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Berlinale
Help, the Germans are coming!
Surrounded by darkness: Lars Eidinger as conductor Tom in the Matthias Glasner film “Die”
© Jakub Bejnarowicz/Senator Film
Auschwitz, women’s prison, alcoholism and the great deaths from cancer, Parkinson’s and suicide: anyone who looks at the German contributions to the Berlinale is seriously worried about the mood of the nation
We can do it differently and so can he. Told two years ago Andreas Dresen’s film “Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush” describes the fight between a Bremen housewife and the US President in a lively and humorous way. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, his son was locked away in Guantánamo without charge, but he had not counted on his mother’s courage and rabid persistence. A relevant topic, told in an entertaining way.
Two years later, Dresen is back in competition at the largest film festival in the world and does what directors from Germany still like to do when they want it to be significant: he dedicates himself to the Nazis.
His Berlinale entry “In Love, Your Hilde” is going underground. The focus is on the communist-influenced resistance fighter Hilde Coppi, who is hardly known in West Germany. As part of the so-called “Red Band”, a rather loose group of young people, she helps with small sabotage actions against the brown shirts. Actually, she would rather enjoy the summer, camping at the lake, and her fresh love for the blonde Hans. Since even small things were punishable with the death penalty back then, Hilde soon ends up in prison for treason and before a fast-track court, heavily pregnant. You can imagine how it could turn out.
From the underground against the Nazis
Dresen succeeds in creating an honest, empathetic film, played intensively by his leading actress Liv Lisa Fries (“Babylon Berlin”) in the title role. And yet in the end you ask yourself what new Dresen actually has to say. Counts only the love? Not all Nazis were monsters? During her arrest and later in prison, Hilde repeatedly encounters traces of humanity. “I always try to find the good in every person,” says Dresen in Berlin. Maybe that’s why his film seems a bit vague.
A carefree moment from “In Love, Your Hilde”: Hans (Johannes Hegemann) and Hilde (Liv Lisa Fries)
© Frédéric Batier/Pandora Film
“Treasure,” on the other hand, comes close to the border of Holocaust kitsch. Directed by the German director Jutta von Heinz (“And tomorrow the whole world”), but cast with two international stars: the American Generation Z heroine Lena Dunham as a music journalist and the British Stephen Fry as her Polish father. Yes, you read that right. Fry plays, sometimes with an unintentionally funny accent, a New York Pole who survived the Holocaust and is persuaded by his daughter to take a trip in the footsteps of his childhood and youth in Lodz and the surrounding area. She ends up at the family’s former factory and at her old parents’ house, where locals quickly moved in after their expropriation and deportation in 1940. Father and daughter also go to the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Fry’s role is invaded by dark memories.
Heinz tells from the perspective of the victims and their descendants what could have its own significance in a time of new anti-Semitic waves. Nevertheless, “Treasure” often remains surprisingly mild and narratively uneven in order to be really touching. The Auschwitz scenes were allegedly shot in front of a green screen, i.e. artificially inserted afterwards. You can see it in the film.
Starring in the British-German co-production “The Outrun”: the multiple Oscar-nominated US actress Saoirse Ronan
© Studiocanal
Nora Fingscheidt has filmed with an international star for the second time since her breakthrough with “System Sprenger”. First it was Sandra Bullock in “The Unforgiveable”, now the four-time Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan (“Atonement”, Lady Bird”) in “The Outrun”. Again it’s about an outsider, a young alcoholic, who returns to her Scottish homeland flees, appropriately enough, the harsh, storm-tossed Orkney Islands in the far north to finally get dry. Not much really happens in this soul and liver washing through the power of nature. But Ronan plays Oscar-worthy again, the pictures of the original The landscape, the harshness and yet warmth of the hearts of the locals actually develop a healing power that the bitterly serious subject urgently needs. In the end, is there still hope in German cinema?
Rejoiced too soon. Matthias Glasner’s competition entry (“Free Will”) is simply called “Dying”. That’s exactly what it’s about for a good three hours and embedded in a dysfunctional family made up of a cold-hearted mother (has vaginal cancer), a scatterbrained father (has Parkinson’s), a chaotic daughter (is an alcoholic) and a son who works as a conductor with a composer who wants to kill himself. Title of his current orchestral work: “Die”. It was kind of clear, right?
Together at the Berlinale (from left to right): Ronald Zehrfeld, Lilith Stangenberg, Matthias Glasner, Corinna Harfouch, Lars Eidinger and Robert Gwisdek
© Monika Skolimowska / DPA
Liven up the film “Die”: Lars Eidinger, Lilith Stangenberg & Co.
Because the really big drama is played by Lars Eidinger and Corinna Harfouch, Lilith Stangenberg, Robert Gwisdek and Ronald Zehrfeld, there is a lot of extraordinary acting to admire. Glasner said at the Berlinale that his very personal film was only made when his parents died. This is also why he is so honest and ruthless. In the first scene, Harfouch’s character sits confused in her own excrement. But after the haunting and often darkly humorous first half, Glasner loses the thread in the second part and no longer knows what he actually wants to say. Instead of original storylines, a tooth is pulled out without anesthesia or vomiting on the other listeners during a concert.
In the end, there is still hope left for your own mood, your desire to continue living. Because what the Germans still do well, at least at their most important film festival, is celebrating after the premiere. So the cast, crew and friends of “Die” met in a demolished house on Friedrichstrasse and toasted each other for courage. Lars Eidinger was the DJ in a good mood. Techno and hip hop, underworld and Duran Duran. At some point the sun always comes up again.