Great Freedom review – historical drama perfectly balances intelligence and empathy

Though its does feel like a misstep, Great Freedom’s absence from this year’s Best International Feature category at the Oscars (it was Austria’s submission) just goes to show what an incredible bumper year we’ve had for foreign language films in the last 12 months. Here is a powerful and poignant historical drama that balances empathy and intelligence, the enormous and the intimate, in a way that, in plenty of other years, would land it as a worthy frontrunner for the prize.

Sebastian Meise’s second film (coming a full 10 years after his debut, Still Life) chronicles almost 30 years in the life of Hans Hoffman (Franz Rogowski) via three of his stints in prison in 1945, 1957, and 1968. Hans is jailed for the crime of being gay, which was illegal in Germany until 1969. Jumping back and forth through these imprisonments, Meise examines the barbaric cruelty of the post-war order, the state plucking gay Germans directly out of concentration camps only to immediately drop them into civilian jails.

Great Freedom is unsparing in its examination of the harrowing emotional effects of this system, but there’s beauty and tenderness here, too, albeit of a very rugged kind. During his first stay, Hans is cellmates with lifer Viktor (Georg Friedrich), who is guilty of a mysterious but presumably heinous and violent crime, who reacts with predictable hostility to his initial discovery of Hans’s sexuality but grows more and more compassionate as the two get to know each other.

From here, a sort of love blooms; sometimes platonic, sometimes sexual, but always a source of emotional sustenance for both men whenever Hans is sent back into the penal system, whether they’re cellmates or not. Both lead performances are excellent, though it’s obviously Rogowski who proves most captivating, helped by superb hair and makeup work that subtly but distinctly sells Hans’s aging process. One of Europe’s most reliable and transformative actors, he’s simply brilliant here, showing us how Hans’s pain and fear calcifies into a quiet resigned rage, but also how he finds an unexpected freedom within the walls of his prison.

Great Freedom never shows us the outside world, which initially provides a crushing claustrophobia, particularly during Hans’s visits to the hole, which is dank and pitch-dark, lit only by Hans’s cigarettes in some of the film’s most singularly striking shots. Yet, as we get more and more used to the prison and its cells – great production design draws the eye to the small changes each decade, even as the environs mostly remain stagnant – we gradually start to relate to Hans’s growing comfort within the confines of these walls.

Meise’s camerawork always has the utmost empathy for its characters, from the demeaning work in the prison workshop to the frank and explicit sex scenes. He keeps the emotions of the piece at a constant steady simmer, meaning you’re engaged throughout, though this also means there aren’t any absolute gut-punch moments either, and the story drags just a bit as it approaches its end. But these complaints are only minor when a film is this clever and well-constructed, showing in absorbing and fascinating detail an ignored piece of history and the traumas and strength of the people who survived through it.

Great Freedom is released in UK cinemas from 11 March.