Photo caption: Franka Potente in RUN LOLA RUN. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
You’ll never see a more kinetic movie than Run Lola Run, the 1998 German indie thriller which has been remastered in 4G and re-released into theaters. Lola (Franka Potente) has only 20 minutes to raise 100,000 Deutschmarks and save her boyfriend’s life from his gangster boss. In only 81 white knuckle minutes, writer-director Tom Tykwer has Lola desperately sprinting around Berlin in three different scenarios.
Lola’s desperation and the ticking clock make for a pedal-to-the-metal performance by Potente. This also a physically challenging performance. Incidentally, Potente is now a director, and her new film Home with Kathy Bates played at last year’s SFFILM.
Run Lola Run is Tykwer’s masterpiece, and it’s one of the great stories told in real time (which I love).
This is a wonderful movie to see in a theater. Run Lola Run is also available to stream on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Photo caption: Stefan Kurt and Esther Gemsch in GOLDEN YEARS. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
The Swiss dramedy Golden Years begins as Peter (Stefan Kurt) turns 65 and retires. His wife Alice (Esther Gemsch) has been eagerly awaiting this day, which she sees as an opportunity for travel and to rekindle intimacy with Peter. In contrast, Peter doesn’t seem to have been thinking about it at all, but he begins to be consumed with his physical health and suddenly transforms himself into a mountain biking, vegan workout king. Alice wants to downsize, but he wants to stay in their house. Travel doesn’t interest Peter, but he feels trapped into joining Alice on a Mediterranean cruise that their adult children have gifted them.
Esther’s best friend unexpectedly dies, and Peter impulsively invites her heartbroken husband to join them on the cruise, which appalls Esther, who wants Peter to herself on the cruise. Esther has read her late friend’s hidden cache of letters and has stumbled on an explosive secret. Esther’s annoyance from Peter’s inattention simmers until it boils over into she staggers Peter by embarking on her own adventure.
Esther Gemsch, Ueli Jaggi and Stefan Kurt in GOLDEN YEARS. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
At this point, Golden Years departs from a comedy of manners into an exploration of dual self-discoveries. Indeed, there are Men-are-from-Mars moments when Peter is a clueless dunderhead about Esther’s expectations. But Peter’s needs have evolved, too, and Esther has also mistakenly assumed that he will want to do want she wants to do.
We all know couples who drift totally apart after decades of marriage, and there must be some couples who age with identical interests. Many couple have different, but complementary aspirations, or can build a new life together around some core commonality. The question that Alice and Peter face is, where are they on this continuum?
Will Alice and Peter compromise? Will they be able to accommodate each others’ needs? Will they live separate lives? Is there a Win Win?
Screenwriter Petra Volpe (The Divine Order) probes these questions in a consistently funny and engaging movie with a minimum of senior citizen tropes or cheap geezer cheap jokes. (It is very funny, though, when Peter’s Gen X co-worker brightly tells him that his old office will become a server room.)
Esther Gemsch in GOLDEN YEARS. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
Director Barbara Kulcsar keeps the story sprightly paced and maintains just the right balance between comedy and the more serious issues. Alice is the primary focus of the story, and the performance of actress Esther Gemsch is especially strong.
Golden Years can now be streamed from Amazon, Vudu and YouTube.
Photo caption: Stefan Kurt and Esther Gemsch in GOLDEN YEARS. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
The Swiss dramedy Golden Years begins as Peter (Stefan Kurt) turns 65 and retires. His wife Alice (Esther Gemsch) has been eagerly awaiting this day, which she sees as an opportunity for travel and to rekindle intimacy with Peter. In contrast, Peter doesn’t seem to have been thinking about it at all, but he begins to be consumed with his physical health and suddenly transforms himself into a mountain biking, vegan workout king. Alice wants to downsize, but he wants to stay in their house. Travel doesn’t interest Peter, but he feels trapped into joining Alice on a Mediterranean cruise that their adult children have gifted them.
Esther’s best friend unexpectedly dies, and Peter impulsively invites her heartbroken husband to join them on the cruise, which appalls Esther, who wants Peter to herself on the cruise. Esther has read her late friend’s hidden cache of letters and has stumbled on an explosive secret. Esther’s annoyance from Peter’s inattention simmers until it boils over into she staggers Peter by embarking on her own adventure.
