Rosa Revisited

Rosa Luxemburg

Written and Directed by Margarethe von Trotta

At the Somerville Theater

Through October 22

In German and Polish with subtitles

SHE called herself the last man in the German Democratic party. A politician, a spectacular orator, a radical and a doctor of economics, she was a major figure in the early 20th-century politics of Prussia, Poland and Czarist Russia. Yet since her murder by German army officials in 1919, Rosa Luxemburg has been largely forgotten. Until now, that is.

German feminist director Margarethe von Trotta's Rosa Luxemburg is a richly told tale of this unsung hero. Von Trotta, who has acted in such films as The Lost Honor of Katherina Blum and directed several critically acclaimed works, including Sisters and Sheer Madness, lives up to her reputation as a dominant personality in German cinema. Rosa Luxemburg brings to life the harsh personal and political life of Luxemburg.

The key to the film's success is Barbara Sukowa, who plays the radical politician with a proper mixture of courage, furor and angst. Sukowa won the best actress award at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival for her role in the film.

Sukowa's acting combines grace and power. She transforms her role into a psychological study, conveying the essence of a woman who could deliver roaring speeches at one moment and then adjourn to a sophisticated ball. After watching Sukowa's Luxemburg, one understands exactly what the radical's daily life was like--her struggle for her ideology, the embittering of her personal life and the eventual estrangement of her allies.

With sharp visual images, von Trotta brings the complex character of Luxemburg closer to the audience. Numerous close-ups establish the communist radical as a figure worthy of sympathy. but these are not the soft focus, flattering close-ups of a romantic film. They are hard and lucid glances, sharp swords of realism which dispel the aura of godliness the film's plot gives Luxemburg.

NOT THAT von Trotta entirely escapes making "Rotte Rosa," as she was called by supporters, into a legendary figure. And this glorification of character may be the film's greatest fault. For example, classical music is used to glorify Rosa during her great speeches. Fortunately, the highly unflattering portrayal of Luxemburg's personal life returns the film to the realm of realism.

Von Trotta moderates her actors' performances and saves the film from the excesses that made the characters of Gandhi too inspiring to be real. Von Trotta's focus on the female friends of Luxemburg, for example, tends to humanize the historical figure. And the feminist director prevents the men who love Rosa from idolizing her.

Luxemburg's strong character is balanced by the strength of her companions. As Clara Zetkin, Doris Schade expertly comforts and complements Rosa. And Otto Sander, who plays Luxemburg's political ally Karl Liebknecht, burns with an impressive zeal.

Despite the smallness of her part as Elisabeth, a young prison attendant enamored with her political charge and mentored by her, Katherina Seyferth succeeds in vivifying the mundane side of Luxemburg's life.

From the casting to the cinematography to the plot and pacing, von Trotta leaves no loose ends. But her film is almost too complete, making its audience painfully aware of the boundary between reality and films.