jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Homewrecking karate teachers, hard-partying Finns, and two thumbs up from Daniel Day-Lewis: I’m having a fine time at the Berlin Film Festival. My latest update, sent from woefully sparse wifi hotspots between marathon screenings and hurried curry sausage meals, covers six more movies: Black Ice, Auge in Auge, Shiver, Gardens of the Night, Chiko, and Transsiberian.

Read Berlinale Journal, Day 3 on About.com.

You may have heard French lounge cover act Nouvelle Vague’s version of Eisbär, but nothing beats the original 1981 Grauzone version of the song, a Neue Deutsche Welle hit in 1981. At least that’s what I thought until I saw Valeska Grisebach’s Sehnsucht (Longing), in which a German small-town couple plays it on their dinky keyboard after dinner. In their incapable hands, the song’s NDW ironic reserve (this is the period that brought us Trio’s “Da Da Da“) turns into real heartache that perfectly encapsulates the movie’s mood of awkward tragedy.

Like Christian Petzold and Robert Thalheim, Valeska Grisebach gets lumped into the Neue Berliner Schule — and I guess I just did it, too. Movement or not, every film by these directors that I’ve managed to catch so far has been outstanding. Sehnsucht, the story of an ill-fated love affair between a locksmith and a waitress cast with non-professional actors and set in a tiny village, feels absolutely lifelike. The characters and the tired, cliche-ridden things they say in hopeless attempts of bridging the gaps between them are depressingly real and instantly familiar to anybody who has spent any time in small-town Germany. Bold direction and editing add an artful dimension to the sparse, elegant story. There’s a fantastic sequence involving a Robbie Williams song, and then there’s that Eisbär.

• signandsight
• Sehnsucht - Laien werden Berlinale-Stars
• “Sehnsucht”: Realismus des Wünschens
• Arne Hoehne Presse | Sehnsucht
• Sehnsucht (Schnitt Online)

Sehnsucht. Valeska Grisebach, 2006. ****

This post is dedicated to the polar bear at the Central Park Zoo, who swims laps tirelessly to everybody’s endless delight. Too bad about that whole warming thing.

I had a strange dream last night about Romania and Malta, India and Switzerland. In my dream, Francis Ford Coppola had made a new movie, something about an old man who is hit by lightning and grows a new set of teeth. He collects roses and languages and Bruno Ganz was there, too. He owned a German-made tape recorder, for which he apologized. A beautiful woman spoke in tongues and changed her name and lived in a cave for a thousand years. In Walter Murch’s hands, close-ups of cigarette smoke turned into drifting clouds illuminated by the full moon. Mad Nazi scientists electrocuted horses, and I couldn’t remember if I left the third rose in a safe deposit box or inside a shattered mirror. There was never enough time. By the seaside, I made promises and broke them, but all of my friends were at the Cafe Select.

I know, I know — there’s nothing duller than listening to other people’s dreams. And yet… the shared fantasy Coppola created from Mircea Eliade’s novella weaves a strange magic, mysterious, playful, philosophical, and loopy with romance. I’d like to hold on to that gossamer enchantment for just a little while longer, privately, before it’s time to take out the stainless steel critical apparatus and cut this one open. Check back for a proper review before the opening on December 14. With Tim Roth and Alexandra Maria Lara.

Youth Without Youth. Francis Ford Coppola, 2007. ****

The trailer:

Like Weltschmerz and Fahrvergnügen, Vergangenheitsbewältigung is one of those German words that don’t quite have an equivalent in other languages: “working-off-the-past” has been a national project for the last sixty-odd years; it stands to reason that no other country has a history quite as heavy with guilt and horror to cope with. To be sure, the Holocaust has been the topic of countless films, but precious few address the legacy of the most efficient genocide in history as it confronts us today. With And Along Come Tourists, writer-director Robert Thalheim has made an understated film about a particularly sensitive place where past and present collide with unforgotten atrocities: the present-day town of Oswiecim, Poland, site of the Auschwitz extermination camp.

Read the rest of my review of And Along Come Tourists on About.com. At the reception following the MoMA screening, I had the distinct pleasure of being mistaken for the director several times. MoMA is screening the film, which doesn’t have U.S. distribution yet, as part of its Kino! 2007 program. You can catch it tomorrow at 2pm. Related: Yella and Q*Bert at the Holocaust Memorial.

