Change Your Image
suviska
Reviews
Halt auf freier Strecke (2011)
A realistic chronology of a tumor
The movie 'Halt auf freier Strecke' draws a realistic story of a family facing a great loss. The film begins from the beginning of an end: at the clinic where a doctor gently delivers a death sentence for a father of a family.
In the story, the parents' roles are solid and their mutual relationship is pictured in a beautiful but not overly romantic way. Outsiders to the nuclear family remain uncomfortable with the thought of death throughout. Amazingly that happens even to the close ones. Only those that are facing death at the daily basis seem to be okay with the idea.
The daughter's role remains strangely distant throughout the movie. It is likely intentional from the director, as for a teenager the thought of someone's death might feel distant. However, if it were one's own father, I would imagine that the response would not necessarily be like the one pictured in the film, especially that the family seems like perfectly average.
The film is probably a great chance for going through one's feelings for anyone who has experienced a cancer death of a close person. For others, it surely is a chance to stop for 110 minutes to think what it would mean for oneself if something tragic suddenly happened in one's own life.
As a non-German viewer, it is refreshing for a change to see good movie-making from Germany motivated by something else than the currently hot "multi-kulti" topic.
and something that made me feel great at the end regardless of the theme was the soundtrack - German rock (when played at the right place at the right time) is just awesome!
The Green Wave (2010)
Pictures of violence from Iran
The Green Wave is a shocking documentary film combining pieces of video and textual footage about about the civilian movement of the Iranian presidential election in 2009. The film includes interviews of several bloggers, and also the Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi gives criticizing comments on the election fraud.
In the film, a layer of animation is used to tie the narrative of bloggers to the actual video footage from demonstrations. It is a nice trick that makes the film look better on screen even though the most of the shown footage is actually taken with a mobile phone camera and thus is of low quality. The style of animation reminds me of Persepolis, an animation film (2007) that takes place around the Islamic revolution of Iran (definitely worth watching for a viewer interested in modern history of Iran).
The documentary cannot avoid sentimentality, as some scenes are very violent and make the viewer feel very bad. The film is not actually very political: It does not attempt to explain the real differences between the ideologies of the presidential candidates Ahmadinejad and Mousavi. Instead, it shows cruelties of the regime, and how it suppresses the voice of young and educated voters who want change.
The Green Wave is a documentary that does not look very far behind in time. It is actually telling about an uprising that is still, to some extent, going on, and nobody yet knows the final outcome of the series of events. Thus, it is a product of its time, and may not hold time very well. The main rationale for showing this film to people around the world is to inform them about the injustice in present-day Iran.
As a background, I recommend the excellent three-part documentary series "Iran and the West" from BBC (2009). It describes the evolution of Iran from the era of Shahs until the time before the latest controversial election.
Tehroun (2009)
Stay out of trouble in Tehran
Tehroun is a strong film about a network of criminal activities in the Iranian capital. The film gradually opens the story of Ibrahim, a supposed-to-be student from the countryside, who gets tackled with nasty criminal business in the city.
The story is absolutely depressing. To me, having visited Iran and Tehran, the film opened up completely different world than what I encountered. In contrast to hospitable and happy locals, the film shows struggling of people that end up into problems with the outlaw. Such mafia-type business, as depicted in the film, surely exists in the Iranian metropolis, which might not be the best place in the world to live in. To an outsider who knows something about the Iranian culture, the film seems to be quite realistic (and still very entertaining). All that stuff that takes place in the story, is something that I can imagine to happen in a city of a third-world country.
The film itself is very well made. Cinematography looks good like in western movies and there is no problem in following the thoughts and intentions of the characters, which usually is the case at least for me as a western viewer watching a movie from the east (or any culture that is somewhat unknown to me). Even though quite standard mafia story, whose analogs can be found in Latin American cinema, the Middle Eastern cultural context makes the film a bit more exotic than average.
The major contribution of this film to me is the opportunity to look into the life in Tehran from a different perspective than the usual. If you prefer the brighter side of the Iranian cinema, you might want to have a look at Abbas Kiarostami's production, such as "Under the Olive Trees".