Afterwards Knarf Rellöm, who should probably be considered some kind of historical figure in the whole Hamburger Schule set of things, did a weirdo DJ thingy. Let’s just say that I am not a big fan of people playing beats and speaking/singing to them while wearing golden track suits. That said, it was still quite fun and I’m waiting for the Außerplanetarische Opposition now.
Ever since getting hold of their pretty catalogue a while back, I liked the books by Hermann Schmidt publishers in Mainz. Unfortunately most of their stuff is as pricey as it is pretty and I’d have a hard time arguing that I need it in any reasonable sense of that word. So I’ve been trying to look at some of their ‘smaller’ and cheaper books for intermediate entertainment and the 70 page volume Schriften Erkennen (recognising typefaces) didn’t disappoint.
Recognising typefaces is a tricky thing. I’ve loved doing it for ages but since I stopped working with them regularly I find it increasingly hard to do. In addition to that I always lacked the ‘professional’ classification of typefaces. While I may recognise letters on paper, I’ll strugge finding the ‘correct’ name. Even more so as the classifications used in English language traditions differ slightly from the strange German one. And the terminology differs greatly. Recently I geeked out about typefaces with a French friend, just to learn that they have yet another set of terminology in French.
The Book Schriften erkennen focuses on the German classification, complete with names and numbers, gives descriptions, and presents examples. These are authoritative, yet short and readable, making it easy to understand the differences both visually and historically - which may aid remembering things. Between chapters they squeeze double pages on topics related to the font family just discussed. Say, about the different typefaces leading to today’s Garamonds, and examples of how those Garamonds differ or, similarly, the many Helvetica rip-offs.
While the book was created from a student’s diploma thesis back in the 1980s, it has been updated to include more current typefaces as well. Where ‘current’ probably was some time in the late 1990s as more modern typefaces are missing (Possibly discussing Georgia which is extremely common on-screen these days might be interesting; mentioning Hoefler Text Text might be as well; as would be discussing Palatino Sans when the topic of typeface ‘clans’ is mentioned; finally, I guess, the ubiquitous Arial would be mentioned along with the Helvetica rip-offs.)
A pleasant read with surprising depth in both explanations and example images for the few dozen pages it consists of.
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Morgens aufstehen, wenn die Sonne scheint, was man durch die kleinen Risse im Rollo erkennen kann, springe ich aus dem Bett, geräkelt, gestreckt, ahhh! und dann unter die Dusche. Das prasselt auf einen nieder, massiert die erschlaffte Haut. Abtrocknen, rubbelen, mit der Bürste einmal durch die Haare und darein ein Tropfen Gel, damit sie einem nicht die Sicht auf diesen wunderbar klaren Tag verhängen. Ich habe nie diese Langhaarigen verstanden, die ihr Leben in einem steten Zustand geistiger Umnachtung verbringen müssen, weil sie einfach nichts mitbekommen von ihrer Umwelt. Freiwillige Autisten sind das, wenn man mich fragt. Zähne putzen, Borsten extrastark, das widerlich grüne Pfefferminzzeugs in den Abfluß gespuckt, frische Klamotten, die Pixies auf den Plattenteller…
Which is a line that stuck with me. I don’t want to know what kind of non-conscious role it played in making me want to get a turntable and doing my best to find a Pixies LP that I didn’t own as a CD already.
… 25 Liegestütz, raus auf den Balkon, einatmen, hmm, kaum Ozon in der Luft, tut gut, macht frei, frisch und fickerig, egal, wieder rein, ist inzwischen fast schon wieder Mittag. Wo ist eigentlich der Kater von letzter Nacht geblieben? Futschikado! Noch mal raus, vor die Tür, schauen ob er dort ist. Nein nein nein nein nein, nicht mal im Briefkasten, nichts da. Dafür tänzelt man selbst ballerinengleich durchs Treppenhaus, vor der Tür paffen Dir lustigen Wölkchen aus dem Mund - Vorsicht Glatteisgefahr! - und wenn schon, dann schnallt man sich halt ein paar Kufen unter und kurvt durch die Kurven mit den Kufen, ratsch, ritsch, rutsch, dann aber wieder rein, bloß nicht übertreiben. Man friert sich noch den Arsch ab, keine gute Sache, drinnen wartet das Bett. Genau: Frühstück im Bett. Großartige Idee. An der Tür vorbei, bevor sie im Luftzug zuschlägt, geschafft, 1. Platz von allen. Drinnen ists inzwischen auch ganz luftig, der Muff einfach weggeblasen, jetzt kann man anfangen zu genießen. Die Sonnenstrahlen knallen einem immer noch um ein Haar die Augäpfel aus den Höhlen, alles explodiert, die Konturen messerscharf. A propos Messer: da liegts, und dazu noch gut in der Hand, braucht man fürs Frühstück - aber nicht so ein lächerliches Butterbrotmesser, neee, 18 Zentimeter Klinge; mindestens!
