One fine example is Marianne & Juliane, a German film from 1981, finally released in the United States by the highly respected New Yorker Films in 1994. Written and directed by Margarethe Von Trotta (who had an illustrious career in her home country), it’s the compelling story of two sisters fight for feminism during the 1970’s, through diametrically opposed paths. Marianne sets up bombs to prove her point while Juliane writes about her’s.
These sisters were inseparable. What makes their current combative status even more intriguing is that they have swapped positions of actions since their youth. Growing up in post-World War II Germany, certainly an oppressive environment, they each always felt compelled to fight tradition. At first, Juliane was the rebel, through seemingly minor provocations such as refusing to wear a dress to school, which is aggressive enough to have her removed from the dinner table. Meanwhile Marianne was their father’s favorite, sitting on his knee and graciously asking him to forgive Juliane. Their father was a Reverend and though neither sibling holds with religion in adulthood, there is a subtle idea brilliantly conveyed that putting one’s life or reputation on the line for a worthy cause, as Christ supposedly did, is the right path of all living creatures.
So Marianne and Juliane are constantly disagreeing about whose efforts will have the farthest reaching impact for the future of women’s rights. They take each other to task about how they used to behave, hoping to convince the other to join their ranks. They both argue so convincingly that you don’t sympathize with one mode of conduct over the other. Instead, you view their collective passions with admiration as these are prime examples of the types of personalities that have worked so hard to achieve what equality for women currently exists.
Yet neither of these women are painted as saintly figures. Marianne has a child that she left with her ex-boyfriend to keep up with her resistance work. After all, she’s always wanted by the law and that is no way to raise a child. Even after the father commits suicide, she refuses to raise him despite Juliane’s pleading that she has her own work to think about so that she cannot take on the extra responsibility. Mariane will also show up at Juliane’s house during all hours of the day and take any possessions that could be of use. As for Juliane, she not only allows Marianne to take advantage of her kindness, but propels the assistance of her long-term boyfriend in lieu of her own obsessions. She also encourages her mother to lie to her father, a sin the matron has never committed during their marriage, to visit Marianne in jail.
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