Author: Sasa

Was nützt die Liebe in Gedanken? (Love in Thoughts)

It’s interesting how I watched this on Tuesday while chatting with Shii, and immediately wrote up this post afterwards. I just didn’t come around to copy/paste this post and click “publish”. How silly.

Of course, it was Shii who proposed to me to watch this film, and here I am. I have watched the trailer years ago and decided that this would be a horrible film, but I am intrigued by adolescent suicide themes (especially since I’m not an adolescent who could pull that off anymore) and I actually think that Daniel Brühl and August Diehl both are pretty good actors. I’ve seen “Good Bye Lenin”, “2 Days in Paris” and “Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei” (The Edukators) with Brühl and I watched “23” with Diehl who was actually pretty great in it. So yeah, here I am, watching a film with both of them.

Another reason why it took me awhile to watch this film is the Wikipedia picture of Anna Maria Mühe. She’s Ulrich Mühe’s daugther with this abominable woman (his second wife) and looks like quite a bitch. There are femme fatales that I admire and there are femme fatales that I am jealous of and find horrible – she definitely is the second kind. Her eyes look extremely large in this film, and you easily see how she uses these eyes to give off an ‘irresistible’ air. Perhaps it’s just that she’s not my type, but the predictability of her charm just makes me feel repulsed somehow. She is attractive after all and the way how the males in the film fall for her is pretty well done, and she’s not too bad an actress (just a little bit bad).

Also, Shii says that this film is like “Frühlings Erwachen” by Wedekind. The only thing that both have in common is that they are about german children growing up. But there are millions of coming of age films out there – and these are fundamentally different for me. The ones don’t know about love; the others think they know about love but don’t love at all. The ones get screwed by society while trying to fit in; the others refuse society and want to rebel. The ones have issues with their future on a rational level; the others only have issues with their feelings. The one is about the attitude of adults towards growing children; the others are about adolescent relationships among themselves. Very simply said, the one is about sex, the other about love. Or so. How are these stories similar?

In some aspects, the brother and sister + best friend constellation is a little bit like “The Dreamers”. It’s also both about finding ‘love’, but really, they are like day and night too. Especially when comparing Eva Green’s personality and Anna Maria Mühe’s role in these respective films. I actually find it impressive that Eva Green has not turned out a second Maria Schneider.

Another aspect I really liked was the friendship between the young boys. Even though it wasn’t *really* well portrayed, I was able to feel the something between them, and I liked that. Unfortunately all the other relationships along with the characters involved are pretty boring and none of their feelings of “love” have touched me, even though August Diehl brought up an impeccably passionate yaoi kiss. It’s too bad.

What struck me deeply however was the beauty of this film. The style is exactly my thing. Sure, it looks absolutely wrong. The characters look wrong, the acting is wrong, the english party music is wrong and especially the clothes are wrong. But who cares? Their white shirts are so incredibly attractive, the backgrounds are great and the slow pacing (although it made the story very simple and short) contributed greatly to the stylish atmosphere. The scenes under the moonlight make me want to spend a night swimming naked in one of the lakes around here. Simply for the style, I am glad that I have watched this film in the end. It just suited my tastes.
However, it is a little bit sad that the film is such a bad depiction of that time. The Weimar Republic is fascinating after all.

With this nice style, what I like the most about the film are its details. For example, the menu of the DVD features white butterflies (which appear a little bit in the film): It struck me because butterflies have a very special place in my personal life, I’d even call them my favourite animals and there is a beautiful symbolism for them. What is interesting is that black butterflies stand for death. Perhaps white butterflies stand for suicide? *hrr* (An “innocent” death?) After all, with all those overly white shirts, white is probably the leitmotif colour of this film.
Another detail is the white (!) “cravatte” that Anna Maria Mühe wore at the very end of the film. It’s basically just a very long and thin scarf draped like that – I want it!

Finally, I think I could never really, really like this film. Firstly, the story is so simple and predictable, but my ain issue is that I don’t agree with their “dying out of love philosophy” at all. I totally understand that one can want to die at the happiest moment of your life, but didn’t these two boys die at the most unhappiest time of their life? Right when they were incredibly unhappily in love? How silly.