Esther Gemsch, Ueli Jaggi and Stefan Kurt in GOLDEN YEARS. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
At this point, Golden Years departs from a comedy of manners into an exploration of dual self-discoveries. Indeed, there are Men-are-from-Mars moments when Peter is a clueless dunderhead about Esther’s expectations. But Peter’s needs have evolved, too, and Esther has also mistakenly assumed that he will want to do want she wants to do.
We all know couples who drift totally apart after decades of marriage, and there must be some couples who age with identical interests. Many couple have different, but complementary aspirations, or can build a new life together around some core commonality. The question that Alice and Peter face is, where are they on this continuum?
Will Alice and Peter compromise? Will they be able to accommodate each others’ needs? Will they live separate lives? Is there a Win Win?
Screenwriter Petra Volpe (The Divine Order) probes these questions in a consistently funny and engaging movie with a minimum of senior citizen tropes or cheap geezer cheap jokes. (It is very funny, though, when Peter’s Gen X co-worker brightly tells him that his old office will become a server room.)
Esther Gemsch in GOLDEN YEARS. Courtesy of Music Box Films.
Director Barbara Kulcsar keeps the story sprightly paced and maintains just the right balance between comedy and the more serious issues. Alice is the primary focus of the story, and the performance of actress Esther Gemsch is especially strong.
Golden Years opens in select theaters, including the Laemmle Town Center in LA, on February 23. I’ll remind you when the film arrives nationwide on digital on March 26.
Photo caption: Sandra Huller in THE ZONE OF INTEREST. Courtesy of A24.
Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest is an exceptionally original and well made, intentionally unsettling and, ultimately, unnecessary film.
We first meet Hedwig (the great Sandra Huller), Rudolph (Christian Friedel) and their five children in 1943 on an idyllic riverside picnic in the woods. They return to their spacious villa and put the kids to bed (Hedwig firmly and Rudolph gently). When Hedwig and Rudolph are in bed themselves, they ignore what sounds like shouting and the barking of guard dogs nearby.
The next morning we see that Rudolph is the commandant of Auschwitz and the family home is LITERALLY next door to the walls. Hedwig, like any hausfrau, hangs laundered sheets to dry, while her groceries are delivered by death camp slave labor.
As the family’s domestic life goes on, the soundtrack slowly becomes louder and includes more shots, screams and the drone of industrial extermination. We see more of the skyline, with smokestacks spewing fire and ash.
Glazer slips in little matter-of-fact horrors like perverse Easter Eggs. Hedwig brags to her gal pals about furs and other luxuries she has stolen from dead Jews. Hedwig seems meaner than Rudolph and coldly utters what must be the most terrifying threat ever made to a maid.
Having married a guy who has risen to be a big boss, Hedwig is living her best life, with servants and plenty of perks, like Italian spa vacations. She has the very disturbing capacity to shut out the hellish enterprise over her back fence, replete with the sounds, smells and images of workaday genocide. Glazer has made a Holocaust film without any images from inside the death camp; the Holocaust is just kind of leaking over the fence.
The Martin Amis novel that Glazer adapted into the screenplay did not name the commandant and his wife, but Glazer uses the names of the actual historical figures: the real Rudolph and Hedwig Hoss. When one reads about the real Hoss, you can see the care with which Glazer depicts him, down to his distinctive haircut, the kids’ names and Hedwig’s dream of spacious gardens (She’s the true believer in lebensraum.)
Rudolph is not a hate-spewing frothing maniac, more of a Company Man go-getter. One can imagine a 1960s version of Rudolph driving to surpass this quarter’s IBM sales goal. Yet, this is the man who admitted to murdering 2.5 million people; the other million, he said, died of disease and starvation.
The Zone of Interest is an extraordinary illustration of the banality of evil. But why do we need it? Hannah Arendt’s recognition that Hitler’s mad horrors were not carried out by monsters, but by the ordinary and mediocre, has been generally accepted for decades. If Hitler were obsessed with dairy production or ceramic art, thousands of workaday Nazis would have been content to do just that, instead. The logical conclusion is that the Holocaust doesn’t need a maniac to happen again, just millions of people who obey the maniac. After all, it was ordinary-looking American companies that vied for Trump Administration contracts to put migrant babies in cages, not some survivalist militia.
