‘Trial of Hein’ Review: An Intriguing Brechtian Period Drama Puts Memory on Trial

Unfolding in an isolated fishing village, Kai Stänicke’s German drama “Trial of Hein” has a nebulous, nondescript period setting, but its concerns are entirely contemporary. We’re introduced to its uncanny backdrop through the eyes of protagonist Heinrich, or Hein (Paul Boche), a gaunt young man who returns by boat after 14 years away. However, no one in the village seems to recognize him — least of all his mother Mechthild (Irene Kleinschmidt), who suffers worsening dementia. To verify his identity, Hein is put on trial by the village elders, resulting in a revealing drama that, although it states its themes rather clunkily, investigates the nature of experience and recollection with intimacy and aplomb.

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Premiering internationally at the New Directors/New Films showcase following a Berlinale debut in February, the film has been picked up for North American distribution by Strand Releasing.

The first thing that stands out about the film’s quaint locale is that its scant dwellings are made up only of exterior flats. As Hein treads lightly along its single dirt road, he draws suspicious stares from fishermen working outdoors, as well as their wives and daughters, popping their heads out of their sparsely furnished, stage-like houses. Each consists of no more than two visible walls — showing bare, wooden interiors — with the rest left to our imagination. When Hein finally steps inside his childhood home, even its comforts leave him exposed.

Hein’s younger sister Heide (Stephanie Amarell) is too young to remember him, leaving his childhood friends Greta (Emilia Schüle) and Friedemann (Philip Froissant) as the only people who can be reasonably sure of who he is. Greta is certain he’s telling the truth. Friedemann, however, shiftily averts his gaze; there’s something unspoken between them, which he doesn’t wish to acknowledge. Part of the film’s pleasure is in discovering why Friedemann behaves this way, through childhood flashbacks that Hein visualizes in the spaces around them — though it wouldn’t be a major spoiler to call “Trial of Hein” a film of closeted youth.

This central theme is drawn from Stänicke’s own experiences as a queer filmmaker, but dramatized through a tale of interrogation. Though captured with a handheld wandering camera, each frame is composed with immense formal control. The villagers call upon Hein and various other witnesses to recall past events, but each one seems to have a drastically different perspective. Most remember Hein’s childhood being a happy one, but his recollections are far from rosy. While it would be all too easy to draw didactic lines explaining this discrepancy — for instance, framing the townspeople are purely ignorant, and Hein as an enlightened escapee — Stänicke takes a more nuanced approach. Hein’s memories turn out to be underscored not only by longing and melancholy, but an instinct of self-preservation.

In the vein of each family dwelling, the village courtroom becomes an amphitheater of sorts, foisting upon its participants a sense of outward performance, while simultaneously exposing them to the elements. Although born of budgetary limitations, this Brechtian approach ensures a closer reading of each physical and emotional façade, forcing us to look past Boche’s calculated, crumbling stoicism in the lead. His conception of Hein is that of a man hardened by years of urban wandering, in search of some true version of himself.

Between its production design and its invigorating lead performance, “Trial of Hein” doesn’t need to do much else to explain itself, which leaves much of its exposition feeling excessive. This is in addition to a recurring secondary metaphor: a card game with semi-comprehensible rules about guessing and bluffing, representing deception and a shifting point of view.

That said, the film is alluring in spite of these imperfections. The longer it goes on, the more piercing it becomes, while its flimsy diegesis (from the artificial sets to a couple of fake beards) interrogates the personal and political truths with which the village wrestles. The setting may be out of time, but speaks to the present, as the villagers’ conservatism manifests as rejection, suspicion and persecution — treating outsiders or non-conformists as an invading pathogen. The antidote to this noxious instinct is a gentleness that only seems to exist behind closed doors, in subdued whispers, or in the recesses of memory. In “Trial of Hein,” Stänicke seeks to find and nurture that gentleness, and the film is a worthwhile dramatic quest to understand how memory and experiences change people deep within.