Directed by Andreas Dresen. The film was about a beloved actor Otto whose alcoholism made him missing the filming of a new movie. This led to the producer hiring a younger actor Arno to shoot the scenes twice as Otto’s backup. Competition on and off screen between Otto and Arno, and one was bound to lose… Whiskey and vodka should never be mixed…
The movie was a bit boring and actors / actresses not particularly appealing. The story was also so-so.
Another Goethe Institute’s initiative which feature German movies shot outside Germany. Tangerine is directed by Irene von Alberti, with Sabrina Ouazani, Nora von Waldstätten. The story is about Pia and Tom and their musician friends who went to Tanger to look for the root of rock and roll. Pia and Tom’s love were falling out, and they encountered a wild local girl, Amira, who wanted to make use of the Germans to get away from her traditional family and go for her dreams.
The movie was boring, the plot was weak, and there was no chemistry between the actors and actresses. The film tried to capture the “exotic” Arabian feel, like Pia wandering the markets and streets aimlessly, which made no sense to the audience. Von Alberti was trying too hard to show how chaotic things are in Morocco, as contrast to the orderliness of the Germans. And the effect was showing to the world how the affluent westerners had nothing better to do but to travel to exotic areas messing up with local people’s lives.
The first movie under Goethe Institute’s German Film Forum Real Life On Screen. Directed by Kai Wessel. With Heike Makatsch, Dan Stevens, Monica Bleibtreu. It’s a biography of Hildegard Knef, one of Germany’s biggest post-war stars.
Both biography movies of divas, to me Hilde is much better than Edith Piaf. The film is more coherent in terms of the portrayal of the ups and downs of her career, as well as the changing political scene in Germany that affects her life. Heike Makatsch’s perforamance is most impressive.
Fell in love with song Für mich soll’s rote Rosen regnen (quoted part of the clip of Heike Makatsch’s singing in the movie below)
Directed by Hermine Huntgeburth. With Julia Jentsch, Sebastian Koch, Juliane Köhler. Based on the novel of Theodor Fontane published in 1894.
Effi Briest is a young girl from a noble family. She married a baron who’s twice her age and had once courted her mother. The marriage was not happy and she fell in love with her husband’s friend. The affair ended tragically.
A disappointing film. Boring. I haven’t got chance to watch the Fassbinder 1974 version, but from the reviews it seems the old one is much better.
Recently I moved to a new apartment. And of course I visited one of the world’s most famous brands, Ikea, to shop for furniture. After spending hours in that maze-like shop, I finally bought some shelves. And knowing too well of my own limitations, I have requested to have Ikea staff to come and assemble the shelves for me at an extra fee. My male cousins, not surprisingly, scolded me for wasting money as “they could have done the assembling for me”.
Are men really good at assembling furniture? According to DPA (Deutsche Presse-Agentur), the head of the German division of Ikea, says the company’s male customers have a bad track record compared to its female clients when it comes to putting furniture together. “Men never look at the instruction leaflet and have the most problems when assembling our furniture because they think they can do it without help.” Women, on the other hand, study the instructions and are methodical when it comes to getting the job done. “A woman will neatly lay out all the screws while a man will throw them in a pile. Something always goes missing then.”
I guess these days men are no longer dependable on things that they are “traditionally” good at. I am convinced that the extra assembly fee I paid to Ikea is worth it.
Directed by Martin Gypkens.
Synopsis: Tales of unfulfilled love, hopes and dreams, based on Judith Hermann’s critically acclaimed international bestsellers Nothing But Ghosts and The Summer House, Later. Judith Hermann sends her characters out into the world in five episodes dealing with her favorite themes: star-crossed love and the general rootlessness of Generation X. Whether they’re in Venice, Jamaica, Berlin, the Nevadan desert or Iceland – her characters always leave their familiar surroundings behind. They travel to various countries for various motives, but they all inevitably realize that there’s something you can’t escape, no matter where you go: yourself…
I have to say that this is a disappointing movie. The whole film is very piecemeal as all five stories were practically shown in 1-minute intervals. It’s just impossible to sympathese with the characters. All of them are so lost, for reasons unclear or not mentioned at all, and in the end there don’t seem to be any improvement in their situation.
Directed by Doris Doerrie, starring Elmar Wepper, Hannelore Elsner and Aya Irizuki.