It’s a familiar truism, and, to my sensibilities, not worth the unpleasantness of sitting watching these unpleasant people and their unthinkable deeds. That being said, this is anything but a slog. The Zone of Interest is captivating throughout (not unlike a vehicular crash).
This is only Glazer’s fourth feature in 24 years: Sexy Beast (2000), Birth (2004), Under the Skin (2013).
The Zone of Interest has been nominated for multiple Oscars, including Best Picture.
Photo caption: Sandra Huller and Swann Arlaud in ANATOMY OF A FALL. Courtesy of NEON.
Anatomy of a Fall is such a great film, on so many levels, that it’s taken me an entire week to mull over why it’s so good.
Here’s the story. The successful German novelist Sandra (Sandra Huller) and her French husband Samuel (Samuel Thiess), a teacher and wannabe writer, live in his hometown in the French Alps near Grenoble. They moved there, into a chalet that needs renovation, after a car accident caused their now 11-year-old son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner) to lose his eyesight. Daniel and his dog Snoop return from a walk and discover Samuel, who has fallen to his death from the chalet’s high attic window. Only Sandra was home at the time of Samuel’s death.
The evidence from Samuel’s autopsy might point to a suicide or to a murder. The investigators find something provocative on a thumb drive, and charge Sandra with Samuel’s murder. Anatomy of a Fall goes from a whodunit to a courtroom drama, and then to a family psychological drama, as the trial reveals explosive secrets.
Director and co-writer Justine Triet makes ambiguity more delicious than we could possibly expect. As Jon Frosch wrote in The Hollywood Reporter about Sandra, “But Richard Kimble she’s not. ” We don’t know if Sandra, unlike the famed The Fugitive, is really innocent.
Sandra might be a Kafkaesque victim, unjustly put through a humiliating and terrifying trial, Or she might be an extraordinarily gifted sociopath.
Ironically, Sandra’s literary success has come from transforming her real life experiences, and those of others, into best selling fiction. But Sandra is very closemouthed about her own private life and anything but confessional. Her worst nightmare is to have details of her marriage and her sex life exposed in a public trial.
As the onion of Sandra and Samuel’s marriage is peeled back, Anatomy of a Fall explores just how multi-faceted relationships, the dynamics of guilt and resentment, and how a marriage survives a trauma – or doesn’t. And each scene is filled with ambiguity andthe uncertainty of memory.
As the close of the trial approaches, there’s a a Wowzer cliffhanger that keeps us on the edges of our seats.
Although the story is set in France, most of the dialogue is in English because Sandra and Samuel speak English at home, and Sandra speaks English in the French courtroom.
Sandra Hullermust play Sandra so we believe that she could be innocent or guilty. In addition, Sandra’s character is complicated, even full of paradoxes. Huller’s performance has not been surpassed by that of any other screen actor this year, and she certainly deserves the Best Actress Oscar.
American art house audiences know her best for Toni Erdmann, where her corporate striver character must react to her zany father’s onslaught of ever more elaborate, outrageous and high-stakes practical jokes by maintaining a straight face and carrying on without giving away her shock, embarrassment and desperation. She’s on the verge of abject mortification for the entire movie. Hüller proved herelf a master of the take and the slow burn. She was similarly exquisite in a smaller role in Triet’s Sybil.
No one plays aggrieved, while struggling to maintain composure, as well as Huller. Can you imagine having to listen to your dead spouse’s shrink testify in public about all of his complaints about you in their private sessions? There are many injustices in that situation, and Huller makes us understand that Sandra is feeling each layer of indignity.
Huller has won Best Actress Awards from the European Film Awards and the Berlin and Toronto film festivals. She also stars in the upcoming Zone of Interest, another of the very most acclaimed films of 2023.
Anatomy of a Fall is just the fourth narrative feature for Justine Triet, a firecracker director. This one is the least comedic. I described her most recent film, Sibyl, as “masking its trashiness with expert filmmaking”.
