Category: German film

Good Bye, Lenin! (2003, Wolfgang Becker)

Somewhere near the end of the second act, Good Bye Lenin! starts having some narration problems. At first they seem like a little bit too lazy writing or, given Lenin has five screenwriters, a too many hands situation. There’s just a disconnect between protagonist and narrator Daniel Brühl’s experience and what the film’s doing. Then, as Lenin enters its muddled third act, it’s clear the disconnect is either by design—which seems unlikely unless the point is to make Brühl into a narcissist—or director Becker missed the boat.

Lenin doesn’t just ignore the most interesting points it raises—with some optics because they’re all for the ladies and despite the movie being about Brühl being an exceptional mama’s boy—it doesn’t even do right by Brühl. Ostensibly, the film’s about listless East German young adult Brühl’s complicated history with reunification; his mom, played by Katrin Sass, who the film manages to diss, showcase-wise, which is incredible given she’s in it all the time–she was a Party member who spent her life spreading the good word and then she was in a heart attack-induced coma when the Wall fell.

When she wakes up, the doctors tell Brühl she can’t handle any excitement, which he takes to mean he’s got to lie about the Wall falling to keep her alive. So it’s a bunch of hijinks. Eventually it gets real, with Brühl and sister Maria Simon learning maybe mama Sass told them some lies too. And then it flushes all the real for more hijinks, including Brühl’s romance with nurse Chulpan Khamatova. Khamatova has a “subplot” about having problems with Brühl’s elaborate scheme to lie to Sass, but it’s really just a scene and the end of even the pretense of agency. Sass doesn’t get a name in the credits—she does in the film, but she’s just mama in the credits—and despite the female characters outweighing the male, the film doesn’t even try to beat Bechdel. Even when it’s not about Brühl, Becker’s there to make sure it’s not about anyone else in the meantime.

When it seems like Lenin’s about Brühl’s experience with the Wall falling, it’s good. When it seems like it’s about Brühl and Simon’s family secrets drama, it’s better. When it’s about Brühl gaslighting Sass? It’s always running out of steam. Especially once everyone starts calling Brühl on the gag going on too long, only then the gag just keeps going on too long. There’s also the subtext about Brühl—and many of the former East Germans—wishing things would go back to the way they used to be. Not everyone wants to drink the literal Coca-Cola.

Lenin does zilch with it.

Sass is great. Simon’s really good. Florian Lukas is adorable as Brühl’s buddy, who helps him make fake newscasts for Sass’s benefit. That subplot’s a double-edged sword once Lukas’s video production techniques become more interesting than the main plot.

Brühl’s fine. He doesn’t have a character arc. He doesn’t learn anything. Taking those considerations into account, he’s fine.

Good supporting turn from Burghart Klaußner, who the movie positions like a deus ex machina, but then ends up just being background.

Good Bye Lenin! ought to be a lot better. It does Sass incredibly wrong, and doesn’t do Simon or Brühl any favors. Maybe they needed a sixth screenwriter.

The Silence (2010, Baran bo Odar)

There’s always something to be said for a new approach to a standard genre. The Silence is a murder mystery, kind of a cold case one, kind of not, kind of serial killer, kind of not. Director bo Odar tries really hard in the end to give the film a singular ending and he fails. Once the third act is underway, it all of a sudden becomes entirely predictable.

All of these predictable events are entirely realistic and digestible… they just aren’t necessarily for the film to succeed. The film is almost entirely amazing for the first ninety minutes, stumbles a bit–but on to steady ground–then bo Odar just keeps going and going until he’s exhausted it. The weary cast members all get a montage at the end. It makes sense, but doesn’t work.

The film doesn’t have a central protagonist. Sebastian Blomberg plays a crack detective who is a recent widower and no one thinks he’s up to the task of solving a resurfaced serial killer. Except his now retired boss (Burghart Klaußner) and erstwhile partner (Jule Böwe). Poor Böwe gets bo Odar’s greatest disservice in some odd misogyny–the only female cop, it turns out she’s only good for supportive hugs.

Good performances from Wotan Wilke Möhring and Claudia Michelsen too. Everyone’s good, it’s just bo Odar shows his hand too much to make The Silence seem different. Then it’s not.

