Lukas Förster liked the movie, and Loris liked aspects of the movie. In that respect, I am glad I saw the film because it’s the kind which you probably can never get your hands on ever again. I instantly took interest in the description on the Berlinale website, and the adaptation of an old novela sounds intriguing (in the case of “The Painted Veil”, the slightly romanticized film adaptation is actually awesome). Sadly, it ended up being one of those “What the heck did I just see?” kind of movies in which I also – unfortunately – fell asleep to. Considering how short the movie is, missing some 15 minutes or so felt like a lot. It reminded me of this very stressful day in which I slept through almost the entirety of Rossini’s “Il Turco in Italia”. Until today, I feel like my impression of the opera is inadequate since I missed so much (and I would like to see it again especially now that 6451 told me he liked it). I have similar feelings about “Der Geldkomplex”, though I have no particular desire to see the film again.
By the way, this was one of the few times where I sat upstairs in the Delphi theater. We had seats in the very front, so the view was much better than most places downstairs. It’s definitely something to keep in mind when faced with an almost filled-up theater. Afterwards, we didn’t stay for very long. A good Q&A would have helped a lot, where the filmmaker could have explained some of the background of this pretty confusing movie he has made. Shockingly, in this case the Q&A just made it worse. The director essentially said “Oh I didn’t want to write my own script so I stumbled upon this story and randomly decided to adapt it” (which honestly is quite offending to Reventlow’s possibly good book), then went on to say a lot of confusing things including how nobody really knew anything and they just sat together to develop the characters at random. It totally sounds like the entire movie was made on drugs, and there was no structure or intent anywhere.
Der Geldkomplex (El complejo de dinero)
Spain 2015, Juan Rodrigáñez, 76′
As I mentioned before, I simply have no idea what the whole story is about. I liked its first scene and some later scenes, but I am unable to put them together to an actual story. I never read zu Reventlow’s epistolary novela the whole thing is supposed to be based on, so I have no idea whether the original story is just as confusing. Maybe the film actually is supposed to be some kind of mumblecore thing in which nothing happens and people just talk, but then how is it a literary adaptation? Other than that, I actually liked the concept of the film: A bunch of people hang out in a serene, beautiful place, doing nothing but talk about life, themselves and so on. It could have been fantastic, if only I knew what it was all about.
Taken out of context, however, the film did have a few moments which I thought were interesting. I thought the first scene, in which one of the guys is being coached to ask for 3 million euros – sofort! (hahaha) – was quite amusing, but the greatest scene was definitely the paella one, in which we see nothing but the paella pot from bird’s view and a few guys arguing about whether shrimp (or something else) goes into paella. It made me hungry and the repetitive humour of the scene gave me a glimpse of what the film could have been. Finally, I liked how they all ended up breaking into song, even though it’s a cliché (and I am ultimately glad that Star Trek DS9 did not have a musical episode).
The good thing about this year’s Berlinale was that there was no movie which I perceived as a waste of time (unlike last year, where some movies were saved only through the grace of Stephen Horne’s accompaniment), but “Der Geldkomplex” came pretty close.