Julian Radlmaier’s charming exploration of alienation through Sangerhausen’s political history is a multilayered examination of collectivism and fate.
In Julian Radlmaier’s Phantoms of July, or original language title, Sehnsucht in Sangerhausen translates to Longing in Sangerhausen. The latter expresses a metaphysical feeling in relation to its place, while the former brings the thematic qualities of the story into play. In Radlmaier’s film, Sangerhausen, a city in Central Germany, haunts its civilians from the early 1900s to the present day where humans yearn for life under capitalism and globalization. After presenting shorts and features in international festivals in Rotterdam and Berlin, Radlmaier’s new film is a deserving selection into the international competition at this year’s Locarno Film Festival.
Told in four sections: the first being titled “Lotte”, in which we follow Lotte (Paula Schindler), a servant of Prince Novalis of Sangerhausen, who discovers a blue stone, unearthing an immense feeling of longing. In her case, this desire comes during the transitive period of the end of Germany’s monarchy, near the bottom of society. In the next two sections, titled “Ursula” and “Neda”, we are transported to the present day where these two women’s paths will converge. Ursula, a native German, in a miserable marriage, cross paths with Zulima (Henriette Confurius), a traveling musician where the two develop a deeply romantic connection. Neda, an Iranian novice vlogger, self-films a travel series in this region to justify her work visa, encountering paranormal activity in her footage. Interweaving characters and history, locations and objects, the ongoing lingering of the past seeps through Radlmaier’s whimsy narrative through a melting pot of various ethnic groups.
And lastly, Sung-Nam (Kyung-Taek Lie), a Chinese tour guide who meets Nede, who negotiates with him to drive her to the city’s most well-known landmark, the Kyffhäuser Monument, near Sangerhausen’s mountaintop. Radlmaier constructs a ghostly city symphony, where the past haunts the present, and characters gain the strength to pursue the uncertain future. The tone-setting soundtrack covers the film’s hopeful, yet mysterious tone, accentuated by flutes during transitory scenes. Lensed by the rising cinematographer, Faraz Fesharaki, his vibrant photography composes individual close ups to tableaus, using a mixture of zooms, pans, and static shots that are lushly textured by the 16mm film stock. In this time of instability, Radlmaier’s mosaic of characters break free from the historical or personal trappings of the past, once they, collectively, persist.
On an individual level, Ursula and Neda’s stories give the strongest character development, where Lotte and Sung-Nam mainly provide lore and wisdom. Ursula and Neda, both working class females: one native and the other, an immigrant, both relate on the experience of struggle. Where the two pursue for companionship, Radlmaier realizes these abstract feelings as phantoms, playfully balancing the imaginary with the real, using cinema’s formal qualities such as space and time to set the intrinsic atmosphere. The charm of it all comes from Radlmaier’s magical sense of wonder in the ordinary. From the aforementioned blue stone to flowerpots to the cinema, he constructs a potent meaning in everyday objects through repetitive motifs and layered meanings. His use of montage is precise and well-paced, setting a gentle, metronome-like rhythm to evoke these objects’ true potential. He also ties these same objects to its place – Sangerhausen cherries become a running motif of companionship, or the blue stones in relation to its mining history, turning this natural resource into progression. By comparing and contrasting the ghostly qualities of the past to the magical cinematic forms such as framing, space, and time, Phantom of July’s evocative world exhibits the bittersweet pleasure of yearning whilst balancing the absurd and the political.