In Anatomy of a Fall, Triet tells us so much before the opening credits. In just a few moments, we see both Sandra’s success and her off-putting manner, undeniable friction in her marriage, the boy’s visual handicap, his spirit and his loyal dog. And the discovery of a dead husband. Wow!
The entire cast is solid, especially Swann Arlaud (with a fabulous haircut) as the defense counsel, passionate about Sandra’s defense and perhap devoted to Sandra herself, but uncertain (and indifferent) as to her innocence. Samuel Thiess brings Samuel alive in flashbacks, especially in a searing mano-a-mano with his wife. Milo Machado Graner is wonderful as Daniel, a spunky kid who insists on his right to hear everything at the trial, but is unable to imagine all that will entail.
Howard Hawks said that a great movie is “three great scenes and no bad scenes”. There are no bad scenes in Anatomy of a Fall, and there are at least four great scenes:
An incredibly authentic argument (in flashback) between husband and wife;
Sandra’s courtroom confrontation with her husband’s shrink.
Sandra’s testimony after the courtroom has listened to a taped conversation.
Daniel’s explosive scene with his court-appointed social worker and Snoop.
BTW Snoop the dog is great. I’m now finding my own dogs very inadequate in comparison. There’s also the unexpected use of an instrumental version of 50 Cent’s P.I.M.P. to great effect.
Anatomy of a Fall won the Palm d’Or, the highest prize at the Cannes Film Festival. (That may indicate that the film is sublime like Shoplifters and Parasite or an unwatchable mistake like Titane, but, this time, it’s the former).
Thomas Schubert and Paula Beer in AFIRE. Courtesy of Janus Films.
Christian Petzold’s Afire is an agreeable slow burn that builds to a revelatory conclusion. The lumpy, dour Leon (Thomas Schubert) needs to polish off his second novel. He and his friend Felix (Langston Uibel) head off for a week at the woodsy vacation cottage owned by Felix’s family, a short walk to the beach on the Baltic Sea. They are seeking artistic inspiration, Leon for his novel and Felix for his photography portfolio. But they’re not even there yet when things start going off the rails.
Felix’s car breaks down and they have to hoof it through the forest. Upon arrival, they learn that Felix’s mother has also invited another guest, Nadja, and the guys will need to share the remaining room. They go to bed without meeting Nadja, but she returns late with company, and the guys are kept awake by the boisterous lovemaking in her room next door.
Focused on their own situation, Felix and Leon are vaguely aware that wildfires are raging inland, but they’re a few meters from the sea and the ocean winds are blowing across them toward the fire, As people at the nearby seaside resort town go about their holidays, faraway sirens and the fire-fighting aircraft overhead are ominous.
Felix rolls with the punches, but each setback makes the grumpy Leon more aggrieved. Each annoyance makes Leon harrumph, roll his eyes and stalk off complaining about the distraction to his work. Leon is creatively blocked, but is it from the distractions?
He’s really afraid that his manuscript is shitty, and his day of reckoning, a meeting with his kind publisher (Matthias Brandt), is this week. Self-absorbed in the best of times, Leon’s insecurities are making him beat himself up and mask it all with offended self-importance.
Leon and Felix meet Nadja (Paul Beer), who turns out to be charming. Felix befriends the handsome lifeguard Devid (Enno Trebs), who has been Nadja’s nocturnal playmate, and soon the four are hanging out together – Leon grudgingly.
Thomas Schubert, Paula Beer, Langston Uibel and Enno Trebs in AFIRE. Courtesy of Janus Films.
As we watch Leon stumble around in his behavioral misfires, it seems that we are watching a comedy of manners. But Afire evolves into a study of creative self-sabotage until a heartbreaking tragedy, a moment of redemption, and a final hopeful glimmer of personal fulfillment. It’s the best final fifteen minutes of any film this year, unpredictable but grounded in reality and humanity, and emotionally powerful.
Afire works because the protagonist doesn’t alienate the audience, even though he is irritable and irritating. Petzold’s writing and Schubert’s performance is such that we don’t give up on this unlovable loser. As much as his thoughtlessness vexes the others, his behavior is really only mean-spirited once. Clearly, he must be talented because his first novel was good enough to get him an advance on his second, and he seems to be a decent person underneath all his fussiness. He just needs to learn how to get out of his own way.