Probably the best movie I have seen this year. A beautiful poetic journey of an old-age couple who explore what they really want in life when death is approaching them. It’s sad to see how detached their children are to this couple, but joy to see the couple’s wish fulfilled in the end. It’s touching and impressive. Nice cinematography as well.
KINO/08 presents the triology of Hans Weingartner:
1) The White Sound (Das weiße Rauschen), 2001
2) The Edukators (Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei), 2004
3) Reclaim Your Brain (Free Rainer - Dein Fernseher lügt), 2007
I was only able to watch the first two. Both films are starred by Daniel Brühl.
The White Sound is about a young man who just arrives Cologne from the countryside to live with his sister. He immediately falls into the embrace of drugs and loses his direction in life. Soon he finds himself hearing sounds and imagines that people around him are making ploys to kill him. He tries to kill himself but is saved. He’s diagnosed to be Schizophrenic but he refuses to take drugs. In the end there’s no one who can save him but himself.
Weingartner spends quite a lengthy part on portraying the confusion and fear and the way Brühl tries to combat the sounds. The intensity builds up slowly till the moment it bursts suddenly. Overall speaking the movie is a bit too long, but pretty well-done and impactful given the small budget it has.
The Edukators are about a group of 3 young people who are fed up with the capitalistic society and like to break into rich people’s homes to scare them by re-arranging their furniture. One day their mission fail. At their wits’ end, they kidnap the owner to the countryside. The rich businessman turns out to be a former activitist who has lost his ideals throughout the years. The four of them try to live together under the same roof with love, distrust and ideological conflicts develop among them. Finally the young people set the old man free. The ending is ambiguious and is open for different interpretation, which makes the film interesting and thought-provoking.
Daniel Brühl is definitely a talented German actor. I hope he is not going to Hollywood.
The Chinese name of this book is 擁有太多愛情的男人. It’s a story about a middle-aged man (50s) whose health is deteriorating and has no retirement fund since he does not have a regular job. He has two girlfriends, and is struggling on whether he should choose one of them to spend the rest of his life with. In the end he realises that picking either one of the women would not help solve his financial and physical problems, but would instead break the precarious balance in life he’s enjoying at the moment.
Genazino’s writing is very sharp and sometimes quite mean. But then it suits the mood of the novel and of the characters - when everyone is in their middle-age, there’s really no need to pretend that life is sweet and tomorrow will be a better day. The feeling of fatique roams in the book - both physical and mental. The problems don’t go away, they stay there and they get worse when time goes by. No one is trying whole-heartedly to improve their situation, especially our protagonist. Life’s fading and everybody is struggling pathetically.
More German movies during the past weekend…
1) Ich denke oft an Piroschka / I often think of Piroschka
A summer love story between a German student and a Hungarian girl called Piroschka in 1950s in a small village in Hungary. The tone was pleasant and sweet. Colourful landscapes and festivities. Reminds me of my good time in that lovely country and the peaceful Lake Balaton.
Directed by Kurt Hoffmann, 1955.
2) Schneeland / Snowland
A newly-widowed female writer who tries to take her life in the snowy barren hinterland of Sweden accidentally comes across traces of a love story of a dead woman. The story switches between past and present, giving the audience details of what happened to the dead woman when she was young. It was a bit confusing at the beginning and towards the end the whole plot became much clearer. Breath-taking landscape wonderfully captured in the movie.
Directed by Hans W Geissendoerfer, 2004.
3) Am Ende kommen Touristen / And along come tourists
A young German guy Sven signed up for civil army service in a youth hostel in Auschwitz (Poland). There he had to take care an old, stubborn concentration camp surviver. There were lots of conflicts depicted in the film: Germans vs. Poles; young vs. old, remembering and forgetting. Being a German in a previous concentration camp site made him uneasy, and when Sven realised how disrespectful (may be unintentional) of the younger German generation towards German war crime sufferers, he felt angry and ashamed. A very touching and thought-provoking film on trans-national and trans-generation issues between the two countries.
Directed by Robert Thalheim, 2006/2007.
4) Marseille
Sophie, a young photographer, exchanged her apartment with a student in Marseille. There she met a guy, went back to Germany, and decided to go back to Marseille. But there she encountered a strange accident.
This movie was the worst of all the German films I watched over the weekend and was a total waste of time. Extremely fragmented and boring. When Sophie went back to Germany, the focus turned to her friends who were having family problems. Then all of a sudden Sophie was back to Marseille and without knowing why, she ended up in police station.
Directed by Angela Schanelec, 2003/2004.
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