Providence

I think I have been trying too hard to like this film, somehow. Perhaps I should have watched another Resnais first, or I should have tried to get into the film more. Or I should have immediately started to get french or even german dub of this film, because I simply could not stand the “english”ness of these characters. And that’s supposed to play in Rhode Island? Anyways, la bourgeoisie should die.

What is interesting however, was that there were tidbits of the movie that were incredibly funny – and there were other tidbits where I thought “my gosh, this dialogue is actually really great!”, but on the other hand, I have been forcing myself through the majority of this film. I suppose I should put this film onto the re-watch list – and I will watch it with french dubs. After all, Gérard Depardieu is dubbing Kevin, which is just such an incredibly good fit. Just look at them and you’ll understand <3

From the “list that started it all”, this is the first film that I have kind of disliked. Perhaps this even is the worst of all of them, because I believe most or all of the others would be actually good and enjoyable films.

Modern Times

I have had this film on my computer for some ages and finally decided to watch it. If you ask yourself why I have never watched this film for so long – it’s an old silent classic. Personally, I’m not a big fan of silent films exactly because I dislike the fast frame rate. It makes all those stories seem blatantly unnatural for me (the same happens with most musicals, by the way). If you also ask yourself how I got the idea to watch this: Right after I went to the museum of the Cinemathèque last year, I saw the scene in which Chaplin falls into the machinery and then slips back again. Somehow I found that utterly hilarious and it intrigued me so much that I decided to watch the film at that time, but never came around to do it.

Now, after getting very interested in the repeated discussion in “The Dreamers” whether Keaton or Chaplin is funnier, I decided to finally check it out myself. (Oi oi, “The Dreamers” is going to become the “Unbearable Lightness of Being” of film for me… not really. “The Unbearable Lightness” is just THE work of fiction in my young life.) When I was younger, I remember that my parents have liked watching Chaplin’s films a lot, and so I still remember having watched one involving Chaplin in a circus – and I especially remember the last scenes in which the tramp always turns his back to us and goes away. I wonder which film that was?

Anyways, this is the list of Chaplin films I want to start with (in this order):
– A King in New York
– City Lights
– The Great Dictator
– Gold Rush
– The Kid
I have no idea what Keaton’s major works are… the Wikipedia article on him is too long!

Recently, I have also realized something horrible: even though I like films much more than I used to and put much more thoughts into watching them, but when I look at the box-office-top-1 films from 2003, I actually have watched much more back then, and I even spent loads of money on the cinemas. O.o

WordPress is evil, because it has killed a part of my posting again. Oh well, here I go onto the review of the actual film (as you can see, I am much less committed to write this now, but I still had to write about it): What I realized very quickly is that Charlie Chaplin’s is blatantly funny, but not in the way of making me laugh. It’s more like I feel like smiling throughout the whole film, maybe because comedic situations just don’t make me laugh as much, I was just amused at seeing the tramp’s delightful clumsiness and hilarious pantomime. My favourite was how he was waving the red flag, I think, hahaha. But, there is not much more to say about it – comedic films are just better watched.
Speaking of the red flag, I do think that this film has some pseudo-communistic touches, but I think that’s way not enough to rise such a political controversy as it happened back then. I really love how Charlie Chaplin was hated in Hollywood, hehe.

Finally, I think that I still don’t like silent films as much – and this one actually isn’t even a “real” one, it’s just that Charlie Chaplin prefers to remain, well, silent. However, I find the beginnings of film quite intriguing, and definitely will be watching more of ‘the old times’.

Ohoho, I finally managed to create a little poll. Considering that I have been blogging for such a long time, it’s quite strange to me that this actually is a first O.o

So, after buying so many DVDs recently (and there is more to come), I have been thinking about the no.1 question of all collectors: how to sort my DVDs on my shelf. This kind of reminded me of the protagonist of “High Fidelity” who re-ordered his whole vinyl collection every time something dramatic happens in his life. Finally, I decided to sort them alphabetically by the original title.

What about you? You can find the poll (and possible future polls) on the sidebar. :3