Let’s just say I have a soft spot for oversized knives as well. While I don’t use them for breakfast, I use them for pretty much everything else. Perhaps I should work on my breakfasting technique…
Und dann reiße ich den Kühlschrank, dessen Temperatur immer nur haarscharf über dem Gefrierpunkt liegt, auf, und die Milchtüte raus, schmecke, fuchs, der Tetrapakquader - natürlich einer von den hohen schlanken, die breiten niedrigen vermitteln ein depressives Lebensgefühl, am schlimmsten ist H-Milch, bäh! - eist mir fast an der Hand fest, macht aber nichts, im Gegenteil, das stimuliert nur noch meine Kampfeslust. Lasche hoch und dann säbere ich voll in den Karton, daß mir das ganze Zeug über die Hose pladdert. Ui, da glitzern noch Eiskristalle drin, ich setze die Tüte an und gieße mir das Zeug in den Rachen und schlucke und schlucke und schlucke, fühlt sich an, als würde die Kehle einfrieren. Reine Milch ohne Zusätze, leider auch ohne Frostschutzmittel, da hat mans damals beim Wein besser gehabt: glykolversetzt, den konnte man sich gleich auch noch in den Kühler kippen, der Nachteil war, daß man elendig verreckt ist an dem Zeugs. Nichts für mich. Dann doch lieber den Weißen Riesen, der in meinem Magen inzwischen Eisklumpen bildet, schnell zurück unter die Bettdecke, zuerst aber stopfe ich noch den Schmeckefitzel in den Papierkorb, rülpse und lasse mich zurück in die Kissen fallen. Keine Frage: Jeder braucht mal ne Pause.
And to finish things off, the guy gives a perfect classification of milk packs. The tall 1 litre tetra packs are the ‘good’ ones while the wider and smaller ones are bad and usually contain disgusting UHT milk. After another fun detour to the glycol wine ‘scandal, the singer deserves a break.
]]>Celebrity is a so-so Woody Allen film from 1998. It deals with the struggles of a married couple who split up and start going different ways. While she goes on to an exciting new life in the media industry with her new husband, he continues to struggle as a neurotic writer trying to get his name known. When just listening and not watching what’s on-screen you’d bet that his role is played by Woody Allen himself as it’s just that typical Woody Allen role.
But it isn’t and I find it remarkable that Allen can make other people be so-much himself (or his on-screen self). As things have to go in a Woody Allen film, the neuroses and love-stories flourish while the writing suffers. All in a very entertaining way. We even have some scenes with a tolerable Leonardo Di Caprio in there.
At first I was thrilled by the fact that the film is in black and white. But as it went on I thought the black and white somehow looked rather modern and artificial. I’m not really sure what that is about.
I missed out on Team America when it was in cinemas because I didn’t think it sounded too compelling as a film. Yeah, South Park is fun, but seeing that dragged out in full film acted by puppets sounded like stretching things a bit too far. And in a way it is.
One thing did change, however. And that was the curious fact that some weeks ago my flatmates started saying Matt Damon
in a silly voice whenever the opportunity arose in the form of some celebrity news being in the paper or so. While that was funny in itself, I soon learned that it actually came from Team America. So I had to check that out myself.
And yup, it was quite funny. In all its actor hatred, singing dictator and anti-terrorism ridicule. And, hey it’s apparently Rated R for graphic crude and sexual humor, violent images and strong language - all involving puppets.
Uh, hot puppet sex! And it’s lovely to have a film in which all parties are wrong for a change.
Finally, they get extra credit for blowing up the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre in the opening scene just to kill some Arab guys. The fact that this doesn’t seem completely unrealistic probably stresses the – err – ‘communication problems’ that American foreign policy has had a for a while.
[Let me add that German school education and the standard school atlas won’t help you finding out where Mount Rushmore actually is. Thanks to Google Earth…]
Gespenster is the most recent film by Christian Petzold (the director of Die Innere Sicherheit). It is quite short and painful in telling two tragic stories.
The main one is about two girls in trouble, Nina and Toni. Nina, an orphan, falls in love with Toni, a broke liar. And they spend some time together with fun activities like shoplifting and end up going to a casting where they are supposed to tell about their friendship. There, Nina stops lying and moves from the story they made up to the real story about how she first saw Toni when she was harrassed by some guys in the park. That leaves an impression and at a party soon after, Toni goes on to sleep with the director as Nina learns from his wife…
The other story is about a French couple, Françoise and Pierre, who come to Berlin. When Françoise sees Nina she is convinced Nina is her daughter who was abducted many years ago. And as charming as that may sound in terms of a happy end, it is just not happening.