Wonderful photography from Nikolaus Summerer.

bo Odar’s an excellent director. He just tries too hard.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed by Baran bo Odar; screenplay by bo Odar, based on the novel by Jan Costin Wagner; director of photography, Nikolaus Summerer; edited by Robert Rzesacz; music by Michael Kamm and Kris Steininger; production designers, Christian M. Goldbeck and Yesim Zolan; produced by Frank Evers, Jantje Friese, Maren Lüthje, Florian Schneider and Jörg Schulze; released by NFP Marketing & Distribution.

Starring Sebastian Blomberg (David Jahn), Burghart Klaußner (Krischan Mittich), Jule Böwe (Jana Gläser), Oliver Stokowski (Matthias Grimmer), Wotan Wilke Möhring (Timo Friedrich), Claudia Michelsen (Julia Friedrich), Karoline Eichhorn (Ruth Weghamm), Roeland Wiesnekker (Karl Weghamm), Katrin Saß (Elena Lange) and Ulrich Thomsen (Peer Sommer).

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M (1931, Fritz Lang)

I don’t think I’d ever realized M‘s technical importance. Lang creates quite a few filmmaking standards here, still in use today. Non-specific to genre, M features some brilliant off-screen dialogue work. It’s the earliest example (I’ve ever seen) of hearing a scene’s action while looking at something else. There’s also Lang’s approach to the sound. Lang uses the silence for the emphasis, shocking the viewer with loud noises every once in a while. There are, I’m sure, a few other ones, but those are most obvious.

Except for the genre specific norms. Watching M, one can see a lot of genre norms–the modern criminal investigation narrative, going back years, owes it all to me. There’s the suspect disappearing behind a moving car shot, but there’s also the detective who uncovers the long-hidden clue and has his eureka moment. Watching M is, at these moments, stunning. It’s seeing Lang create these familiar filmic mechanisms.

That use of sound, something I only mentioned in passing, is all the more amazing because of its place in film history. Talkies were very new when Lang made M and his masterful use of sound in film is something Hollywood wouldn’t begin to match for another ten years, until Welles and Citizen Kane.

But M isn’t just staggering because of its significance as a historical artifact. Lang and wife Thea von Harbou’s script is fantastic. The film’s without a central protagonist, just a handful of primary characters. There’s the police inspector, played by Otto Wernicke, and the criminal mastermind, played by Gustaf Gründgens, and then, of course, there’s Peter Lorre as the child murderer. Lorre appears early on, but isn’t really a big character until the second half.

The split of M is interesting. The film has a somewhat modern gimmick–the criminals go after the criminal the cops can’t catch. One could just see it as Ashton Kutcher’s breakout, “tough” role. Except the gimmick isn’t even a part of the film for the first hour. Instead, Lang concentrates on establishing the mood of a city in constant fear. He uses crane shots to both bring the city’s inhabitants together and to highlight their isolation. M is very much about the urban experience. But then he moves on to a lengthy review of the police’s attempts at solving the crime, followed, near the halfway mark, by the underworld getting involved.

The hunt for Lorre is split as well–there’s a lengthy break from it, as Wernicke questions one of Lorre’s pursuers.

Much of the film, in that first half, is exposition. But Lang opens the film with a measured sequence of a woman realizing her daughter is missing. This opening makes the second part, the lengthy exposition, involve and affect the viewer–it otherwise would not. The introduction to the underworld characters brings the human element back in and their decision to hunt Lorre keeps it in the rest of the film.

Only at the end, after M gives Lorre the chance to shine in a revolting role, do Lang and von Harbou stumble, bringing back the didacticism from their earlier efforts. But it’s too late for it to hurt M.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Fritz Lang; written by Lang and Thea von Harbou; director of photography, Fritz Arno Wagner; edited by Paul Falkenberg; produced by Seymour Nebenzal; released by Vereinigte Star-Film GmbH.

Starring Peter Lorre (Hans Beckert), Ellen Widmann (Frau Beckmann), Inge Landgut (Elsie Beckmann), Otto Wernicke (Inspector Karl Lohmann), Theodor Loos (Inspector Groeber), Gustaf Gründgens (Schränker), Friedrich Gnaß (Franz, the burglar), Fritz Odemar (The cheater), Paul Kemp (Pickpocket with six watches), Theo Lingen (Bauernfänger), Rudolf Blümner (Beckert’s defender), Georg John (Blind panhandler), Franz Stein (Minister), Ernst Stahl-Nachbaur (Police chief), Gerhard Bienert (Criminal secretary), Karl Platen (Damowitz, night watchman), Rosa Valetti (Elisabeth Winkler, Beckert’s landlady) and Hertha von Walther (Prostitute).

