I keep thinking about Leon's tattoo. The way the framing and his partially unbottened shirt again and again lay bare its edges, without ever allowing us to take in its entirety. In a way the mostly hidden tattoo it is a perfect cinematic object: on the one hand it is a device of audience control, because it keeps up our interest in the protagonist and especially in his body, which is never exposed (unlike Devid's and Felix's) and which also never becomes expressive via acousmatic sensual emanation (unlike Devid's, Felix's and also Nadja's, while Leon lies in his bed next door, alone, isolated, unable to even properly be alone); his is a body always wrapped in dark, often completely black clothing, yet something of interest just has to be there, underneath.

On the other hand the tattoo also fits Leon, and even his unwillingness to expose it together with the rest of his body fits him as an attempt at anti-bourgeoise self-stylization mired in self-doubt. A bold, almost irreversible gesture that turns out not to be the desired break-through but yet another act of self-deception. While at the same time still signaling the desire for another, freer life. Just like the patches on his backpack, while clearly evidence of the phony devil-may-care attitude of a guy who still dreams to emulate the life of a 19th century "Dichterfürst", also point towards the facts that yes, this one is really broken pretty much completely. A guy so desperate even his repeated classist gaffes are a cry for help first and foremost.

In other words: A guy so desperate only love can save him. And to turn things around: When love can save even this poor fellow, it can and will save everyone. All of us. And we're also just incredibly lucky that there is a director out there, working right now, working straightfaced in madcap romanticism mode and pulling it off, again and again. I mean who else would even try to pull off a scene in a naturalistic setting in which a Heine poem is quoted from beginning to end - twice?

Just so much beauty in this, big and small. Like the way Matthias Brandt just naturally has taken on the role of benevolent spirit of the Petzold universe. Or the moment Paula Beer's shirtsleeve gets entangled in the bicycle handlebars.

While PHOENIX, the culmination of his work with Farocki, might still his masterpiece, I have to admit I generally kind of prefer Petzold's post-Farocki films by now. His work just keeps getting freer and crazier, nerdier too, and his last few films also do not quite come with the kind of semantic burden - regarding the Berlin Republic, late capitalism etc - some of his earlier films at times struggled with. Leon, for example, is allowed to just be a bad writer, like so many others. And because this is a film that takes no shortcuts at all, without ever feeling cumbersome because of it, we even learn about the precise sentence his second novel ("Club-Sandwich") starts unraveling. It happens, I believe, when he starts writing about "Berlin townhouses", taking refuge in a tired socio-cultural cliché, the very sort of intellectual laziness Petzold never falls prey to.

I do not expect to see many, if any better new films this year.