With the people in the film and their problems, this film made me feel rather uncomfortable throughout.
I am quit split about this film. On the one hand I saw the preview with all its dark fantasy elements and decided I won’t like it. On the other hand I found it hard to find a bad review of it and heard many people recommend it and say Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno) is the film that should have won the foreign Oscar rather than Das Leben der Anderen. And people usually said that thinking about the film’s merit rather than the politics and stupidity going with big money film awards.
In the end my gullible self decided to go and watch the film anyway so I could form ‘my own opinion’ on the topic. And I found that people were mostly right because Pan’s Labyrinth really tackles a big story – fascism and how it is perceived by a little girl – and does so in an ambitious way.
This means we don’t just get to see the ugly face of good old fascism with its uniforms, power structures, unified opinions and arbitrary killing. (It made me wonder: people who flourish in fascist systems, would their skills also make them successful in business? or in art?) And we follow the girl Ofelia who has to move to the countryside with her mother who is pregnant by her new husband – a captain in the army.
Not only does she witness the cruelty going on in the fight against the terrorists opposition in the mountains who belong to the same families as the captain’s servants. She also dives into a fairy tale world in which she is a princess and has to solve problems so she can get back to her kingdom. Those stories take place in a dark world which isn’t really my type of thing. The only thing I really liked of that was the chalk to just draw a door where you need it, I thought all the fairy tale figures were a bit gross. Which probably was their point – but that didn’t make the film more enjoyable to watch for me.
One of those films which is well worth watching. But which I probably won’t watch again.
The Japanese film Rikyu plays in 16th century Japan and revolves on the dealing of the local lord Hideyoshi who wants to convince his peers to invade China. Not really my topic to be honest. If it weren’t that the film revolves around Rikyu, the lord’s tea master who conducts and teaches the way of the Japanese tea ceremony.
As I am quite keen on most tea-related things I was familiar with Rikyu who wrote what seems to be the book about the tea ceremony. And it was great to see the interaction between the powerful yet nervous lord and the calm and determined Riyku in the film. There are also plenty of tea ceremonies and different rooms for the ceremony which Rikyu designed and constructed.
While the film is quite slow, peaceful and long it still wasn’t boring and we see how Rikyu rises with the powers that are and eventually falls from their favour – leading ultimately to him having to leave and kill himself.
After having finished the François Ozon short film DVD with mixed impressions and really having liked Les amants criminels, it was time to try another one of Ozon’s full length films. This time I tried 5×2 which I still remember avoiding when it was in cinema because its posters looked definitely like a girl film romantic thing to me (and of course with a name just begging to be written with improper typography giving me an additional negative kick).
And while the film is about the relationship of a couple (2) in five acts (5), it isn’t the typical romantic film you’d expect. For one it is about a failing relationship. And in addition it’s told backwards. Now that sounds a bit silly. At least since the Pulp Fiction era non-linear narrative has become quite standard and just going straight-on backwards, with the acts going from divorce to meeting friends to childbirth to wedding to falling in love, doesn’t sound like an overly exciting concept.
But it works perfectly well. In fact running the story backwards makes it more dramatic because you keep wondering how things became the way they did. How they ended up wanting the divorce without too much stress and drama around it. And in the end it all spells out in an undramatic and slightly tragic way.
Network is a mid 1970s film by Sidney Lumet (who also did Running on Empty a decade later) situated in the TV news business. While I was at first not too impressed with the film’s all 1970s media company setup, I started liking it once the main plot line thickened.
We learn about a new show which is transformed into a kind of preaching event in charge of its host Howard Beale. That show is wildly successful and gives a financial upswing to its TV station. All of which is orchestrated by the modern programme manager Diana (Faye Dunaway - Arizona Dream) who at the same time bedazzles the news show’s former manager Max. As time goes on and the show’s market share rises it becomes more and more apparent how all that success is totally market driven and lacks basic sense or even humanity. While such ‘insights’ may be completely obvious today – I found it quite astonishing to see them in such a well made story from thirty years ago.
And the whole idea of doing TV shows on terrorists with some wonderful ‘authentic footage’ surely is an interesting twist, particularly these days.
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Tonight I went to see Funny van Dannen. He has been a singer for a long time doing some singer songwriter thing with great and funny lyrics that I really like. I even managed to see him about nine years ago. Which is a fun story in itself as the sold out a few dozen people before my place in the queue but my decision to stick along for a while after they sent everybody who didn’t get in away paid off. Also, I was shocked back then that he wears cowboy boots for real and not just on his album covers.
He was still wearing cowboy boots today but he was reading from his latest book Zurück im Paradies (Back in Paradise) full of fun stories. I really was positively surprised that his stories turned out great as well. With quite a bit of charme and fun being in them. He also read some poems which immediately sounded like they’ll make great songs once a guitar is around.