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Stalingrad (1993, Joseph Vilsmaier)

I remember when Stalingrad came out on VHS. I was working at a video store and argued for ordering it, based on the ads mention of it having the same producer as Das Boot. Still, I was a little surprised at how much the opening credits try to go for a Das Boot feel. It’s kind of shameless.

Then the movie opens strongly, with the heroes on leave in Italy. Actually, until they get to Stalingrad–so, basically there’s a good train ride and then that’s it–Stalingrad is fine. Once the five soldiers the film follows get there, everything falls apart. Everything except some of the performances. And only some of them. The rest of them are terrible. So, five or six good performances, then a bunch of awful amateurish ones. But the performances fit the script, which is a painfully obvious mess. A lot of the plotting feels like Stalingrad was intended for Das Boot length, but got cut up. There are few transitions and often sequences make no sense.

The director, Joseph Vilsmaier, doesn’t help. Unless Stalingrad was shot on an über-cheap budget, there’s no excuse for Vilsmaier’s composition. His battle scenes are fine, even his soldiers sitting around scenes (which comprise the majority of the film–the script feels like a play adaptation and a bad one), but whenever he’s got to establish a setting, he fails miserably. It often looks like a poorly directed after school special.

The acting from Thomas Kretschmann, Dominique Horwitz and Jochen Nickel is all excellent. Kretschmann’s so good I couldn’t believe it was him. Horwitz is obviously not German, no matter how his hair is cut and I kept wondering if I was supposed to notice. Nickel’s got the easiest role, the sturdy then crumbling sergeant, but he does good things with it. Like I said before, there are a handful of other good performances.

The biggest overall problem with the film is its narrative cheapness. Not only is there the Russian kid the soldiers all like, but there’s also a villain who hunts the soldiers throughout. It’s silly and the silliness is the worst thing about Stalingrad. The filmmakers seem to think its subject alone will make it good and they’re wrong.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed and photographed by Joseph Vilsmaier; written by Johannes Heide, Jürgen Büscher and Vilsmaier; edited by Hannes Nikel; music by Norbert Schneider; production designers, Wolfgang Hundhammer and Jindrich Goetz; produced by Hanno Huth, Gunther Rohrbach and Vilsmaier; released by Senator Film.

Starring Dominique Horwitz (Fritz), Thomas Kretschmann (Hans), Jochen Nickel (Rollo) and Sebastian Rudolph (GeGe).

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Das Boot (1981, Wolfgang Petersen), the uncut version

Das Boot probably has–of serious films–the most number of alternate cuts released. Besides the two and a half hour theatrical version, there was a three and a half hour director’s cut (which I saw theatrically, so I suppose I only saw the original version on VHS), and finally, now, there’s the five hour “uncut version,” which is actually just the original German miniseries. Das Boot‘s such an immersive experience, whether two and a half or four and a half, the added footage isn’t particularly perceptible. When the film started, there were a few things I noticed new, but I stopped bothering to look after the first fifteen minutes. For such a long film, it moves really fast. Quite a bit happens and the viewer is expected to keep track of a large number of characters (one of the visible changes in the longest version is the attention paid to the supporting cast).

Starting Das Boot–maybe even from the opening shot–I remembered it was an excellent film, excellent to an almost mythical degree. I’d forgotten, taken it for granted maybe. The first fifteen minutes, establishing the primary characters at an officer’s party, I also realized something tragic happened to Wolfgang Petersen. He went from making Das Boot to some of the most unwatchable–without music video editing–mainstream films of the 1990s and, presumably (since I certainly don’t see them anymore), 2000s. Fortunately, Das Boot‘s so good, I didn’t dwell for long.

Much of the film’s success is Jürgen Prochnow as the captain. There are some other excellent performances, like Otto Sander’s cameo at the beginning, and Klaus Wennemann as the chief engineer and Martin Semmelrogge as the comedy relief. The entire cast is good, but it all revolves around Prochnow and he has to be good, because it’s five hours. Even if it’s two and a half hours, not a lot happens. Das Boot chronicles the minutiae, not just of boring days at sea or of battle scenes, but also of being bored at sea. Not much else is quite as immersive.

I haven’t seen Das Boot in about nine years, since the director’s cut came out on laserdisc. I always waited for DVD, because the SuperBit version of it was supposed to be better than the regular disc (then I guess wasn’t), but finally the miniseries version came out… and I took a couple years to watch it. I’m hoping next time I won’t wait so long again.