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Zina

1985, Movie, NR, 92 mins

Zina: Review

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Concentrating on the psychoanalysis of Zina, the daughter of the great political thinker Leon Trotsky, director McMullen has woven together a structurally complex, frustrating, and, in many ways, intensely beautiful film. Giordano plays the disturbed young woman, attempting a life in 1931 Berlin, convinced that the nightmares and disorientation she has been experiencing are indications of her social inadequacies. But her psychiatrist (McKellen) understands the things in Giordano's mind to be quite different: a vision of the horrors in store for a Germany preparing to accept Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. McKellen has Giordano relate events from her past, especially her relations with her father, her dreams, and the events in her present life, as she attempts to unfold some mystery that is lurking in the back of her mind. Sequences jump from Giordano talking to her psychiatrist to the island where her father has been exiled, to Giordano's apparently uneventful life spent in listless daydreaming about present-day Berlin. Near the film's end, the Nazis have usurped power--the fright that had existed in Zina's mind is now a reality. Giordano is last seen lying dead on a large stone stairway--apparently the victim of suicide--sounds of marching Nazis echoing in the background. Like the unfathomable visions existing in Zina's imagination, much of this film remains a mystery. The captivating imagery and profound ideological quotations are never brought together in a poetic whole. This could be blamed on a director more concerned with the chance of displaying Trotsky on the screen, thus confusing the film's focus between Zina and her father. Giordano, previously seen in Andrei Tarkovski's NOSTALGIA (1984), displays the passionate sensitivity that makes her character fascinating, yet she remains ungraspable, her turmoil never fully understood or appreciated. leave a comment
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