Film critic | "Balloon": Running to the Embrace of Freedom

Text/Wang Xu

(Film information: Balloons, directed by MichelLe Hobisz, written by: Ki Hopkins, Tilo Roschessen, MichelLeHebezy, starring Fledrich Mooker, Carolini Schucher, David Klaus, Germany, 2018)

Peter opened his arms and hugged the man across from him tightly under the astonished gaze. This embrace overflowed with joy and tears of joy like relief. The border guard on the other side only routinely told Peter that this was Bavaria, and he received Peter's almost ecstatic salute. The ensuing jubilation exploded in the clearings in the forest, and a signal flare rose in the air, tearing through the pitch-black night and illuminating the frustrated face of the lieutenant colonel on the other side of the border, who was waiting to arrest the stowaways.

"Everything was in vain," the lieutenant colonel muttered, ending the mass manhunt led by the secret police and echoing the firm words of Peter's family when they first flew into the sky in a hot air balloon, and his wife Doris comforted her young son: "Ignore the person who hit your dreams."

The great hunt is the ultimate blow to dreams. Because of the failure of the first hot air balloon flight across the border, Doris was discouraged and involuntarily predicted the coming disaster. These predictions did not have the immediate signs of coming, but they made Peter's family tremble as if they were infected. These days plunged peter's family into a nightmare of their own fear, but through this nightmare-like day, the entire social life of East Germany at that time was shrouded in an atmosphere of high pressure and terror. In this atmosphere, Peter did not give up on his plan to fly over the border. At the same time, Doris's accidental loss of medicine on the grass of the first failed take-off of the hot air balloon also made her strong as a wife change her discouraged mood. Because by tracking the prescription notes, the secret police will eventually find themselves. In the days that followed, Peter began a simultaneous race to work on the intense production of a second hot air balloon.

Tension is a tense breath outlined in the film. Unlike the visual tension created by the thrilling, mediocre fight scenes, the tension in "Balloon" is a confrontation that hides under life and transcends life. Peter and Gantt made a hot air balloon as a carrying tool to fly across the border, and for these two ordinary people from the civic class, they only wanted to leave East Germany and reunite with relatives and friends living in another Germany. In the face of this simple purpose of escape, the film does not reveal the specific political demands of Peter and Gantt. Instead, the secret police's manhunt, with its preconceived fear of political failure, gave the stowaways a psychological picture of a "treason thief."

According to the fears of the security minister, who does not appear in the film, if someone successfully flew over the border in a hot air balloon, East Germany would be in a situation of political passivity internationally. In order not to give a hand to the international community and to leave a pretext for attacking other countries, the Minister of Security strictly ordered the secret police to arrest and bring the stowaways to justice. This is where the confrontation beyond life comes from. Following this hidden thread in the film, peter and Gantt's plan to fly over the border has lost the purity of the purpose of fleeing, and has been manipulated by an invisible hand to make political dirt and trickery at the level of confrontation with the state.

Apparently, Peter and Gantt did not know that their own process of making hot air balloons had been given political significance. Politics is also the driving force behind the secret police's mass search. Confrontation unfolds in this tense atmosphere. On the one hand, the secret police's meticulous logical analysis of the case, the tight organizational ability of the upper and lower coordination, and on the other hand, the immortal yearning of two extremely ordinary families to run to freedom.

The film portrays an era full of vicissitudes. In those days, the opposing sides did not have high-tech means and tools as an aid to themselves. The secret police have sown a wide net, using manpower and unquestionable orders to build a unified and consistent cornerstone of the great search and arrest operation. Peter and Gantt made hot air balloons against the coloring pages in the book. Inside the books are the tools of freedom, but outside the books is a cage-like kingdom.

The kingdom was left behind by Peter and Gantt as they flew over the other side of the border in a hot air balloon. Behind them, secret police and heavily armed soldiers swarmed, waiting for their prey to fall from the air. The crowd on the ground, excited to return with a full load, was illuminated by the subsequent signal bomb that illuminated the decadence that twitched on the lips.

The lieutenant colonel understood that they had succeeded. In the face of the success of this ordinary person, no one can figure out what such success means for a country. Just a year later, East German citizens could travel to another Germany with passports to reunite with friends and family in hot air balloons. Since then, the "confrontation" with ordinary people given by the state has come to an end in history, and the political trickery has left the thinking in the audience's heart through the reproduction of the image.

(End of full text.) Made on October 2, 2021)

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About the author: Wang Xu. His pen names include Wang Muyu, Xu Muyu, Xu Muyu's Bookcase, and Wang Xu 326, who settled in Chongqing.