When Hans tells Leo in 1968 to defy night watch (a headcount), it allows them to have a "first date" as they are both taken to another cell in the prison for the evening. It's a clever narrative approach and allows Rogowski to create a complex, multi-layered portrait of a man who is subversively operating within the rules of a restrictive systems to achieve his desires. "Great Freedom" uses these three distinct episodes from Hans' life to show how he sacrifices himself for others and finds a way to control his world in the process. How Hans and Oskar navigate their relationship behind bars provides one of the film's most dramatic and affecting moments. Hans performs a sexual favor for Viktor in order to get his former cellmate to pass communications along to Oskar.
In 1957, Hans is jailed again under Paragraph 175, this time along with his lover, Oskar (Thomas Prenn). Meise introduces a third narrative thread in the film, which also features Hans and Viktor. Viktor is initially wary of Hans - he does not want to share a cell or associate with a gay man - but Viktor, who is imprisoned for another crime, helps Hans alter his tattoo, a scene that has a real intimacy.
So does the serial number on his arm, which catches the attention of his cellmate, Viktor. Hans' scrawny, naked frame (Rogowski reportedly lost more than 25 pounds for the role) illustrates the horrors of that experience.
He was then finishing four months of an 18-month sentence after being held prisoner in a concentration camp. The filmmaker's commitment to the world - he filmed in an abandoned prison - adds to the picture's heightened realism.Īnd it is at this moment in "Great Freedom" that the story shifts back to 1945 and reveals that Hans has been in this same cell before. Director Sebastian Meise, who cowrote the film with Thomas Reider, plunges viewers into the darkness of Hans' experience in the hole, illuminating some scenes with just a match or a through a peephole. When he protects Leo from some abusers, Hans ends up in solitary. Hans seems resigned to his life behind bars, and he is observant, picking up cues as he surveys the men on the yard. Sentenced to two years in jail without probation, he enters the prison system where he recognizes both Leo (Anton von Lucke), a teacher, who was also arrested in the same sting operation - a hidden camera in a public toilet where men met for sex - and Viktor (Georg Friedrich), whose connection to Hans is slowly revealed. Hans Hoffman (Franz Rogowski of " Undine") is arrested in 1968 for "deviant sexual practices" under Paragraph 175. "Great Freedom," which won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section of this year's Cannes Film Festival, is a poignant, potent drama - and a love story, actually - featuring an all-male cast and taking place almost entirely within the confines of a German prison.