Petzold has also written some segments of novels-within-the-movie, one that is extraordinarily moving and one that is just awful, awful, awful.
Beer, the star of Petzold’s Transit and Undine, is irresistible here as Nadja. Her Nadja teaches Leon that a woman can be sunny and fun-loving without being a ditz.
Petzold is one of cinema’s most significant contemporary auteurs. I loved and admired his simmering paranoid thriller Barbara and his Phoenix, a riveting psychodrama with a wowzer ending. He followed those with the more aspirational but, IMO, less successful Transit and Undine. Afire is his most intimate and funniest film, and I think, his most subtle and his best. Afire won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 2023 Berlinale.
Afire opens this weekend in theaters, including the Roxie in San Francisco. It’s one of the Best Movies of 2023 – So Far.
Lea Drinda and Anne Ratte-Polle in EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE LOVED. Courtesy of Cinequest.
This German dramedy Everybody Wants to Be Love is a triumph of the harried mom genre. As a psychotherapist, Ina (Anne Ratte-Polle) spends her workdays listening to whining and naval-gazing. Then she goes home to her self-absorbed boyfriend and her teen daughter – and the job of teenagers is to be self-absorbed.-Nobody is most narcissistic and entitled than Ina’s mom. It’s the mom’s birthday, and she is rampaging with demands. The daughter is threatening to move in with Ina’s ex, and the boyfriend wants to move the family to Finland for his career. As Ina is swirling around this vortex of egotism, she gets some sobering news about her own health. As everyone converges on the birthday party, what could possibly go wrong?
Everybody Wants to Be Loved is the first feature for director and co-writer Katharina Woll, who is a perceptive and clear-eyed observer of human behavior. Woll maintains the perfect level of simmering as Ina’s indignities build toward a meltdown.
Anne Ratte-Polle is excellent as the long-suffering Ina, whose tank is about to hit Empty if she doesn’t start putting her needs above those of everybody else.
The rest of the cast is excellent, too, including Urs Jucker as Ina’s maddening boyfriend. Lea Drinda is very good as the teen daughter who pushes Mom to get what she wants, but knows when to stop.
Cinequest’s online festival Cinejoy will host only the second screening of Everybody Wants to Be Loved in the US. It’s one of my picks for theBest of Cinejoy. Watch it through March 13 at Cinejoy.
Photo caption: Felix Kammerer in ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. Courtesy of Netflix.
The anti-war epic All Quiet on the Western Front unforgettably makes two points: war, in general, is a traumatizing experience and WW I, in particular, was disgustingly senseless.
The screenplay was adapted from the famous Erich Maria Remarque novel, as was the 1930 Lewis Milestone cinematic masterpiece. Since the story is told from the point of view of a German infantry recruit, Netflix commissioned a German director and cast for this version. That director is German filmmaker Edward Berger, who has been working in US television over the past decade. The actors may be German and Austrian, but they speak English in this movie.
Paul (Felix Kammerer) is a callow youth who, with his friends, is swept away by patriotic fervor and enlists in the German Army just in time to participate in the last few months of WW I. Both sets of belligerents have been grappling for years in the mire of trench warfare, suffering mass casualties for the sake of a few hundred yards here and there. The conditions between battles are horrific, and the battles are more so. Paul endures the terror of bombardment, gas attacks, invulnerable enemy tanks and charges across no-man’s land in the face of machine gunfire. The hand-to-hand combat is especially savage.
Kammerer, in his first screen role, is exceptional as an Everyman who experiences physical and mental exhaustion, dread, panic, shock, guilt and hopelessness.
The battle scenes are superbly photographed by cinematographer James Friend, who has 71 screen credits, not a one suggesting that he was capable of anything this masterful.
War may be traumatizing, but this eminently watchable film is not. All Quiet on the Western Front is streaming on Netflix.
In the evocative and thought-provoking German drama Western, a crew of German hardhats sets up a construction camp on a remote Bulgarian mountainside to build a water power plant. They aren’t cultural tourists and certainly not diplomats, and they see the nearby Bulgarian village as a distraction from, even an impediment to, their project. Of the Germans, only Meinhard (Meinhard Neumann) seeks out contact with the Bulgarians.
