Longing
January 14th, 2008
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.
And Along Come Tourists
November 3rd, 2007
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:
