they are the exception to the law. They live in a ‘zone of  indistinction’ between life and death, law and violence and survivor and victim.

The notion of Homo sacer is widely used to define condition of Jews in concentration camps in the Second World War. Transit widens the concept of ‘zone of indistinction’ from concentration camps to the all city Marseille –even to other European cities-. Due to the metonymic similarity drawn between two places (today’s Marseille and 1940s concentration camps), an elaboration can be put forward about analogy between these two time periods.

Recently, Europe faces rise of far right parties and Neo-nazi, fascist organizations. Although the parties involved a span of broad political spectrum, there are some common themes, such as hostility to immigration, anti-Islamic rhetoric and Euroscepticism.When rise of far right merges with the flow of refugees to Europe in recent years, some familiar fears from history have reemerged. Putting these two period of time ‘beside each other’ , Petzold calls fear of the fascist past by drawing a continuous line between period of the  Second World War and today’s Europe.

Analogy between two periods of time is reinforced with the encounter of George with illegal African refugees Driss and his mother Melissa. According to Agemben,

‘The camp’, is hidden matrix of the politics in which we are still living, and it is this structure of the camp that we must learn to recognize in all its metamorphoses into the zones d’attentes of our airports and certain outskirts of our cities. (Agemben:175, 1995)

Transit city, outskirt of Europe Marseille, becomes ‘the camp’ of today. Homo sacers of the Second World War come together with today’s Homo sacers who are illegal refugees from all over the world. The film depicts a sunburned cinematography where every event happens in very day-light. Yet, people pass without realizing these refugees. They assume the form of transparent things. This invisibility implies ‘the hidden matrix of the politics in which we are living’. There is a change in face of state of exception, a change in perception of danger. While atrocities that we experience become more light and mundane, the situation of Homo sacers is not obvious to our eye.

By setting a Second World War story in today’s Europe, Transit clearly challenges historical drama genre. Furthermore, the film reminds us that history is not too far away from present time. Dangers have become more transparent in daylight, so that we became blind. So blind that we do not realize the sunburned hell we have been in for a long time.

References:

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/a-citizen-without-civilization-christian-petzold-discusses-transit

Seghers,A.( 1944). Transit. New York: Penguin Random House

Agemben,G. (1995). Homo Sacer. California: Stanford University Press

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