The reading itself wasn’t the greatest, though. To me he seemed a bit absent minded when he came on stage (dope, alcohol, whatever?). Emptying a bottle of wine during the reading made him a bit more lively, though.
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I happened to see the trailer for Little Miss Sunshine many times before films in the past months. And I kept thinking that with its defunct family it may be fun but a bit disappointing in the end – the trailer drawing its attraction mainly from a Sufjan Stevens and Flaming Lips based sound track.
I still went to see the film with a friend. And while it may not be the most high-brow film, I thought it was good and really enjoyed it. In the film, we follow the slightly defunct Hoover family consisting of Richard (dad, successless seller of some success scheme), Sheryl (mum, keeping the family organised and serving KFC dinners on paper plates), Edwin (grandpa, got kicked out of his old aged home because of his heroin and porn habit), Frank (uncle, philosopher, gay, just lost his job and failed at suicide), Dwayne (son, loving Nietzsche, hating everybody else, desperately wants to be a pilot and resolved not to talk until then) and Olive (little daughter, loving chocolate and keen to participate in a beauty pageant).
So they’re all a bit strange, and when the opportunity arises that Olive can actually participate in a pageant, everybody is forced to join a road trip across the U.S. in an old VW bus. And during that trip we get to know even more quirks of the family, suffer with them through their car breaking down, money problems, a death and a big dream being destroyed, before they arrive at the pageant.
And the thing about the pageant is that even without her ugly glasses, Olive just isn’t the type of girl for that kind of contest. Once they arrive there, this becomes obvious to the family as well: the world of beauty pageants is made by and for obsessive parents who want their daughters to look like little bulimic whores. It’s nothing where sweet and well-fed Olive could stand a chance against the other over-ambitious families with mum’s who spray paint their daughters with tan colour before they go on stage.
But as films go, the family just went through this and supported their daughter to not feel too humiliated even with many people leaving the room during her show which had a slutty Madonna-ish touch that brilliantly reflects the taste of grandpa Edwin who trained Olive while at the same time upstaging the other contestants who do pretty much the same thing with a delusion of ‘class’.
The character of Dwight probably deserves a special mention, as he really suffers from unforeseen tragedy in the film. It’s very tough. Perhaps the fact that he is wearing interesting T-Shirts is a hint – particularly for the yellow Jesus was…
T-Shirt which I think could only be fully seen for a single brief moment in the film to reveal the complete message. (Hmm, yellow T-Shirts, just remember the one in Elephant!)
I was pointed to Punishment Park a few times and avoided seeing it for a long time. Mostly becaused it sounded like such a serious film. And a serious film it is. A depressing film in fact. A film which left me shocked and reminded me of all the bad things in the world. This really isn’t recommended viewing for a relaxing evening. Yet it probably is a film you should see.
Coming from back in 1971 it deals with non-conforming young people who didn’t play by the suppressive rules of their society. Thanks to special crisis laws they are brought to a so-called court that is run by unqualified people and they are convicted to very long sentences for doing things that should qualify as free speech or not sticking to the rules. As a wonderful alternative they are given opportunity to do a long run through a desert called Punishment Park
. It has the added benefit that if they don’t die of heat and exhaustion there will be plenty of armed police and army people around trying to catch them as ‘training’.
The film shows us all this – from the so-called court, to people running and suffering in the desert, to people being shot at will by others who happen wear uniforms – from the perspective of a camera team documenting this great new way of saving money in the time of overcrowded prisons. And it’s scary to see. Not only does all the talk of crisis sound a bit too familiar in these days. It’s the people exercising the power that make the film the most scary.
Those ‘little people’ – people who ‘know’ what’s right and wrong and who will stick to their ‘moral’ standards are scary. They are easily enraged and in their self-righteousness will not see that they are happily stomping other people’s rights, normal laws and the constitution (which particularly in the U.S. must be a big thing as people seem to be very proud of theirs there – and perhaps rightly so as the constitution seems to be more about what the country wants to be rather than the nitpicking legalese you find in laws).
Similarly scary are the ‘little people’ in uniforms. Not that I ever had actual bad experiences with uniformed people apart from them being a tad annoying and overestimating their importance, rather than being polite and helpful as they should (after all the police advertise themselves as Freund und Helfer
– friend and helper – in Germany). Seeing those uniformed people always gives me a bad feeling. Usually them wearing uniforms suggests that they can exercise some sort of power over you. And even if they do something that isn’t warranted, they’ll be likely to get away with it. (I assume that doesn’t really have much to do with the uniforms as there can be un-uniformed people with the same powers – but the uniform often is an obvious symbol.)
Now the thing is that the people who are in the (physically working) parts of the police or the army probably aren’t their brightest as well. Which makes them easy to manipulate and more likely to shoot. Which is exactly what they did in the film.
