Hello GamingWorld! This is the first installment of a new article series dedicated to Film.  I would consider myself a movie buff, and I watch a good number of films from various different countries and all kinds of zany directors, including many that I think the GW community at large is not familiar with, but would certainly enjoy. The format of these articles will be pretty simple, I'm just going to provide a fairly simple review of each of the movies I am going to share along with some info on why I think it's a movie worth watching. Without further ado, I begin:

This week's feature is: Contemporary German Film

I've noticed that a large number of really good movies have come out of Germany in the last five or six years. Many of these movies have garnered multiple Academy and Golden Globe Award nominations and several movies racked up some wins. Overall, they are an excellent group of films, not just limited to the ones I'm going to share with you guys. The movies I have selected are, in my opinion, the most powerful and most likely to be enjoyed by a larger audience. This is Germany we're talking about after-all, a people whose literary tradition, especially in the late 19th century and throughout the 20th, has been prone to surrealism and flagrant exhibitionism. I have seen German films that made no sense at all, had distasteful nudity out the wazoo and generally were fairly similar to the musical Cabaret... except everything about them was completely serious. I would not suggest watching such films, but instead maybe one of these:

Also, understand that while I do speak and understand spoken German fairly well, I watched these movies without subtitles and may have missed some minor plot points, but the essence of the movie is what I am trying to convey to you here.

Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others)



At a superficial level, this movie is about the monitoring of the cultural scene by the GDR's secret police in the 1980's. It stars various German actors and actresses, none of whom have ever acted for a Hollywood production to my knowledge. Even though they are a cast of what boils down to unknowns to the American audience, they are a great set of actors and this movie really benefits from some class-A acting. The main focus of the movie, however, centers around a fictional playwright named Georg Dreyman who is the darling of the Berliner performing arts society. He and his wife, Christa-Maria Sieland, are brought into the fold of high society, and it is implied that the Dreyman has written propaganda plays in the past at the behest of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. A high ranking official in the Culture Ministry takes a fancy to Dreyman's wife, and arranges to have Dreyman... taken care of. He has Dreyman's apartment bugged, and assigns a professor and expert on surveillance and interrogation named Gerd Wiesler to keep watch over Dreyman. Various developments take place, and Wiesler picks up on serious subversive activity that Dreyman is involved in and the drama begins.

This movie is fucking riveting. I hate to swear on the front page but Holy Jumping Jesus this movie got inside my head. The acting so powerful, and the struggle that Wiesler goes through while spying on the Dreymans, as well as the crazy game of cat and mouse that takes up much of the movie is just thrilling. I don't intend to give out too many plot points, but I can't say that I've been more drawn in to the world of a movie before in my life. In addition, all the stuff that comes together in this film make it about so much more than just the immediate plot. It provides a really excellent look into what East Berlin was like and the kinds of lives that the people of the DDR lived towards the end of the Cold War (hint: it was fucking bleak). This movie isn't nearly as stark and depressing as the next movie as I am going to talk about, but it is equally as powerful.

Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage (Sophie Scholl: The Last Days)



This movie is about the famous resistance group in Nazi Germany, Die Weisse Rose (Lit. The White Rose) particularly focusing on the people who were essentially martyred for the cause in 1943. The movie stays pretty faithful to historical events, but manages to make one whopper of a thriller/drama out of it. Sophie and Hans lay out some fliers at the university that they attend, and they are caught by the janitor, who calls the Gestapo. After their imprisonment, they are interrogated for days. In the beginning, Sophie manages to bluff the questioning of investigator Robert Mohr, but her brother confesses everything. Sophie then has to deal with the realization that her life is about to end. On February 22nd, the Scholls and their aide Christoph Probst are accused of high treason and sentenced to death.

