Queer prison drama ‘Great Freedom’ finds hope | movie review

Franz Rogowski and Anton von Lucke in Great Freedom. Courtesy of Mubi.

Great Freedom is an intimate prison drama that follows a gay man over decades as he is repeatedly imprisoned as a part of Germany's outdated anti-gay laws.

While Great Freedom takes place during a dark time in Germany's history, its hopeful story filled with empathy doesn't feel anything less than authentic and, against all odds, enjoyable. Taking notes from Shawshank Redemption, director Sebastian Meise's telling of gay men persecuted under Germany's strict anti-homosexuality laws is epic-in-scope but intimate in its execution. Without becoming overwrought, it feels genuine to the queer experience.

Great Freedom will open at the Film Forum in NYC on March 4 and Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles on March 11.

Great Freedom begins in 1968 with a series of hidden camera videos from a public restroom where various gay men cruise for sex. One of the men in those videos is Hans Hoffman (Franz Rogowski) who seems all too comfortable with the prospect of going to prison for two years for “homosexual acts” which are outlawed in West Germany. That's because this isn't Hans' first time. In fact, he's been in and out of the same prison since 1945. In the prison, Hans, and the other men imprisoned for the same crime, are called “175ers” after paragraph 175 of the West German criminal code which outlaws homosexuality.

For Hans, the prospect of being locked up in prison versus spending his life metaphorically locked up in the outside world is an easy choice. Plus, he seems to have prison life down pat. As he starts his most recent stint he doesn't need the guard to tell him the booking procedure, he performs it as if it's second nature. When he passes the threshold he thrives. He knows how to work the system to get what he wants much like his friend Viktor (Georg Friedrich) who has been inside for decades.

It's a jarring place to start a prison drama. Things just seem so peaceful. It's like Hans is back home and Viktor has his friend back. We're so accustomed to seeing struggle in prison. Instead, we see the opposite. However, when Hans gets locked up in solitary confinement — a hellish pit where he has to remain with no light, no clothes, and nothing but a bucket to relieve himself in — the darkness makes way to the past. To 1945, specifically, when Hans is first imprisoned and meets Viktor.

We'll flashback a few times throughout Great Freedom to moments both big and small. Like Hans and Viktor's first meeting where Viktor repeatedly kicked Hans out of his room for being a “175er” or a tender moment later when Viktor offers to cover Hans' number tattoo that he was given when he was in a Nazi concentration camp. The movie jumps around in time to not give us a full picture of either character, but just enough to understand them.

We'll also see Hans with other men. Lovers, specifically. In 1957, Hans is back in the prison, but this time with his live-in partner Oskar (Thomas Prenn) who, unlike Hans, hasn't gotten a chance to adjust to their prison setting or accept the prison they live in outside. “I want to be fearless too,” Oskar says in a note to Hans that is read in voiceover as film images of the couple's trip to a lake play on the screen — it's one of the few cinematic flourishes director Sebastian Meise adds in. Hans is almost too much of a hopeful romantic with Oskar, a vision that is quickly shattered.

Later on in 1968 Hans is once again imprisoned with a lover. This time it's Leo (Anton von Lucke), a teacher who has an encounter with Hans in a public bathroom. This time, however, a tender Hans understands that sometimes love isn't all the hopeful. It's a remarkable portrait of what oppression can do to a person. That's part of the wonder of the screenplay by Meise and Thomas Reider. The movie is less of a story than it is an exploration. If anything, it's when the movie tries to push a plot that it loses some of its authenticity.

Shawshank Redemption is maybe the easiest comparison to make to Great Freedom. Obviously, both movies share DNA as prison dramas and focus on a specific friendship at its center, but the connection goes even deeper. Both stories struggle with what freedom really is. What is it to be in this world when this world isn't made for people like you? Great Freedom's final sequence, easily the best of the movie, answers that question. To be accepted is to be with people you love, no matter where they are.

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Hey! I'm Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I'm also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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Karl Delossantos

Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.