Great Film overall

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Although the way this film will end is probably there from the beginning anyone who complains about that is missing the point. The big pluses are the location, the atmosphere and the wonderful leading lady who was totally convincing as a bullied wife. Even viewed from the back she maintained her somewhat cowed attitude. I liked the hint at an unknown dimension of the spirit as she gained her freedom from her horrible husband. I also liked that the world Yella found herself in was strange and alienating but she adapted quickly because she was used to being pushed around. It's another film that demonstrates how much wiser and more satisfying European films are.

Very strange small film I have to say. Because it's a thriller able to keep you interested, it's definitely entertaining. But for myself, it doesn't tell me about life, doesn't raise any self-centered question. And those who know me know this is what I mainly expect from books and films. It raised some questions though, but about itself in fact: she's involved in an accident, survived, at least this is what you think, and finally you discover that she died in this accident. OK, but what does this make of the main body of the film? Is it what she imagined while she was drowning herself, or just before the car jumped into water when she knew it was unavoidable? In which case, it should represent her expectations about life (expectations of having been less lawful, more adventurous?). Or is it what would have happened if she had survived, some kind of way of saying if she had been less naive, she would have become more adventurous, less lawful. Or again of saying it's because she was naive she died and could never have become this person we follow in the film? Hmm, really this left me perplexed. But as I said earlier, it's entertaining. It's also nicely filmed and well played, so it's definitely not a waste of time. Just a strange object.

This is an attempt at an interpretation to a movie which I consider a highlight amongst the movies released in the last couple of years. Since an interpretation implies spoilers, my text is full of them. However, given the chance that I am wrong, the spoilers are dissolving by reading. Therefore, best read this text after you have watched "Yella".It is a gruesome picture that we can see in older European movies: The farmer grabs a ax and cuts off the head of the poor chicken. Whenever such a situation is portrayed truthfully, then one sees that the trunk of the chicken still flutters around for a good bit of time, before the heart stops and gives the final release out of life. All this you do not see in this movie, thanks the heaven, but the question arises what happens in the brain when the body is dead. Is it true that the death of the heart blows out the last gleaming of brain-activities, or is it rather so, that there are relays in the brain that gather all the present information together, not according to the logic of logic, but to the logic of our dreams, everything unreeling in enormous speed until the brain stops because the last feedbacks from the heart-streams who are still in the body, are ebbed away? After Yella is more or less hijacked by her former husband, he wants to kill him- and herself by driving with the car over a bridge and precipitating into the river. However, we see, how first Yella and then Ben come out, exhausted but alive. Interestingly enough, shortly after, Yella reaches the train that she wanted to take for getting to her new job: Not only was the place of the accident far away from the railway-station, but neither did she loose her high-heels in the water nor are her stockings dirty. The three "clue-men" she meets in and around her new job belong to the same type of men. In the hotel, nobody knows about the reservation of her room that she had made some days ago. In a conference with business partners she knows like a psychic that these partners are betrayers and have even profited from the bankruptcy of her husband. We also hear three times a noise like from an airplane after the cry of a raven. Every time the scene changes, like the acts in a stage play. Although it turns out that the manager who gave her the new job, has been fired meanwhile, she manages to jump from part-time job to part-time job in order to prove her that she is capable to manage her life without the "help" of her husband. However, when the film ends, one sees almost the same scenery as at the beginning, after the car with her and her husband crashed into the river. But there is now just one thing: Both Yella and Ben are dead. Obviously, this film by Christian Petzold is the attempt to reconstruct the fragile time between a lethal accident and the death, so-to-say a mental geography of the never-land between beginning and end of death. This is so fascinatingly done in this movie, that my recommendation is unlimited.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film with its easy pace and moments of emptiness - but it really reminded me a lot of the 1962 version of "Carnival of Souls". You have the car driven off the bridge, the recurring musical theme, the constant drawing to the water, her acceptance of a job after travelling there after the crash, the way her life gradually corrupts despite her being given a second chance and the final moments where she's discovered to have died in the original crash after all. The two films aren't so similar that I was certain it was a remake, in many ways guessing if it was a supernatural story or not made it more interesting to watch.