Saw The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978), a joyously dark film about Maria who is married to a man just before he's deployed to the front of Germany. They spend one night together and then Maria loses her husband. The war ends shortly after and she must sift through the wreckage of Germany, searching for any trace of her one true love.
As the film wears on, it becomes a character study of Maria, and a meditation on the nature of love. Maria's love for her husband becomes an obsession, fueling her struggle to survive, fueling her ambition, her journey to greatness and success. She takes many lovers but refuses to marry any of them. She is looked at with disdain by her mother and her friends, but she smiles with open glee as she discovers her mother has also taken a lover, her friend's marriage is falling apart.
The film is peculiarly both cynical and idealistic: the way Maria exploits her lovers and chuckles at their protestations of love seems very cynical, but Maria's uncomplicated love for her husband seems sweet, even as it drives her to steal and cheat, to break hearts in pursuit of becoming a woman worthy of her man.
I enjoyed the movie, even as it was sort of slow and pokey. The whole thing is rich and fraught, dangerous and sweet. Maria may not be the hero, but she's compelling to watch as she unravels in the face of her own all-consuming love.
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