An evocative meditation on history, Boxhagener Platz moves at an effecting pace through a Brechtian degree of character study towards the resolution of the 'who-dunnit' that drives the plot forward.
As a film, several elements come together to manifest the film's focus which is preoccupied with the nature of History. The high standards of recreation of 1960s inner city East Berlin with an exemplary attention to detail contrasts with the constant call and recall the characters make to the recent Nazi past and it's ghostly spirit uncannily pervades the very air these people breath. The conflict and all defining issue of Ideology which defined the fate of the German people living in those decades is brought into high profile. The mostly wordless observations of the child protagonist acts to show the confusion of messages and cognitive processes required to adapt to that time and place.
The film's self absorption does indeed make this a particularly German 'Heimat' film but the film is clear in it's indication of the complex social condition which demands such attention.
Despite being an adaptation of a novel, the film is very evocative of Brechtian theatre in the pacing of itself primarily through intense character study. This aspect acts as the bind which synthesises the real and ghostly echoes of the Communist and Nazi reality whose spirited co- existence defines how the film presents History as it's main subject.
