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“Tatort” from Berlin
No hope. Nowhere: A depressing case for Rubin and Karow
Nina Rubin (Meret Becker, left) and Robert Karow (Mark Waschke) question the suspect Dennis Ziegler’s mother
© rbb / Aki Pfeiffer / ARD Degeto
The Berlin commissioners Nina Rubin and Robert Karow have to solve the murder of a young student and come across a wall of silence and broken families. No fun on Sunday evening.
- 4 out of 5 points
- Freezing cold, heartless people and a rather bleak mood make this Berlin case difficult
What’s the matter?
The medical student Sophia Bader (Laura Sophie Warachewicz) uses a dating app to meet the couple Dennis Ziegler (Vito Sack) and Julia Hoff (Milena Kaltenbach) for sex. The next morning the naked body of the young woman is found at the Engelbecken in Berlin-Kreuzberg. When the inspectors Nina Rubin (Meret Becker) and Robert Karow (Mark Waschke) inform the parents of the dead, they deny that it could be their daughter. “Sophia doesn’t sleep with just anybody. I brought her up well. She doesn’t do that,” says her mother Marianne (Andreja Schneider). Even with the relatives of Dennis Ziegler and Julia Hoff, the investigators encounter a mixture of ignorance and helplessness. In order to solve the case, Rubin and Karow decide on “mind games”, which in the end get completely out of hand for everyone involved.
Why is this “crime scene” worthwhile?
The case takes place on cold Berlin winter days, and it’s not just the weather that is icy here. The strength of the film lies in the focus on the individual characters. It is the psychogram of two broken families. There is a lack of love and compassion, respect and understanding. Screenwriter Markus Busch and director Torsten C. Fischer were guided by the question: What degree of callousness and egocentricity does it take to commit homicides as they happen again and again? It is a rather bleak picture that they paint and that they do not exclude the commissioners either. In one scene, investigator Rubin said: “I finally want something beautiful, something warm, something cheerful.” There is none of that in the film entitled “The Cold and the Dead”.
What bothers?
The murder case in the crime thriller is told quickly and doesn’t really contain a surprising twist. The end is foreseeable and makes the story in itself a bit one-dimensional. The focus is on the individual participants and their current behavior. Why they act the way they act, however, is not elucidated further. As usual, there is solid language for this, which may not be for everyone.
The commissioners?
In this case, Nina Rubin and Robert Karow are almost as broken as all the other protagonists. They investigate completely carelessly and thus cause even more problems. In addition, they both have their affronts from a previous episode: Karow is plagued by a sexually transmitted disease and he wants to know from Rubin whether she is to blame for his “intimate souvenir”. The only one to cheer up is the new assistant Malik Aslan. It is portrayed by comedian Tan Caglar, who is in a wheelchair due to a spinal cord disease.
Turn on or off?
The case is depressing, but still well worth seeing. It is also the penultimate appearance of Meret Becker as Commissioner Nina Rubin. The actress is leaving the “crime scene” next year at her own request.
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