Change Your Image
eulman
Reviews
Geschichtsunterricht (1972)
Difficult and rewarding
Far from being drivel, as another commentator has suggested, History Lessons is one of Straub and Huillet's richest and most rewarding films. A young man from the present interviews a series of ancient Romans about the rise of Julius Caesar (the text is adapted from an unfinished novel by Brecht): what emerges is a brilliant (and funny) demythologization, an analysis of power whose contemporary relevance is underscored both by the young man's obvious modernity and by his 3 long drives through modern Rome. Straub and Huillet refuse to cover over the myriad contradictions in their project (the anachronisms, artifice vs. documentary, etc.); instead they heighten these into a rich and challenging dialectic which demands of the viewer intense critical engagement and the patience to learn new ways of looking and thinking.