The Uncanny Heimat: longing for home in Barbara (Petzold, 2012)

In Christian Petzold’s 2012 film Barbara, a film about a disgraced East German doctor who has been demoted to work in a provincial hospital, borders and boundaries abound. While moral, ethical, and personal boundaries are frequently crossed in the film, the German-German border remains somewhat of a mystery. It is a border that cannot be spoken of, rendering not only the characters mute, but also any visual representation impossible. Using the understated realism of the Berlin School of filmmaking, this paper argues, the film visualizes instead an ambivalent approach to the German notion of ‘Heimat’: rather than being the homely, safe haven it is usually depicted as, Barbara’s country of birth becomes ‘unheimlich’–uncanny, a place of invasion, surveillance and confinement. And yet, in the end, Barbara chooses to stay there, giving up her place in an escape plan to a pregnant teen patient instead. The film thus throws up more questions than it answers, most crucially about the human capacity to live within even the most personal constraints.