“A bare bones drama about the perception of identity, the reliability of memory, and our suspicion of outsiders.”

“There was a role I had to play”

When can we truly be ourselves? The best answer is probably when we are alone, because in any form of human interaction we always, to some extent, play a role attuned to the social setting we are in. Social norms dictate how we behave in any given situation, and so do our own intentions when it comes to interacting with others, regardless of whether we are with friends or strangers. It is this idea that German director Kai Stänicke plays with in his feature debut Trial of Hein, a bare bones drama about the perception of identity, the reliability of memory, and our suspicion of outsiders. With staging that gives the film a play-like feel and camerawork that draws the viewer onto the stage, as it were, the film tackles the more difficult aspects of the human condition in an intellectually engaging, albeit somewhat belabored way, while drawing comparisons to a 21st century arthouse classic.

After 14 years of absence Hein (Paul Boche) returns to the remote island of his birth in the North Sea. Upon revealing his identity to the fishermen who first encounter him, the guarded community of his youth regards him with suspicion. Is he truly who he says he is? His own sister, Heide (Stephanie Amarell) doesn’t recognize him, but at the time he left she was perhaps too young to remember him. His mother (Irene Kleinschmidt) is barely lucid, so her word can’t be fully trusted either. But others, like his former best friend Friedemann (Philip Froissant), should be able to recognize him, yet they are even more in doubt. To get to the truth, community leader Gertrud (Julika Jenkins) proposes to hold a village court, where Hein’s memories of crucial events in his past will be measured against those of the villagers. Surely he will remember things the same way they do?

Obviously their memories won’t line up, otherwise Trial of Hein would be bereft of its drama. As the villagers become increasingly more hostile towards Hein, it becomes a question how long he can keep the secret he has held about Friedemann and his former girlfriend Greta (Emilia Schüle), the reason he returned to the island in the first place, hidden from the community. A card game with the ominous name “Lies” (more commonly known as “Cheat”) might find him a way out.

Setting Hein’s story in a remote island community in which he is one of the very few to ever go to the mainland, Stänicke casts this tale of identity and outsiders almost automatically as a fable. The location and the sparse production design make it hard to pinpoint the era Trial of Hein is set in, which could range from the 1800s to the mid-20th century. This is a community of tradition, where the only trade is fishing and everybody knows everybody. Or do they? Introducing a ‘stranger’ into their midst allows not only for the xenophobic tendencies of such isolated communities to be examined, but also shows that they are perhaps not as close-knit as they may appear on the surface. Everybody plays their role, after all. Stänicke’s screenplay cleverly plays with these notions, though the way he sets the stage (pun intended) makes the examination a tad academic and more a philosophical treatise than a gripping tale. The sets in Trial of Hein, other than the windswept dunes and beaches of the Frisian Islands, consist of a group of small cottages of which one, at most two walls are erected. It turns the inside into the outside, comparable to Lars von Trier’s Dogville, another film in which an outsider is at first reluctantly accepted by a closed-off community, only to be met with increasing hostility as the story progresses. Partly born out of budget constraints, the ‘open floorplan’ of the houses illustrates both the ostensible openness of the community members toward each other and the fact that there is always a wall or two to hide your secrets and your true self behind. What it also does is reinforce the stage play resemblance, which is almost made literal in the setup of the ‘courtroom’: an amphitheater layout of benches that has the three ‘judges’ as well as the defendant and the witnesses on a stage of sorts, with the rest of the villagers being spectators.

This artifice keeps the viewer at arm’s length, something Stänicke tries to counter by using handheld, mostly close-ups and mid-shots, trying to create a connection to the characters and an intimacy that the detached mise-en-scene lacks. This works, but only partially. Because of the often formal and somewhat archaic language used, the feeling that the characters are archetypes through which the director can examine his themes instead of actual people never fully subsides outside of the central love triangle between Hein, Greta, and Friedemann; though even they can’t escape the dialogue being stilted at times, in particular in interactions with other characters. Visualizing the memories of Hein’s younger years and having them bleed into scenes is an interesting device, though used sparingly and only when it is needed to propel the plot forward instead of commenting on the themes. Still, Trial of Hein is a promising debut for Stänicke, a tad academic and too easily forgoing the drama at the core of its story in lieu of its compelling ideas, but excellent as a parable that shows that no matter what role we play, it is best to stay true to ourselves.

(c) Image copyright – Florian Mag