Just as Punishment Park, Two for the Road is on (part two of) the list of films that aren’t seen enough. Being a film with the wonderful Audrey Hepburn directed by Stanley Donen (great titles again!), it is completely different from Punishment Park, though.
It consists of many episodes from the life of Joanna and Mark who met on trips in France a long time ago, got married and had been on many more trips through France since. The film keeps cutting back and forth through their common history and we see how they fell in love, stopped caring but could never really leave one another alone. And those are brilliantly made, giving us a jump in time while remaining at the same location in most places. Really cool.
As the title suggests, all the episodes we see are during travels and we see them travelling France in many different cars, at supposedly different ages and at different stages of their careers (and income). Audrey Hepburn gets the opportunity to show off a broad range of 1960s fashion. Which on her looks rather cool. Even the oversized sunglasses that have become popular again.
Running in a Polanski week on arte, there was his 1974 detective film Chinatown. A rather long film starring the young Jack Nicholson. I’m not usually a big friend of either long or detective films, but this one was rather good, not giving me the feeling of a stale detective film or a long film at all.
With the detective Gittes exploring a case ranging from adultery to criminal business to murder and running from one lie to the next, you are almost tempted to lose trust in people after seeing that film.
Just to ‘spoil’ things a litte by stating the obvious, ‘departed’ in The Departed means ‘dead’. So we start off with many people and end up with very few survivors two and a half hours later. In between we get to see Jack Nicholson play himself – something he’s really good at and strangely we don’t even notice how those 150 minutes pass. So Mr. Scorsese must have gotten a few things right on this one.
The story is about the police fighting against the mafia with each party having an undercover man with the other. Meaning that no real progress is made for either party, that people get seriously upset, that trust stops existing and everything nicely goes downhill from there.
I quite like old-fashioned films like this one. Even with modern gadgetry playing a role in there, they are a nice break from the usual 24 / CSI / … crap they usually serve you these days. Perhaps it’s just because I like the police to actually try and prove those crooks’ wrongdoings rather than shooting them first and asking questions later.
Dislikes: the cheesy music at the end of the film’s trailer. Open question: Who’d be the father of the child – not that it matters much as the likely candidates are – erm - departed.
A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy is another Woody Allen film. And not exactly one of his best, I’d say. Woody Allen plays the inventor (and investor) Andrew who together with his wife Adrian has guests over for the weekend in their house in the countryside. Soon there is a lot of the attendants fancying people they shouldn’t fancy and trying to meet them without their significant others noticing.
Add to that countryside imagery, old clothes and decorations, strange inventions such as a flying wings or a projector showing stories of the past and Woody Allen’s typical psychological weirdnesses and you’ve got a lot of this film already – which with its old-fashioned looks is quite different from many of Allen’s other films.
I had the opportunity to see The Man Who Left His Will on Film (aka Tokyo senso sengo hiwa / 東京戦争戦後秘話) which as far as I understand is one of the more obscure and experimental films by Nagisa Oshima.
It doesn’t really have a straightforward story, but more one that revolves around a stolen camera and the film that was made with it before the guy who took it jumped off a roof and died. An effort is then made to recover the film and figure out the significance of its somewhat dull shots. In the process of doing that the film is recreated with interesting things happening while trying to do so and eventually leading us to the guy with the camera jumping off that roof again.
But that isn’t the whole deal, there’s also the aspect about the people we see being involved in a group of political filmmakers, about filming protest and about the dead guy’s girlfriend. Quite a lot, and probably requiring another viewing for things to make more sense.
I thought the film is beautifully shot in black and white that has both the exciting contrast and the rich greys (uh, that sounds stupid… but it just looks good). The only thing that irritated me throughout the film was that the protagonist Motoki is wearing Converse-style sneakers but in all the film’s running scenes his steps are clearly heard as if he wore shoes with proper soles.
Radio Days is a Woody Allen film that he doesn’t star in himself. It takes the inside view on a family in the 1930s and how they lived and grew up with the radio running all the time. Showing how everyone has their favourite shows and also using those as excuses to tell us more about the family.
Not an outrageously exciting film, but a very solid one bringing a bit of history and some humour together.
As a surprisingly good choice in christmas television Killing Zoe was on. And it remains an excellent film, from the bad language all the way to the needless violence and insanity. A great story of a heist going wrong but there at least being a small positive spin to it.
Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) was a big success in German cinemas in 2006. It deals with how the GDR government spied on their people by taking a look at the people doing the spying.
Everything focuses on the (made up) author Georg Dreyman whom the Stasi is spying on. And we get to see pretty much of the chain of command running that operation which reaches from having bugs in his apartment to scaring the neighbours into not giving away the cover to having him followed around the clock.
