The first screening at the 67th Berlinale was the French war-time drama "Django," which opens a harrowing window on the life of legendary gypsy jazz composer and guitarist Django Reinhardt from his cushy, fabulous Hot Club life in Paris of 1943 to his resistance against being turned into an entertainer for the Nazis’s enjoyment to his breathless escape into a snowy, mountainous Switzerland by foot, SS officers and their dogs in hot pursuit.
Prior to entering the cavernous lower-level Cinemaxx screening room for the screening of the Berlinale’s opening film, “Django,” I fortified myself with a creamy cappuccino, courtesy of Nespresso, since last year, the press' favorite festival sponsor. I hardly needed the caffeine.
From the opening scenes of this French competition contender, directed by Etienne Comar and starring Reda Kateb as Reinhardt, adrenaline was pumping through my veins. Not from the knowledge that this film is situated within that shameful epoch in recent history when a narcissistic lunatic rose to power, bewitching a nation, spreading lies, destroying individual liberties, redefining humanity and silencing the conscience of the many; but from the fear that “Django” portrays what is beginning to unfold in the United States of Donald Trump.
Comar’s storytelling is linear and clean, enabling us to revisit history we thought we knew inside and out -- but through a unique Gypsy jazz lens and with a bit of creative interpretation. The film is inspired by Django’s remarkable life and is not strictly biographical; rather, it is based on well-known details drawn from its protagonist’s life. Case in point: despite being a member of an ethnicity targeted by the Nazis, Django was allowed to play in Parisian clubs for the majority of the occupation.
Using that surprising detail as a springboard, “Django” takes us on a nail-biting journey as Reinhardt flees Paris with his expectant wife and ancient, lovably crotchety mother, finding refuge in a Gypsy caravan community on the banks of a lake that tantalizingly overlooks free Switzerland.
Their lakeside paradise (there is a moving scene when the Reinhardts are greeted warmly by their fellow Roma who are evidently old friends or even relatives of theirs) ends abruptly with the arrival of German officers who take over the villa and begin a campaign to terrorize and deport the non-Aryans. When Reinhardt's beloved pet monkey Jogo is found dead in the forest, he knows it's time to make that journey across the lake.
Did all of this really happen? Is this a new and valuable film shedding light on the experience of the Gypsies during World War Two? I wouldn’t go that far; but fiction can have a way of presenting truths that resonate in contemporary life. From this American critic’s point of view, “Django” is a cautionary tale about where our nation is right now, on the precipice of capitulation to a fascist regime.
Of the innumerable nerve-wracking scenes – suddenly disturbingly relevant during these opening weeks of the Trump Administration – the one that stands out features a Nazi officer brusquely laying out the rules of the acceptable music that Reinhardt and his band are to play for the entertainment of the Gestapo. The exchange is as comic as it is an affront to anyone who cares about artistic freedom.
It was a fictional scene about an event nearly 75 years ago but it took my breath away. The Nazi document about acceptable music (no solos more than five seconds; no “Negermusik”, a.k.a., the blues; no “non-Aryan” instruments like cowbells. In short, no real jazz) seemed of a piece with the shocking Executive Orders that have been signed into action by the new president of the United States: a narcissistic lunatic who came to power through a democratic election, bewitching half a nation, spreading lies, destroying individual liberties, amassing thugs to carry out his decrees, redefining humanity and in the process attempting to silence the distinctively diverse, creative and kinetic music of America.
A final note about the music of Django, which is the exuberantly inventive Gypsy Swing of Reinhardt himself, played by the Rosenberg Trio, a well-known Dutch band. Set inside scenes like shimmering precious stones, Reinhardt’s performances -- anarchic jazz in smoky clubs or the sorrowful church requiem for his murdered Roma family and friends that is the film’s closing scene – form the soul of this fine film, eternal, transcendent, inspiring us long after the demise of a mad and murderous regime.
At “Django’s” press conference earlier today, Kateb, the film’s French-Algerian actor star said that he understood the film as primarily about Django’s moral awakening through his art. “Music can blind you, but Django talks about an artist who opened his eyes to the world that was around him. It’s his answer,” the actor said.