Mark Reviews Movies: THE COLLINI CASE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 4, 2020

The aim of law is justice. It is imperfect, because we are imperfect, too. There are gaps. There are inconsistencies, either intentional or inadvertent, in the way laws are enforced. There are personal, corporate, and political agendas driving the creation of laws. Laws matter to maintain a society, but without justice, what purpose do the laws and, for that matter, society actually serve?

When the law fails the goal of justice, what can a single, ordinary person do to make up for the law's failures? If, in the pursuit of justice, one goes beyond the realm of malfunctioning law, under which societal value should that person be judged: the law or justice?

Such are the issues and questions raised by The Collini Case, an adaptation of Ferdinand von Schirach's 2011 novel. It's a craftily plotted film, beginning as a murder mystery, continuing as a legal thriller, and culminating as sharp critique of Germany's post-war legal manipulation and an intellectual, as well as emotional, debate about the actual purpose of law. Director Marco Kreuzpaintner's film is always engaging, even as its middle section feels as if it's only going through familiar motions, but the third act elevates this story in a way we only half expect.

This story begins in 2001, with what appears to be a clear-cut and obvious case of murder. A man named Fabrizio Collini (Franco Nero) arrives at the presidential suite of a Berlin hotel, knocks on the door, and is greeted by Jean-Baptiste Meyer (Manfred Zapatka), the CEO of a major manufacturing company.

He has been expecting Fabrizio, who wrote to Meyer in the guise of being a journalist, but once the visitor enters the room, Meyer's face drops at the sound of a round entering the chamber of a pistol. Without seeing what happened, we watch as Fabrizio walks to the hotel lobby, with his shoe leaving imprints of blood on the floor, and informs an employee: "He is dead."

Enter Caspar Leinen (Elyas M'Barek), a public defender who only passed the bar exam three months ago. He's assigned to defend Fabrizio, who only shakes his head when the attorney asks if the accused has anyone who should be contacted or if he has made a statement to the police.

At the arraignment, Caspar smiles and shakes the hand of everyone in court, but then he learns the identity of Fabrizio's alleged victim. The lawyer didn't recognize the name of the man who was like a father to him growing up, because Meyer's legal first name was "Hans."

Through intermittent flashbacks, we get an idea of the relationship between Caspar and the victim. A newcomer to the area and, as a child of Turkish descent, an outsider to the country, a young Caspar was taken under Meyer's wing. Caspar's own father (played by Peter Prager) left his family, and Caspar became close to Meyer and his grandson, who died 10 years ago with his parents in a car accident. As a teen, Caspar also became romantic with Meyer's granddaughter.

Johanna (Alexandra Maria Lara), the granddaughter, is now married and about to take over her grandfather's business. She cannot understand how Caspar could defend the man who murdered someone who loved the attorney so much. Caspar has doubts, too, but Dr. Richard Mattinger (Heiner Lauterbach), Caspar's old law professor who is representing the Meyer family in a civil case against Fabrizio, convinces him that personal biases should have no place in court. The up-and-coming lawyer should serve as an example of that.

The story, then, begins as an intriguing mystery with a minor but vital twist. We are confident to the point of near-certainty that Fabrizio killed Meyer, but the main question is one of motive. The facts of Fabrizio's apparent guilt are presented during the trial in a flash, but the reason, which Caspar argues to his silent client could help him in terms of sentencing, remains a question.

Most of the story has Caspar juggling an investigation into his client and his father-figure's pasts, re-igniting an affair with Johanna (as both of them may or may not have an ulterior motive in doing so), and dealing with the sudden re-appearance of his father, who wants to re-connect after decades of absence. The screenplay is busy, for certain, but the focus remains tightly on the mystery (Johanna and Mattinger have a reason to convince Caspar to take a plea deal and/or stop digging into Meyer's history) or the characters (The subject of Caspar's father is the thing that finally breaks Fabrizio's silence).

The screenplay by Christian Zübert, Robert Gold, and Jens-Frederik Otto is also clever in the way it establishes the film's ultimate subject—the debate about the ethics of the law and its purpose in society—early, by way of the discussions between Caspar and his former professor. Considering the timeframe and the location and the ages of the people involved in the crime, the underlying secret of Fabrizio's motive in killing Meyer isn't much of one, but empty surprise isn't the film's intention. That history raises concerns about how the law shifts and adapts according to the will of institutions of power and political ideologies. What once was legal may not be just, and justice for past crimes can be thwarted by a single change to law.

Wisely, Kreuzpaintner doesn't rush these critiques and questions in order to arrive at a simple resolution. The surface of The Collini Case may be the central mysteries of an old crime creating a new one (or maybe not, depending on one's perspective), but the film's core is a thoughtful and specific dissection of a quandary as old as society.

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