The people running the operation reach from inexperienced youngsters who are mainly into snooping on people’s sex lives to very professional bureaucrat types to people focusing on their career in the system to some upper echelon who’s mainly interested in that observation because he wants to shag Dreyman’s wife. This highlights how absurd the whole system was and also leaves enough room for one of the spies to do a good deed.
Nicotina is a fun Mexican film about some geek and his friends wanting to sell some banking codes to a Russian mafia guy. That works quite well, up to the tiny problem that he grabs the wrong CD after his pretty neighbour figured out he installed some web cams in her flat and messes up his flat.
The wrong CD, in turn, leads to the Russians being upset, there being some shouting, running and shooting, people fancying pharmacists, people dying at a barber shop and having other people slit open their guts to find diamonds and equally absurd stories.
While I found the film entertaining, I didn’t quite think it’s great. The way it’s filmed and cut often looks like they are ‘borrowing’ from other films or TV series and the plot is a bit (or not sufficiently far) off the tracks to be good.
Subway is an early (1985) film by Luc Besson. It starts with some scary 1980s tunes, so I was tempted to drop out from that film early on, but it also shows us a youngish Jean Reno playing a weirdo drummer – which on it’s on is quite fun.
The film itself plays in Paris’ métro system with a bunch of guys living in the stations and living of stuff they sell to or steal from people during the days. The main character Fred loves blowing up safes and tries to sell some documents back to a pretty girl (and wife of some rich guy) at whose party he stole them. And the story revolves around that plot with additions about the métro station security people trying to track down the guys in there stations and some extra music playing.
I wasn’t too impressed by that story, to be honest. But I absolutely loved the filming. Very wide angles are used all the time throughout the film giving a great impression of the métro stations two or three decades back. And almost every single scene in the film has wonderful patterns of coloured tiles in it. Those tiles cover the walls and ground in the métro stations and have all those wonderful symmetries, patterns and colours. Worth seeing just for that!
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And both the recommendation and the present were good ones. Die Blendung is an excellent book! I doubt I could do the book justice with a description of what happens in there. So I’ll just say it starts with a brilliant sinologist Peter Kien who lives in his huge private library in Wien and likes to ignore the rest of the world so he can focus on his research. In the book’s three parts A Head without World
, Headless world
and World in the head
we see him losing his home and library to his wife, then trusting a greedy small time crook while looking for revenge and eventually going all crazy until his beloved library burns.
The book does an excellent job (better than university, I’d say) at showing us how close brilliance and insanity can be. How important it can be to be able to handle mundane tasks. How people are driven by greed (mostly for money and some for knowledge) and will do anything to satisfy it. And how everybody is a liar.
In fact, the book is a pain to read at times. Following the story you’ll just see that things will go wrong and you have to watch them go wrong without being able to interfere. The protagonist doesn’t see any problems and just walks straight on to being cheated and further to insanity. Particularly when Kien is overpowered by his nasty wife around the end of the book’s first part I found this almost unbearable and had to have a reading hiatus of a few weeks. No pain, no gain, as they say.
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German director Christian Petzold got quite a bit of good press for his film Gespenster last year. But I didn’t manage to see it on the few days it ran in local cinemas. So I hoped to simply rent the DVD later on – but it hasn’t been released yet, and according to the lady at the video store it frequently happens with ‘small’ films that getting the rights and publishing a DVD just doesn’t happen because it’s too much effort and too expensive. Which – of course – I find completely ridiculous. All the hard work to actually make the film has been done, all the public film subsidies have already been paid for it and publishing it on DVD shouldn’t add much to that. [I now learned that the DVD will actually be published next month, so there’s hope…]
So while I couldn’t see Gespenster I instead watched Petzold’s film Die Innere Sicherheit instead. It starts with a German family, Clara and Hans with their daughter Jeanne being in Portugal. But soon we learn that Clara and Hans have a ‘terrorist’ background back from the 1970s (interestingly this isn’t made explicit and we never learn what exactly they did) and are now fugitives from the government agencies.
Jeanne is growing up being home-schooled by her parents and constantly changing locations and identities together with her parents, so they don’t get caught. Things turn a little difficult when they run out of money and they return to Hamburg to sort things out. Even contacting old friends is dangerous because they could be (and are) spied on by the government. But the family moves smoothly in that world of danger. Quite naturally moving with the commuters in the morning for example and adapting a life style where they blend in smoothly.
In Hamburg they move into an empty flat that Jeanne learned about from a guy she flirted with in Portugal. And she meets him again as well. Which probably is where the trouble starts.
That’s our favourite coffee in the product placement, the pack of tomatoes isn’t unknown to student cooking either…
Up to that point the whole family situation had been amazing. Living in the constant danger of being caught and the constant fear of losing their daugher (or parents), the family lived a lifestyle that could be considered really cool. Unlike in most other families (or at least middle-class families) there were real dangers in their lives. And when the parents said ‘move’ because they thought it’ll be dangerous even their teenage daughter moved. The family is very reasonable, what needs to be done gets done and there’s no superfluous talking around. Even difficult issues are dealt with head on because they are comparatively unproblematic to being caught.
