The Last Tram to Marzahn
The programmer's note
New this week, and watch it late, which is not a pose. The film is built on a mechanical constraint, a driver's cab and an intercom button, and everything romantic about it comes from that: he has to choose to press a button in order to speak, and you hear the click every single time. Weiss-Lindqvist shot on the real line after service. There is no score until minute sixty-one. The ending is not the one the premise promises, and it is better.
The film
The last eastbound tram leaves the city at ten past midnight and takes fifty-one minutes to reach Riesaer Strasse. Konrad has driven it for six years. He likes the run because after Landsberger Allee the tram mostly empties and the job becomes a long straight line in the dark. On a Tuesday in February he notices a woman who does not get off at the terminus. She waits on the platform in the cold and takes the same tram back. She does it again on Wednesday. On Thursday he says something. Weiss-Lindqvist builds the film out of the geometry of the vehicle: he is in a cab with a locked door, she is in a carriage he can only see in a mirror, and for most of the running time the two of them talk through a speaker with a button on it. Seventy-nine minutes across eleven nights, and the film is honest about the fact that two lonely people meeting is not the same as either of them being fixed.
- Ten past midnight
