Mirors No. 3 (Christian Petzold)

Ordinary Magic

Amir Siadat

Christian Petzold continues to explore substitute identities and enjoys twisting familiar conventions to make well-known stories feel strange and new. Mirors No. 3 is another stop along his familiar path. Seen from a distance, this path gently leaves behind the city with all its noise, history, and twists, settling instead into the quieter suburbs and the lives of simpler people. From film to film, his plots have grown more abstract, his worlds emptier, and his settings more compact. Fortunately, he remains a storyteller — though in his own way, where the weight often falls on what is left unsaid, and a glance can carry more meaning than words. He has said that this time he is indebted to the Brothers Grimm. Once you strip away the details, you see he isn’t wrong. The tale of someone who, by “accident,” stumbles upon a strange house — or rather, is lured off the road by a kind of charm or magic — and there gradually takes on a new identity, feels familiar. But Petzold has tried to set this well-worn fairy-tale pattern within the frame of everyday life, staging an extraordinary situation in the most ordinary form. To create the damaged atmosphere of the house — as if the ghost of a lost loved one lingers in every corner — he uses tools and objects you could find in any home, relying on actions that point toward repair: painting fences, tending the vegetable garden, hammering and oiling door hinges, fixing the dishwasher. And this slow, uneventful process is not at all what we would expect after the accident and the tragedy that has taken place! While watching, we wonder why the characters aren’t as surprised as we think they should be — how the host and the guest have grown so quickly accustomed to each other, and how this everyday order manages to hold together. Out of habit, we expect the story, like a compressed spring snapping loose, to eventually lose its calm and pick up speed. Could it be that the film is actually trying to make us experience the process of healing? Relying on modest means and small subjects has helped Petzold finish the film faster than ever, but it has also brought risks. One gets the feeling that a short story has been stretched into a feature-length film. This in itself is not a flaw, but Mirors No. 3, despite the appeal of its idea, lacks a lot in the details and is certainly not on par with Petzold’s best works. Still, when the course and outcome of his trial and error remain positive, who cares!