For example when Jeanne steals a CD, she gets told off by her parents. But not because they try to teach her that stealing is bad but simply because getting caught will mean having to face the police which is to be avoided at all costs. Of course wanting to have a boyfriend is a problem in that situation as well. And again not for the parents wanting to safeguard their daughter’s virginity but mainly because he could (and does) ask questions about Jeanne’s family and none of the options of shutting up, lying or telling the truth are good ones.
And of course when they have to leave Hamburg again, there’s a dramatic situation where Jeanne is torn between her boyfriend and her parents.
I thought this was a rather good film offering not only a view on completely different people and lifestyles, on ‘terrorists’ (a word which I think wasn’t used in the film at all) before that word changed its meaning a few years ago. We see them as smart people, who know how to deal with difficult situations and will handle them without needing to be pushed. And who take care for their daughter even in that difficult situation. Somehow the 1970s left-wing ‘terrorist’ – while violent – seemed to be much more intellectual and fighting for a ‘good cause’ than what the word ‘terrorist’ is used for these days (where the meaning seems to be something between ‘person who wants to kill (or just disagree with) Americans (or Western people)’ and ‘person looking like he’s from the middle east’.
Ah, right, but that’s not what I wanted to rant about. My issue was that I would have liked recommending the film to people who don’t speak German. But it is in German only. Not even English subtitles seem to exist. Well done… shouldn’t that be another thing that’s relatively cheap to make in comparison to the total cost of making a film? Even worse, when digging through some pages of Google results on the topic, it seemed that some Goethe Institute (German cultural institutes abroad) actually have got English subtitles for the film and use them for screenings in England for example – the film’s title Die Innere Sicherheit (literally: The Inner Security / The Securtiy of the Interior) being translated nicely as The State I’m in (which in turn makes me think of that Idlewild son, but never mind…). So subtitles do exist and probably haven been paid for with tax money in some way or another. But they just don’t seem to be available for general consumption by the public. And that sucks because now there’s no way for me to reasonably recommend the film. (Actually I had the very same problem already some years ago with the wonderful film 23.)
While Googling around for those subtitles, I learned a number of things. Most prominently that the main storyline of Die Innere Sicherheit was nicked from the American 1988 film Running on Empty. So I tried to get a copy of that one as well. In the video store they didn’t even know it existed, amazon Germany was better but they wanted to charge a ridiculous €30 – by far too much, particularly for someone who doesn’t usually buy DVDs because they’re too expensive at their normal price already. A quick look across the pond showed it’s selling for $10 at amazon.com which seemed much more reasonable (before adding shipping costs).
Then, thanks to more googling, I learned that the film had a different title in Germany (Die Flucht ins Ungewisse) which isn’t listed on IMDB (thanks!), so I didn’t know it. With that info, amazon Germany offered it for €15 which I still consider expensive but which was much more reasonable. Eventually I saw a cheap mass-seller in the U.S. selling those DVD for what ended up being $6 including the shipping to Europe if I didn’t want the jewel case (the original jewel case inlay was included though). And that’s what I went for.
It just took a ridiculous fight with PayPal (for some reason I couldn’t transfer the money through the apparently helpful handling site that the seller used, that site just broke down and had no good error handling, the seller (quite friendly and quick for someone who apparently sold 200000 items on eBay so far) told me that there was a problem with transfers from PayPal Germany at the moment – and I shrugged at the fact that those systems should be different in different countries in the software they use. But as they were using that extra ‘clever’ payment and shipping site and PayPal flat out refused to let me transfer any money without using it, I became a victim of incompetent / lazy programmers once more. So rather than waiting for them to figure out a different way for the payment to go, I asked Dan in the U.K. to transfer the money for me… which eventually worked although there was a certain unclarity in the process as I had entered my German address when first trying to pay and the site would only accept U.K. addresses when he paid. Somehow yet another bug in the site cancelled that bug, though, and everything arrived at my place ten days later… and I could finally see the film.
As I mentioned above, the story is Running on Empty is pretty much the same as in Die Innere Sicherheit. Just that it’s set in the U.S., that we are in the 1980s, that the parents had blown up a napalm plant in the 1960s, and that they have two boys with whom they move from state to state changing names and looks. Again I was impressed by the relationship of the kids with their parents (although the little brother looks a bit absent minded throughout). And once the older brother falls in love, confusion and problems arise, culminating in the situation where the family has to leave again. In addition, this film includes the story of the older brother being a talented piano player, talented enough to be asked to play in public and to sucessfully apply for the Juilliard school – which brings with it exactly the kind of public scrutiny the family wants to avoid. And thus a difficult decision has to be made which leaves the boy with either the piano or his family.
