DIE FETTEN JAHRE SIND VORBEI (The Edukators, 2004) *** At first I thought that Hans Weingartner was going to do a parallel universe historical extrapolation on how it might have been if Gudrun Ensslin had decided that she actually loved Holger Meins, rather than Andreas Baader. But Hans is up to something much simpler, but with at least equally complex implications. Julia Jentsch is the soul of the revolution of the Western oppressed. She is not without (duly amplified in the courts of law) sin, and they are going to make her suffer for it for the rest of her life. Her choices are either a controlled environment of semi-slavery or a hopeless lunge for anything else. The sociopolitical parameters are well drawn, but the development inside them is unnecessarily concise. I could have used at least another fifteen lines each of the scene where Burghart Klaußner, the semi-shamed capitalist, reveals his own past, with a passion that we've seen none of in his present and that he clearly has abandoned any hope for in the future. So it says some stuff, without proselytizing, in fact Klaußner is the most interesting character in the film, not the least because of his sense of hopelessness, and the subtext that society has also done something awful to him, and his own need to lash out. The duality of the axiomatic denouement: apply it to each character, in every situation, wonder whether it can ever be true, settle for shades of gray, observe where your sympathies settle, and understand that passion can never be reserved for selected moments or rationalizations.
back to Brilliant Observations on 1776 Films home
go back home, or send me email
no more reviews! I want to buy your novel!