In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts (2017)

The film begins in the small Russian town of Slava in the Urals. We see scenes of bleak city life as the camera pans across the decaying remains of a prison camp from the era of Soviet Stalinism. An aerial shot shows farmworkers on a truck on their way back from the potato harvest, and the film’s title is explained: “Autumn with its waning light.” The setting then shifts to East Berlin in the autumn of 1989. Kurt Umnitzer visits his son Sascha, who has separated from his wife Melitta and their son Markus, in Sascha’s illegally occupied, dilapidated apartment in an old building. They embark on an odyssey through bleak nighttime East Berlin in search of a restaurant, finally ending up at a cheap standing-room snack bar. There, Kurt makes Sascha promise to attend his grandfather’s birthday and set up the table. Sascha promises, although by then he presumably knows he will already be in the West that day. The film then recounts, largely in chronological order, the 90th birthday of Wilhelm Powileit, a distinguished party member and committed Stalinist. First, we see the private preparations at the home of Wilhelm Powileit and his stepson, Kurt Umnitzer. Kurt and Wilhelm speak on the phone several times because Sascha is supposed to set up a large, old extendable table (“Nazi table”) at the Powileits’ villa. In between, Kurt Umnitzer gets a call from Sascha in Giessen, who left the GDR the day before. Kurt then drives to his stepfather’s home to help with the birthday preparations, while Kurt’s wife Irina, Sascha’s mother, gets drunk. When Sascha fails to show up, Wilhelm Powileit sets up the table himself, driving several large nails through the tabletop and thereby ruining it in plain sight. The expected guests arrive for the birthday celebration: representatives of the local SED district leadership, the sponsoring brigade, and a group of Pioneers who sing a Soviet partisan song. Wilhelm Powileit greets the guests mostly with boredom or condescension. He repeatedly comments on the flowers, saying, “Take the vegetables to the cemetery,” and on a high state award, “I’ve got enough tin already.” Political discussions break out, with the drinking increasing as they go on. Wilhelm Powileit berates what he sees as the party leadership’s lack of resolve in the GDR and, above all, in the Soviet Union (“the Chovs”); he also insults his son Kurt, his grandson Alexander, and his wife Charlotte, whom he accuses of wanting to poison him. He tells the story of his flight from Germany into exile to escape the Nazis, concluding: “We weren’t prepared—and now we’re not prepared again.” It becomes clear that Wilhelm is showing signs of incipient dementia and that Charlotte suffers from his outbursts and stubbornness. To Wilhelm’s displeasure, but to Kurt’s delight, Sascha’s wife Melitta arrives with their son—and Wilhelm’s great-grandson—Markus. When Markus goes to take a sausage from the birthday buffet, the table collapses, making the entire spread unusable. Later, the heavily intoxicated Irina appears. At her insistence, Kurt finally announces that Sascha has fled to the West. Irina, suffering from the loss of her son, says, “Whoever loses their children loses the future.” The guests sing a Russian song with Irina’s mother, Nadezhda Ivanovna, but, lacking knowledge of the language, they completely misunderstand the lyrics. After the guests gradually leave the Powileits’ house, the two elderly people go to bed. Charlotte prepares tea for Wilhelm and pours drops from a medicine bottle into it before taking the cup to his bedroom. When she checks on him later, Wilhelm is dead, though apparently he has not drunk the tea. The film ends back in Slava. Two years later, this time in winter, Charlotte, Kurt, Sascha, Melitta, Markus, Stine Spier, and Nadezhda Ivanovna stand at Irina’s grave. She apparently died of her alcohol addiction and had wanted to be buried in her homeland.