Oh and who doesn’t want to have a dad who answers a valid question of an outsider about some family habits with It’s a little family tradition resulting from a particularly good LSD trip I had in 1968
?
I thought both films are very good. With Running on Empty being the better one. That’s not only because it is the ‘original’ (unlike many American remakes, say for Abre los Ojos or Nikita, Die Innere Sicherheit does offer a new setup for the story to live in) or because its credits are in Palatino (hmmm) but because it handles the relation between the parents and their son more carefully, it also shows how things can go wrong and how hard it can be to do the ‘right’ thing.
On the other hand, Die Innere Sicherheit looks better. I think this is better filming. But perhaps I’m just fooled by it looking modern and not like the 1980s.
]]>So he gets out of prison and the world has changed completely. He is a citizen of a different country now, he has a different passport, there’s different money, the people have changed in the years since the reunification. I guess that can be quite alienating and might give quite a unique perspective of the world. How will the guy who wanted to flee the GDR a decade earlier like the ‘west’ that he finally lives in now? Will things seem absurd to him? Will he love it? Possibly something in between, but what?
We don’t learn much about that in the film. While thankfully avoiding the genre of ‘Ostalgia’, it doesn’t give us too much insight in Martin’s dealing with the change. Yet, the film clumsily touches all the other stereotypical topics that are around. The guy coming from jail who doesn’t manage to buy a tram ticket? ✓ The annoyance of bureaucrats, particularly the ‘well meaning’ ones? ✓ His wife and son now living with another guy who just happens to be annoyingly middle class and tennis playing? ✓ And driving a small Mercedes of course? ✓ Him being a good guy who saves his friend’s life and won’t see his dark skinned friend harrassed by others? ✓ Him still not being able to get a job just because he’s been in jail? ✓ And of course him only having at least semi-criminal friends who don’t really help his situation? ✓
Let’s say I’m not impressed. It’s not that there aren’t any good things in the film but there are just so many painfully obvious scenes that it seemed unnecessarily annoying at times when I hoped for something more subtle.
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Luckily there are a few posts which have also caused truely interesting comments and discussions (not to forget the posts which get one or two helpful comments by regular readers – thanks for that!), and the post on the German film Gegen die Wand is one of them. Reading those comments, I came across a recommendation to see Solino, an earlier film by Fatih Akin which also deals with the topic of being an emigrant/immigrant.
We start with an Italian family living in Solino in the 1960s. There isn’t enough work and they, the parents and their two kids Gigi and Giancarlo, decide to move to Germany where they have enough work (a bitter contrast to these days, I might add). The kids like the idea of going to Germany because there could be snow. Gigi even has to promis a friend to send her some. Their start in Germany isn’t too good. The flat they rent isn’t exactly nice and the father thinks his job in a coalmine is too dirty. But soon the mother has the idea to open a restaurant in the empty store across the road. Opening a restaurant goes like this:
She: Romano!
He: What’s up?
She: Down there you can rent a restaurant.
He: So what. What do you want to do? Do you want to open a shop?
She: Franco doesn’t have a wife – huh? And most other Italians don’t have a wife either.
He: I understand… you want to open a brothel.
She: No, they don’t have anybody who cooks for them and they’d be happy if they could eat just like at home…
Their restaurant is called Solino and after a while it is running well. Gigi also gets to know the guy in the photo store next door who lets him have a camera to take photos of snow with. And Gigi really likes having a camera. Similarly he enjoys when a film crew eats at their restaurant and he can speak to the director who tells him to live your life with fire and passion. A goal which Gigi won’t forget – and which makes him want to make films as well.
Time goes by, the kids grow up and want to do their own stuff, not just work in their parents’ restaurant. They move out and Gigi finally gets make his first film – thanks again to the generosity of the photo store’s owner. He even submits the film to a competition but he can’t attend the ceremonies because he has to be back in Italy with his mother who had become seriously ill and wanted to return and because his brother didn’t come to take care so he could attend the film festival. His film even wins the festival and Giancarlo goes to take Gigi’s fame and girlfriend. Finally Gigi decides to settle down in Solino and leave Germany behind.
Which in fact is a whole sub-plot in the film – Giancarlo constantly disappoints and betrays his more talented brother. But Gigi keeps forgiving him. So while the film’s setting may be vaguely similar to Gegen die Wand’s, I think the film is quite different as it doesn’t stick that closely to the problems that may come with cultural differences. Other topics, such as the love for photography and film and the pursuit of those, benevolence and magnanimity are very important as well. And all together this makes Solino a more pleasing, less realistic and equally good film in comparison to Gegen die Wand.
P.S. It also reminded me of Cinema Paradiso.
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