Writer-director Valeska Grisebach lets the audience connect the dots about what’s going on. The Germans and the Bulgarians have encounters at the camp, at the riverside swimming hole and in the village. As one would expect from any modern German filmmaker, Grisebach shines a harsh light on the German sense of superiority and entitlement. One German even says, “They know we’re back. 70 years later, but we’re back.” But the characters have dimension. The blustery project boss Vincent (Reinhardt Wetrek) is an asshole, but even he has his own personal and job problems.
Of the Germans, only Meinhard makes Bulgarian friends. Meinhard is a loner among his co-workers, yet he seems to be searching for something among the Bulgarians and their alien language and culture. Meinhard is well-traveled and looks like he Has Lived a Life. He’s not a misfit (he’s very functional), but he hasn’t found where he DOES fit.
What has caused Meinhard’s alienation? That’s not clear, but it doesn’t need to be. Hell, Jack Nicholson just shows up alienated in every movie from Five Easy Pieces through The Passenger, and that works out just fine.
Meinhard has no ties. Asked if he is homesick, he queries, “what is homesick?” He thrives in the simpler culture, and this solitary man finds himself becoming social. He develops a deep trusting friendship with a local leader, Adrian (Syuleyman Alilov Letifov).
We have the advantage of subtitles, so we know what is being said in German and in Bulgarian. The characters are not understanding about 90% of what is spoken in the other language. The friendship between Meinhard and Adrian transcends language. The highlight of Western is a beautiful dialogue in which the two don’t understand all (or even most) of each other’s words.
Meinhard goes native. Will it work out for him? The Germans and the Bulgarians learn that they are competing for the same scarce resource. The Germans are always on the verge of provoking a riot. The insular Bulgarians are wary of strangers.
Western is not a brisk movie, but Grisebach paces it just about perfectly. This character-driven story is a sequence of revelations, and we need Grisebach to take her time. Grisebach uses the handheld camera effectively to plunge us right into the experience of the characters, who are often trying to discover something about the other guys.
Meinhard Neumann and Syuleyman Alilov Letifov in WESTERN
So that’s what is on the screen. I was astounded to learn that Grisebach used no professional actors in Western. She reportedly auditioned 600 working folks to get her cast. She snagged two sublime natural talents in Meinhard Neumann and Syuleyman Alilov Letifov. Not only that, but Grisebach did not use a script.
Quoted by Stefan Dobroiu in Cineuropa, Grisebach said, “I wanted to get closer to the solitary, inflated, often melancholic male characters of the western.” Grisebach may not have intended it, but she nailed the Going Native subgenre of Westerns, where a first world man becomes immersed into a native culture, which he ultimately embraces. Examples include A Man Called Horse and Dances with Wolves.
Western played the Cannes and Toronto film festivals in 2017, and then five US film fests, but never got a US theatrical release. Western can be streamed from The Criterion Channel, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.
In the gripping drama Styx, Rieke (Susanne Wolff) is a woman who intends to pilot her sailboat on a solo voyage from Europe to Ascension Island off the coast of Africa. That’s one woman, all alone on her boat for 3,000 miles of open ocean.
Oozing matter of fact confidence, Rieke seems well-equipped for the adventure. She is fit, highly skilled, an experienced sailor and provisioned up with top quality gear and supplies. Rieke’s day job is as an emergency physician, and we see that no crisis situation seems to faze her.
In the first part of Styx, we think we’re watching a survival tale – woman against nature. But when a dramatic storm hits, we’re afraid for her but she’s not.
After the storm, she faces the first situation that she can’t handle on her own – one of life-and-death that has been spawned by a humanitarian crisis bigger than any individual. Frustratingly, she knows exactly what must be done, but she can’t do it herself; instead, she must rely on civilized nations behaving according to expected norms. But are those expected norms available to everyone? And will everyone act as they should?
Rieke’s persona is based on acting to solve every problem. But here, there are no good choices.
This is a German film about a German character, but almost all the dialogue is in English, the international language of navigation.
The second feature for director Wolfgang Fischer, Styx has won film festival awards, including at the Berlin International Film Festival. Styx can be streamed from Amazon, AppleTV and Vudu.
