Chile, 1973. General Augusto Pinochet stages a coup against the democratically elected Salvadore Allende and rounds up radicals, opponents, students and left-wing activists. That's the story we all know. In the film Colonia, German director Florian Gallenberger turns our attention to a sidebar -- the rise of Pinochet mirrored by the dark faux-Christian cult led by an ex-Nazi, headquartered in a fenced-off commune in a rural setting and specialising in brainwashing young people into mindless zombies. The dictatorship of the state fuels the dictatorship of the mind, and vice versa. It should have been a good story, only that, as told here, it is not.
Colonia stars Daniel Bruhl as Daniel, a good-looking idealist who stands on a raised platform looking brave and romantic as he shouts slogans against the military. Emma Watson (she needs a better agent) is Lena, an air hostess who's just landed at the airport and is going to downtown Santiago when she spots her ex-boyfriend giving speeches -- guess who it is? Daniel! Never mind that the situation is getting hairy, Daniel and Lena reignite their romance, backdropped by Daniel's wide-eyed political campaigning. Handsome young men, perhaps, look even handsomer when they are fighting for a cause, as poor Lena can testify.
Then, the coup happens. The military takes over, violence flares up; Chile in turmoil, Daniel is captured, tortured and packed off to a mysterious location. Lena, instead of putting on her uniform and taking the first flight back to Europe, as a nice air hostess should do, decides to investigate the matter by herself -- imagine, in that city fresh after a vicious coup. She tracks down Daniel to Colonia Dignidad, a secret colony of fascist nuns lorded over by Paul Schafer (Michael Nyqvist), who models himself as a priest though, obviously, his compound is a mix of concentration camp and cultist lair. The secret police, of course, gives full support to all of this.
The film is based on a true story; Schafer and his sect did exist during the Pinochet era, and it plainly doubled as a detention centre for the military. But the problem with Colonia is its ludicrous eagerness that makes everything unconvincing, its pseudo-liberal self-importance carried away by pedestrian filmmaking -- it wants to show the fearless spirit of young people in the face of great adversary, and ends up like a parody of one.
Lena, never mind that she didn't even plan to get into all of this in the first place, volunteers to join Colonia Dignidad with the hope of rescuing Daniel. Once inside, Watson gets to play the rebellious heroine, chin up, eyes sharp, voice raised, amid the familiar characters of sadistic nuns, the stupefied youths and the leering cult leader. Lena finally finds Daniel inside the commune (the state he's in is, to me, the biggest joke of the film), and their plan to escape that inescapable camp has some thrills, though not nearly enough to compensate the shallowness of it all.
Bruhl seems to enjoy the role of young radicals -- here, he reprises his role in The Edukators, which is a much better film about youth rebellion. Watson meanwhile continues to search for a role that deserves her talent and growing maturity; her determination in Colonia is clear and yet misplaced. And that's unfortunately also the case with the entire film.
Colonia
Starring Daniel Bruhl, Emma Watson, Michael Nyqvist. Directed by Florian Gallenberger.
