“As the Berlinale ends, the Berlinale begins!” I like this sentence I used two years ago, because it describes this effect of my lingering thoughts about the Berlinale exactly. It’s like for awhile the Berlinale hasn’t really ended because I am still thinking about the films.
Attending this year’s Berlinale was something of a little miracle, and I didn’t expect I would only skip one Berlinale (last year’s) before being able to attend another one. The miracle is called life, because I am back in Berlin to bring a new one into the world. (It’s a crazy world right now, and when I stumbled upon the baby book entry “The president is…”, I got doubts about whether it’s a good idea given the circumstances, but there is always hope!) So here we are, another 10 days of film watching! One day, the goal is to catch an average of 4 movies per day, as opposed to 2.
This year, my Berlinale actually starts with the opening film of the Retrospektive, which came with a lovely introduction with the director and cameraman who enjoy telling funny anecdotes and some curator person from the MoMA who participated in choosing the films (tall, well-spoken Indian-looking guy who probably gave the best introduction to anything I have ever heard at the Berlinale). It took place at the always fantastic International (where they screened the film in its 70mm original!), and for the first time I intensely felt like the Berlinale was starting thanks to the great atmosphere in it. Perhaps lining up for several days for tickets also made me anticipate the Berlinale more, hurr hurr. This year I absolutely wanted to make sure I get to see the films I want to see, and getting up early and queueing for tickets actually allowed me to do that.
Eolomea
Deutsche Demokratische Republik 1972, Herrmann Zschoche, 82′
In far future where space travel is more advanced, several ships are disappearing close to the space station “Margot”. Our heroes are a blonde and exceedingly pretty female scientist trying to figure out the real reason behind the disappearances, and her lover, a very working class astronaut delivery boy with a good dose of sarcasm, who happens to be stranded on a little planet close to “Margot”. Both of them get involved in a trip to the “Margot” space station and happily meet there briefly, before finding out that it all relates to an old dream of finding alien life on a legendary planet Eolomea.
It was something like the perfect movie to start with. First of all, I am into its positive message and how much it values science. (I will definitely come back to this aspect when reviewing “gog” later on.) Back in the day, space travel and exploration was actually something people truly desired and were willing to sacrifice a whole lot for, wow! Nowadays people are just complaining why one would spend money on Curiosity when they could spend it on combatting poverty. (Nobody seems to ask that question about “normal” military spending though.)
Besides the question of how much dreams are worth sacrificing for, the film also injects some other typical questions about technology of the time, like the little robot who follows orders but has a conscience and is not sure if he should follow these orders if they are potentially putting humans in jeopardy. At the same time, the most unusual aspect about the film was its humor. Maybe it was a little silly and over the top (I’m thinking of a tense scene where they enter the space station and find it surpringly empty, but then a guy says “I need to pee” and someone else responds “Just deal with it”), but I enjoyed these small humorous scenes, probably because science-fiction films have a tendency to be much more serious, even the light-hearted ones. This one is totally not ashamed of its silliness and the fanservice-y outfits they put their main actress into, and I really liked the film for it. It’s especially nice to have a male main character who doesn’t take himself too seriously and cracks jokes all the time.
Apparently “Eolomea” did not garner very many good reviews back in the day (nor today it seems), but for me it was an enjoyable gem.