FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Roland Klick - White Star 

It was our colleague Thomas Groh who watched a Roland Klick exhibition here in Berlin in the presence of the original Roland Klick! And he asked for absolute silence during the screening, and also personally helped a naughty cinema guest. That was in the 00s. But White Star from 1983 can already be considered the farewell of this great German director. It is the darkest film from the darkest hour of Dennis Hopper's life. Klick, which had been marginalized in German auteur cinema of the 70s, is probably almost unknown in the USA as well. So how did this collaboration come about? After all, because of his raw aesthetics, Klick could also be considered an attack on the system of German film funding. It is possible that Klick and Hopper were two outsiders who were both on the verge of losing their careers. White Star is Klick's worst film. It seems unfinished. But I love White Star all the more for that very reason! It tells the story of the synthie popper Moody (Terrance Robay), who is managed by the fraudulent sinister Kenneth Barlow (Hopper). If you wonder why large parts of the story are carried by radio presenters and not by the main character Barlow alias Dennis Hopper, the following explanation is owed (which Thomas Groh taught me): Hopper was unpredictable and consistently on coke. Seen in this light, Hopper is responsible for Klick's early retirement after White Star. But in the distance, it is Hopper's condition on the brink that makes his game all the more fascinating. In later works he plays the madman. Here he IS. Hopper acts like an undertow that destroys the entire film. And when has anyone ever seen anything comparable?