This is probably the most intense movie I have ever seen. From beginning to end it is a horrifying and heart pounding movie. Everything from the scene where they are actually caught to the trial to where they are executed was so brilliantly crafted to get the most out of the actors and the atmosphere. The movie contains plenty of the typical German comic relief in absurdity, but when you stop to think about why you are laughing in the middle of a movie as powerful as this, you feel sick. I don't even really know what to say more about this movie other than it features probably the best female lead performance in any movie of the last 10 years. I don't think I've ever been so moved by the ending sequence of a film.

Der Untergang (The Downfall)



In the last days of World War Two, the Red Army is fighting its way into Berlin. Deep within his bunker underneath the Reichskanzlei, Adolf Hitler celebrates his last birthday and lives out his final ten days isolated from the world, desperately ordering counterattacks that will never happen, from armies that exist only on maps, commanded by men who are most likely dead. Played by Swiss actor Bruno Ganz, Hitler is presented as he was in the last months of World War II: a sick, exhausted man but dreaming still of a Greater Germany amid the ruins of war-ravaged Berlin and callously ranting against the 'weakness' and 'deserved destruction' of the German citizenry. As the Red Army draws nearer and imminent defeat looms over the Third Reich Hitler is seen alone with his clique which consists of Joseph Goebbels, Albert Speer and SS leader Heinrich Himmler, along with his personal staff.

Most of the events are depicted from the perspective of Hitler's young personal secretary Traudl Junge. Events outside Hitler's bunker are mostly depicted from the perspective of SS doctor Ernst-Günther Schenck. On the day before his death Hitler marries his longtime mistress Eva Braun and they commit suicide together on April 30, 1945, ten days after Hitler's 56th birthday.

This movie has so much stuff going on in it that I didn't even try to tackle writing my own synopsis of it, so I apologize but the previous two paragraphs are straight from Wikipedia. I'd imagine a large number of you have probably seen this movie... I believe I got it off the HappyZoo heheheh. Anyway if you haven't seen this movie, you must. The fearsome depiction of Hitler and his neurosis, down to the frenzied phantasmagoria of death and destruction that was Berlin in the final days before it fell to the Russians and the waves upon waves of suicides only matched by the mass seppuku in Japan following the surrender on VJ later some months later makes it worth paying for even.

Good Bye Lenin!



Good Bye Lenin! is set in Berlin in 1989, and is about a guy named Alexander Kerner who lives with his mother Christiane and sister Ariane in a small apartment. Alex's father leaves the family, for the West it is assumed but no one knows for sure. After the father's departure, Christiane becomes an ardent supporter of the DDR. One day she happens to see Alex being arrested in an anti-government demonstration, she suffers a near-fatal heart attack and falls into a coma. After eight months she finally comes to, but her health is fading quickly. Her doctor says that any shock may cause another, possibly fatal, attack. Alex realizes that her discovery of recent events would be too much for her to bear, and so sets out to maintain the illusion that things are as normal in the German Democratic Republic.

Alex and Ariane move back to their old apartment and concoct an elaborate scheme to make it seem as though they really are still living in East Germany. Their gambit is successful, however it becomes increasingly complicated and elaborate. Despite all Alex and Ariane's efforts, Christiane witnesses strange events, such as a gigantic Coca-Cola advertisement banner unfurling on a building outside the apartment. With a friend, Alex edits old tapes of East German news broadcasts and creates fake special reports to explain odd events away. Since the old news shows were fairly predictable, and Christiane's memory is a bit hazy, she is initially fooled.

Need I say more?

As for a final note, I would caution you that none of these movies are in English, they're all in German. I do recall, however, that the subtitles in all of them except for Sophie Scholl were really good. None of these movies have been dubbed into English to my knowledge, and it is probably better that way. Granted with Sophie Scholl and Der Untergang, you almost don't even need the words to understand what is going on, because the acting is just that good. I don't know if I've done a decent job of convincing you that these movies are awesome, but I'd certainly say that if you're tired of the current crop of crap movies that our own studios are putting out that you ought to give at least one of these a try. My personal favorite is Das Leben der Anderen followed by Good Bye Lenin! if that helps sway any of your decisions, but they are all excellent films.