Monte Verità is a place in the Swiss canton of Ticino, a bit uphill from Ancona, there is now a hotel, a conference center, a zen garden. 120 years ago, however, “Monte Verità” didn’t just stand for a place, but for an idea. At the beginning of the last century, a group of free spirits bought four hectares of land on the mountain to settle there. The plan was to pursue an alternative lifestyle, free from social regulations, close to nature. Monte Verità offered space for experiments of all kinds, the more innovative the better. This became a call for artists, anarchists, psychologists, and philosophers who gradually joined the community.
In order to revive this myth of the social utopia, Stefan Jäger made a movie that shows what a stay on the mountain could instigate or mitigate, what strength or criticism was released there. It’s a feature film, a fiction that is nonetheless based on historical figures. You get to know the residents of that time, see a few of the prominent guests like Hermann Hesse or Isadora Duncan, only the heroine Hanna Leitner is made up, as is her story.
Naked on the mountain: Hanna has to get used to the nudist needs of some residents
The film begins in Hanna’s Viennese apartment, in her marriage hell with husband Anton and two daughters. Anton works with the new technique of photography, very carefully, on his group photos you have to hold your breath in order to adhere to the strict concept of presentation and presentation. He treats his family in a similar way: Hanna lives with bated breath so that she can maneuver through all the duties and constraints of everyday life without collision. Today, between gender star and women’s football, it is painfully exciting to see how women once tried to make themselves invisible in order to evade the many measures that justified their very existence.
In any case, Hanna suffers both physically and mentally, until the moment she runs out of bed from her lustful husband. This escape shows Jäger dramaturgically quite spectacularly in two parts, then he sends Hanna by train to the whereabouts of the psychiatrist Otto Gross in Monte Verità. Gross works there in a kind of sanatorium, which is not even remotely what Hanna had imagined: You live in huts, wear loose clothing or do without it at all, gardening and walks are considered therapy. Hanna’s first encounter with freedom is therefore not a moment of happiness, instead the director makes her react with fear and indignation, which is a clever interpretation of what the bourgeois corset does.
The actress of Hanna, Maresi Riegner, conveys the feelings of her character with breathtaking precision. You can watch her alone, but the other women around her are also strong and headstrong, they make the contrast to convention an exciting thing. Jäger puts the women in pictures, the luminosity of which illustrates the relaxed atmosphere on Monte Verità, the landscape over Lake Maggiore does the rest – an external freedom becomes visible, the rescue through nature actually understandable. At the same time, you experience how the absence of repression affects people, ranging from nude parties to discovering your own talents.
Hanna remembers her husband and the photography and begins, for the first time independently, to photograph life on Monte Verità. Jäger stages this beautifully as a contrast to what you initially saw at her home. Hanna picks up the movement that the film offers everywhere, the trees in the wind, the swaying of her hair or skirts, the dance. She especially asks those she brings in front of the camera not to stand still, so that images arise that not only break the previously valid rigidity of photos, but can also count as a rebellion against the rigidity of society. The movement reflects Hanna’s increasing freedom, which, via a few fictional dodges like love, fame or death, ultimately leads to her taking her vocation as an artist seriously, even though she removes it from Monte Verità. But by then you have understood that autonomy does not come of its own accord: a will must be recognizable.
Monte Verità, Switzerland / Austria / Germany 2021. Director: Stefan Jäger. With Maresi Riegner, Hannah Herzsprung, Julia Jentsch. DCM, 116 minutes. Theatrical release: December 16, 2021.