This crime scene from Cologne is called “Pyramide” – an alternative would be “Don’t do it!”. That’s what you want to keep shouting at this guy who’s going to hell. His name is André Stamm (Rouven Israel), and with the eyes of a child he is recruited as a salesman by a company that sells shady investments. He thinks he will get rich here. André Stamm has debts, a pregnant wife and wants to “just live” with her. That’s why he lets the boss and underboss of the company celebrate him with a wry smile as a supposedly born sales genius, and that’s why he doesn’t really ask about the risk of the investments. And that’s why when he’s canvassing, he babbles on the phone exactly the nonsense that he was promised at the company: “Surely you have a wife. In six months you’ll be living in an exclusive penthouse and taking her to the office every morning in a convertible Yoga.” Surprise: All you need is a sad dog instead of a downward-looking dog.
Please count carefully – the story is numbered here!
It’s about seducing the seducable, the nasty “Concreta” boss Komann feeds the tribe with sushi, Instagram with messages about the will to succeed and his sales boys with whipping slogans about how nobody can stop them and stuff like that. “Pyramide” by director Charlotte Rolfes and authors Arne Nolting and Jan Martin Scharf shows a Sunday evening version of the milieu that is used by productions like Bad Banks or King of Stonks has already been used with a lot more narrative space and a lot more money, and of course you can see the difference a bit. André Stamm’s stupid faith eventually turns into anger, which is why he sits in an interrogation room at the beginning of the film and demands that people finally listen to him. The idea of dividing the chapter into numbered chapters with ominous headings is okay in principle, but it always gets really confusing when it was exciting and you didn’t count correctly. Where the hell are a pad and pencil when you need them while watching TV?
André Stamm (Rouven Israel) has to sell investments to get commission, but it doesn’t really work.
(Photo: Thomas Kost/WDR/Bavaria Fiction)
Like the Cologne pre-Christmas case “The Other’s Last”, “Pyramide” is an educational piece; Schenk (Dietmar Bär) and Ballauf (Klaus J. Behrendt) are the compassionate uncles in a modern social drama. You can do that, maybe you’re even on the trail of a big social story in Cologne. As a viewer, you just ask yourself whether Stamm is really a victim when he burns his relatives’ savings for his commission and is not otherwise petty about everything he does. Or is it something bigger? To-do on the block: think about it when you take your husband to yoga soon.
The first, Sunday, 8:15 p.m.
You can find further SZ series recommendations here.