Monte Verità (2021) by Stefan Jäger - Review

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by Stefan Jäger

grade: 7

Monte Verità is a wild run towards freedom. A constant search for beauty in all its forms. A desperate need for love that never seems to find its own fulfilment. A story of female emancipation in which there is also a sincere tribute to the world of photography and art in general.

In the mountains of Switzerland

Cinema and photography. Two relatively recent inventions, often considered – rightly – as two almost inseparable realities. How often is photography mentioned in film? And, above all, could cinema ever exist without photography? Obviously not. One of the recent feature films that makes photography one of its protagonists is, for example, the costume drama Monte Verità, directed by Stefan Jäger in 2021, which takes its cue from real-life characters for a story of women’s emancipation in which there is also a sincere tribute to the world of photography and art in general.

Hanna Leitner (played by the excellent Maresi Riegner) is only twenty-nine years old, yet she has been married for a long time and has two daughters who already know what they want to be in the future. Her husband Anton (Philipp Hauss) is an authoritarian man who absolutely does not want her to take an interest in photography (a profession for him). She feels oppressed in her bourgeois home and suffers from respiratory problems. After a bitter argument with Anton, she decides to run away from home and go to a sanatorium in Switzerland, the Monte Verità, located on Mount Monescia. In this sanatorium, run by Dr. Otto Gross (Max Hubacher), Hanna will finally feel free and will also be able to cultivate her new passion. What will await her in the future?

In Monte Verità, the protagonist’s drama goes hand in hand with history. In the sanatorium – which still exists today – lived with the protagonist, and in addition to Dr Gross, also Hermann Hesse, who wrote the novel Siddhartha shortly after returning home. Some photographs from this period, which could have been taken by a real-life “Hanna”, have come down to us. In any case, for the occasion, Stafen Jäger – together with the screenwriter Kornelija Naraks – has created an extremely topical story, albeit set in 1906.

Hanna longs to feel free. And this is only possible in the mountains of Switzerland, where she can finally run free in the meadows, breathe deeply and become familiar with cameras and dark rooms. Her past, however – and, above all, the memory of her daughters, of whom she has a torn photograph imprinted in her mind – has never really left her. Monte Verità, then, is a wild run towards freedom. A constant search for beauty in all its forms. A desperate need for love that never seems to find its own fulfilment.

Stefan Jäger has skilfully handled all these elements, even making the landscapes additional protagonists. The Monte Verità is like a small happy island, almost completely isolated from the rest of the world (although Locarno is not far away). Upside-down images observed through the lens of an old camera soon become nostalgic black-and-white photographs. And, with the exception of brief moments in which overly artificial cinematography does not convince (as, for example, when we see the speeding train in which the protagonist travels after running away from home), we can recognise how the director has distinguished himself above all by an excellent handling of space and a good characterisation of the protagonists, although, at the end of the screening, some questions remain unanswered. There is always time to return to Vienna. The important thing is to regain possession of one’s life and happiness.