Gegen die Wand

For all you movie buffs, here's one of the films we missed out on this week. "Gegen die Wand" or "Head On"(2004) is a film written and directed by Fatih Akin, a German director of Turkish descent. It shows a more multicultural Germany and the prominent Turkish culture and population which exists there. It's a film concerning search for belonging, tragedy, and ultimately love (though certainly not the kind you find in Hollywood!)

Here's the trailer. Enjoy!

Post-Wende Films: A Comparison of "Good Bye, Lenin!" and "The Lives of Others"

I found this article on MUSE that you all might be interested in. It compares the two highly influential post-Wende (after the  fall of the Berlin wall) films, "Good Bye, Lenin!", which we saw this week, and "The Lives of Others." While both were filmed within the last 10 years and focus on the former GDR and  German unification, this article observes how the films differ greatly "in cinematic strategies, ideological positioning of the spectator, and the narrative function of gender."


Most interesting for me was the discussion on gender and how it created alternate views of the former East.


While the narrative and cinematic organization of The Lives of Others provide the viewer with an ideologically distinct, nostalgic reconstruction of a Cold War narrative of the GDR, in which the female protagonist and the GDR are clearly vilified, Good Bye, Lenin!’s narrative and cinematic strategies position the viewer as simultaneously sympathetic and critical, constructing the female protagonist as the site of contradiction between real existing socialism and the utopian impulse at its heart.

Goodbye Lenin Flash Site

Hey guys! While browsing around the internet looking for something interesting to read about Wolfgang Becker's Goodbye Lenin, I came across this nifty site!



Along with having bits about the cast and director himself, there's a "Director's Note" section which I found particularly interesting. The first section, "An Important Character of German History," is as follows:

I was fascinated by the idea of a son trying to save his mother's life, trying to keep death at bay with a lie and getting more and more entangled in his lie about an East Germany that no longer exists, and that he wants to make his mother continue to believe in. This is something that's universal and could be totally separated from this specific past, this whole East German story and the fall of the Wall and reunification. I was excited by the idea of combining both aspects and relating an important character of German history as well, or least having it as a background. That's what's so wonderful about this topic. It's a slice of German history, but it's told incidentally and not placed in the forefront of the story.

He also gave little snippets of insight into other aspects of the film.
--each of the main characters
--The Narrative Quality of Props
--A West German Take on an East German Topic
--Use of Existing Archival News Material
--On Comedy
--Tragicomic Element
--Bad Luck on the Set
and X Filme

If any of these topics spark your interest, I'd suggest checking out the site. The graphics are cool, the quotes are short, and all that beguiling jazz.

A note from Wolfgang Petersen

This was included in the uncut edition of Das Boot that I have:

My vision for Das Boot was always to show the gritty and terrible reality of war, and to combine it with a highly entertaining story and fast-paced action style that would pull audiences into the experience of these young men out there. The mini-series represents my complete version of that experience. Thanks to new technology, Das Boot now comes even closer to revealing the shocking realities of life in a U-boat-- the way it sounded, the way it felt, the way it affected people so strongly-- and I think that this DVD presentation of the fully restored, six-hour miniseries will be even more shocking and affecting for audiences.

Just to extend a little on what I talked about in class on Tuesday.

Haneke's Take on Inner Violence

Seems we’re not the only ones without the appetite for Haneke.

An interview between Lawrence Chua and Michael Haneke starts with the sentence: “After seeing my first Michael Haneke film, I left the theater sick to my stomach.”



The violence in his films, La Pianiste at the forefront of my mind here, stands out the most. Violence against others, violence against the self, violence as an expression of love, of confusion, of feeling lost – violence as the only true form of expression.

One of his other films, Benny’s Video, contains themes of violent imagery obsession and a disconnect from any moral sense of reality. I found this, also, to be true in La Pianiste. The main character had long since been dreaming of being beaten up, and was a self-proclaimed personage of no emotions. This disconnect from her emotions probably is what drove her to such lengths as cutting herself (which was a horrendously greusome scene, I might add), and eventually stabbing herself in the heart.
Quite the literal metaphor.
I obviously haven’t checked out the majority of Haneke’s films. But if this turns out to be a frequently recurrent set of themes (as I have a hankering it is), it makes me wonder if Haneke himself was in a similar state of mind.

He brings up a German expression, “destroy the things that have destroyed you,” even though it turns out that they have built those things themselves. This German tendency to self destruction is personified in the character of Erika, the piano teacher. Through her, Haneke is exposing a darker part of the German character than just the collective propensity to fascism –he is exposing the darkness within the individual.

Side note for Ashley: Haneke mentions in this interview that he thinks that the piano is often used to hide the flaws in a film.

To cheer everyone up

So true! maybe it's not just German Films....
Anywho, between the depressing Rent Boys, the twisted La Pianist, the nihilist Fitzcarraldo and Maria Braun, I felt the need to cheer everyone up. Here are some uplifting things for everyone to watch, even if they have almost nothing to do with the course.

Extr@ auf Deutsch-This is the first part of the first episode of a great show the intermediate German II class has been watching, about an American visiting his pen pal in Berlin. It is pretty funny, but unfortunately, in German with German subtitles. However, it is pretty easy, and with the subtitles, if you have some german knowledge, you can do it! Sorry to anyone who doesn't speak german.

Keinohrhasen

a romantic-comedy (apparently Germans can do it without making you want to cry, go figure! haha) about a Paparazzi journalist who gets sentenced to community service working in a kindergarten, where he falls in love with the teacher. I might add, this has the funniest ending to a movie I've seen in a long time. 

Amelie

a french film starring the woman from "The DaVinci Code", about a quirky woman and her life as a Parisian waitress. 

Sorry, but I felt this had to be done. Everyone needs to laugh sometimes.

And now back to your regularly scheduled depressing German programming. ;-) haha

P.s. Feel free to add comments with other more positive things

On a lighter note: Goodbye Lenin!

Here is another movie I love that treats of the Est-West separation but in a much lighter way. A woman falls into a coma a little before the fall of the wall , when she eventually wakes up, the world she is in is nothing like the world she left. In the hospital room, the doctors tell her son to avoid any shocking situation as she might die this time. He therefore decides to reconstitute life as it was before the fall of the wall. Here is a preview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIjSaHUKD5I