Am Ende Kommen Touristen. Robert Thalheim, 2006. ****

The German trailer:

To break up the monotony of cross-posted festival reviews, here are some flowers from the garden of Max Liebermann’s villa on the Wannsee, along with a few more linkworthy items:

• Jennifer Merin, fellow critic and film journalist extraordinaire, is our new colleague and About.com Guide for Documentaries.
• Look, one of my photos made it into Schmap!
• Mundane Science-Fiction is a promising new subgenre, complete with manifestos and detractors.
• German filmmaker Florian Thalhofer, whom we met at a Goethe-Institute bash last week, is video blogging his motorcycle trip across America at 1000 Stories.com.
• Finally, a little music. First, a promo clip for one of my favorite albums of the summer, Marco Benevento’s Live at Tonic, followed by a video for “Off the Grid” from the new all-instrumental Beastie Boys album, The Mix-Up. It’s groovy.

Neither the first nor the best film telling the story of the doomed ocean liner, the 1943 German version is nonetheless fascinating– mainly because of the ways the story and imagery compares to John Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster, and as a study in overt propaganda. There’s the obligatory love story, poor immigrants dance below deck, and the band keeps playing “Nearer My God to Thee,” but the real thrust of this version is an accusation of the ruthless capitalists who caused the catastrophe.

Usually, the tale of the RMS Titanic serves as an object lesson in hubris, but in the Nazi-version, the sin that causes the death of over 1,500 passengers is greed: Sir Ismay, the owner of the White Star line played by Ernst Fritz Fürbinger, wants to break all records to drive stock prices up while John Jacob Astor (Karl Schönböck) is trying to thwart him so he can take over the company. The epilogue makes clear that there is no justice for the death caused by the speculating Englishman and his American nemesis. The sympathetic characters display more “German” virtues that must have seemed useful to the Nazis in 1943: honor, duty, obedience.

Nonetheless, Goebbels wasn’t happy with the film. From Wikipedia:

Titanic was the most expensive German production up until that time and endured many production difficulties, including a clash of egos, massive creative differences and general war-time frustrations. All of this resulted in Joseph Goebbels arresting the film’s director, Herbert Selpin, for treason and ordering him to be hanged in his cell the very next day. The unfinished film, the production of which spiraled wildly out control, was in the end completed by Werner Klingler.

The premiere was supposed to be in early 1943, but the theatre that housed the answer print was bombed the night before the big event. The film went on to have a lacklustre premiere in Paris around Christmas of that same year, but in the end, Goebbels banned it altogether, stating that the German people, at that point going through almost nightly Allied bombing raids, were less than enthusiastic about seeing a film that portrayed mass death and panic.

Titanic. Herbert Selpin and Werner Klingler, 1943. ***

• J. Hoberman on Titanic
• Wikipedia
• Jared Poley: Analysis of a Nazi Titanic
• Titanic at TCM

Ten years later, Tom Tykwer’s pop masterpiece still fascinates and exhilarates. It’s a film with a simple premise and complex philosophical implications, a movie that’s all about movement which nonetheless points to big questions best contemplated in complete repose. It’s a film about chance, second chances, repetition, and contingency. It’s Groundhog Day with a techno beat, Rashomon reimagined as a stylized game played on a Google map of Berlin. Rules are established — black and white for flashbacks, video for scenes without Manni and Lola, a quick succession of stills for the future of strangers — but even after the umpteenth viewing, mysteries remain: what is the significance of Lola’s scream? Which characters remember the events of the previous episode? Run Lola Run is emotional, conceptual, symbolic, philosophical, spiritual, local, and visceral. Not bad for an 80 minute joyride you can dance to.

Lola Rennt. Tom Tykwer, 1997. *****

A music video featuring the vocal stylings of Franka Potente:

Walther Ruttmann’s non-narrative rhythmic portrait of Berlin, usually connected to the “kino-eye” of Dziga Vertov, also had a clear influence on Godfrey Reggio. Much more upbeat than Koyaanisqatsi, Symphony covers a “regular day” in the metropolis circa 1927, celebrating modern life before the speed and exploitation turned sour. No dire Hopi prophecies here, even though a dire future was right around the corner. There’s a new score by Seattle psych rock band Kinski which I’d love to hear. Ruttmann went on to make Nazi propaganda: Blut und Boden, Metall des Himmels, Deutsche Waffenschmieden, Deutsche Panzer, and so forth. According to Steven Bach, Ruttmann worked on Triumph of the Will as Leni Riefenstahl’s co-director but was later excised from the credits.

Berlin: Die Symphonie der Großstadt. Walter Ruttmann, 1927. ****

• Cinecine: “holds up as one of the most striking non-fiction films ever made.”
• Channel 4
• Dave Kehr
• No love from TimeOut
• Allan James Thomas in Senses of Cinema
• Klaus Kreimer for Filmzentrale (in German)
• Speaking of Vertov: The Man With the Movie Camera on Google Video
• Watch Ruttman’s short Opus I on YouTube
• And now… Berlin, Symphony of a Great City in its entirety: