My 90s Feel Good Movies

I graduated from high school in 1993. That was there at the border Wedding North and Reinickendorf East. A terrible area. But just two kilometers further on, the gates to the new Berlin opened. To Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte. That's where I wanted to go. To a techno bunker, even if I had to work for free to get in. That's the feeling when you're young and as romantic as never before or ever after! That's the phase of your life when you're having conversations like Celine and Jesse in Before Sunrise or drinking a night out like the vintage in Dazed And Confused. Or when you dare the impossible, like Holden in Chasing Amy! The cardinal question here is: Did we talk like our role models from the film? Or were the film heroes inspired by US?

 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Andrei Tarkovsky - Stalker (engl. subt.) 

When I looked at a few photos of today's atomic environment of Fukushima, I involuntarily thought of Tarkovsky's vision of an abandoned world in Stalker. Of course, the size of a film cannot be missed because of its relevance to the real world. Nevertheless, Stalker is something of a melancholy warning. Stalker is Tarkovsky's most cryptic film and therefore also the work that will always occupy us the most. Wasn't Stalker then also seen as a Chernobyl memorial? The idea of an eerie, depopulated "zone" - the prophecy of a "zone of alienation". Only seven years later it was to become a reality through a terrible conflagration at home. Yesterday I was looking at stalkers again. The zone with its wild fauna, this totemic black dog - that is exactly what happened to the landscape around Chernobyl. Deserted roads that have been reclaimed by nature. It's the quietest place in the world. The proliferating nature is reflected in the enormous station from which the three protagonists begin their insecure mission. Every step means a completely unknown danger to them. If you look at Stalker and think of Fukushima, you should know that Tarkovsky himself had an obsessive love for the Japanese masters of the 1950s. Influences can also be found in stalkers. A filmmaker who was familiar with Japanese haiku poetry and incorporated similar enigmatic twists into stalkers. The story of Stalker himself is claustrophobic. We can read how a first version was destroyed in the laboratory and Tarkovsky had to give up the original venues after an earthquake. The deepest and darkest needs come true in the zone. Even when Tarkovsky's protagonists follow the stalker, the leader, countless traps of sensitive intelligence lurk. It is this intelligence that controls the Zone. It can only be crossed on a given path and also only by means of one's own foreboding. The stalker's skull is shaved, his face expresses restlessness. He is dependent on the energy of the Zone, but also willing to help his followers. The motives of his followers are less altruistic. Very quickly philosophical arguments become very personal reasons for their journey. Stalkers are not to be imagined as narrative cinema. Stalker is like hypnotic suction. The world outside the Zone is bleak, damn it. Within the zone, however, everything seems lush and colourful. A place of wonder and beauty. Stalker works as a parabola. But if you ask yourself what the parable should stand for at all, you will end up back in Fukushima. Don't they? Trust? Religion? Art? The cinema itself? But isn't the Zone a symbol of life itself?

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Yasujiro Ozu - A Story Of Floating Weeds (engl. subt.) 

The darn 13th year in which I'm a video store owner at the Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo (formerly called Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo): I'm lending out the films of Yasujiro Ozu. I think everyone knows this experience: We lend the book to our friends, which we could never forget. Let them share it with us! That's exactly why sooner or later everyone who loves movies and is a customer of ours gets an Ozu movie from me. Ozu is the friendliest and calmest of all filmmakers! He is the greatest humanist! His films seem cheerful, flowing, but the emotions in Ozu's work are deep and powerful. They reflect what is most important to us in life: Parents and children, sickness and death, trying to take care of each other. Ozu was born in 1903 and died in 1963, and we can roughly divide his work into a pre-war and post-war Ozu. One should imagine his work in such a way that Ozu did not have the will to constantly reinvent himself, but aspired to perfection. Every one of his pictures proves it. I always compare him to a reggae musician whose rhythm hardly varies. That goes so far that he simply staged Floating Weeds twice. This version is from 1934, a second one he shot in 1959, we may assume that Ozu wanted to improve something. Basically, his films are still not very popular in the West. Sure, in the mid-1970s, people began to discover his work. But then the phase of the great love for cinema ended and what had Ozu already lost in the times of popcorn cinema? To this day, it remains a discovery for a few! For me, it's impossible to pinpoint his greatest film. Ozu's complete works seem to be all of a piece. It's about two generations, Ozu is doing family dramas. Only very rarely do his protagonists show what they feel. Most of it remains hidden, in the most moving scenes the emotions are not expressed. The most important decisions are only hinted at. I've seen Floating Weeds countless times. This wonderful film is as familiar to me as a song I hear over and over again. A Story Of Floating Weeds lives from its atmosphere. We are in the Japanese country during a hot, sultry summer. Not typical for Ozu that his protagonists appear in traditional dresses, even cinemas can be seen (in the famous later films his characters wear simple western dresses). It's like living together among neighbours. Everyone tries to fulfill his or her wishes and needs while arranging with the neighbours. Only the main character doesn't succeed. Everything should be done according to his will, but to his astonishment he notes that the neighbours also have their own needs. Kihachi (Takeshi Sakamoto) is a stubborn, adorable and funny. Kihachi is the leader of a travelling theatre group that moves from place to place to perform their Kabuki plays. We have no doubt that this force is not on the right track. Their shelters are miserable, their lives at the subsistence level. Most of the weight, however, lies in Kihachi's relationship with his illegitimate son Shinkichi (Kôji Mitsui). Even after years he knows nothing about Kihachi's relationship to his mother... You could make so many things out of this material: A soap opera, a musical, a melodrama. But this story tells us this as a consequence of daily life. He loves his characters far too much to expose them to the artificial ups and downs of drama! That's why we feel that these characters are real! Ozu's scenes are an image of normality. We experience half-hearted discussions, gossip & gossip of the actors... Ozu does not aim to pass from one scene to the next. It is his pictures that hold events together. As in his late masterpieces, the camera always remains below the protagonists. She films from bottom to top, stays at eye level. Exactly by this trick the everydayness of the happening is expressed. Ozu's famous "Pillow Shots" also have an effect here - settings that interrupt the action for a few seconds to show three or four calm compositions. Details like a mighty tree in front of a black sky. Ozu's camera never moves. There are no pans. Only cuts between one composition and the next. So we retreat - into ourselves - instead of simply reacting. To break the rules of traditional narrative cinema. Sometimes we think that his protagonists don't even look at each other while they are talking. I think that's because the camera is looking over the shoulders of its protagonists, so that we take their perspective. If Ozu shows two figures that are moving in the same direction during a conversation

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Who's Singing Over There (engl. subt.) 

Here comes one of the films that were most requested by you at the Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo. On DVD unfortunately difficult to obtain, but a former employee regularly travels to Belgrade and tries on site. Who's Singing Over There (the film by bus) also runs in good quality with English subtitles on youtube. A drunk with a Slibowitz bottle claims the bus driver could drive this route blind. The guests protest not to provoke him! Bets are accepted. He ties a cloth around his eyes and his bus swings down to a pole. Everything falls and staggers, under and over. Then the provocateur with the Slibowitz bottle: "Did you know that he can drive two kilometres backwards?"... The atmosphere of Ko to tamo peva is just as exuberant and over-excited - and in 1941 we are in the Yugoslavian hinterland. There are no roads here. But passengers who act as a cross section of their time: Lovers, policemen, eccentrics, politicians, a hunter with a shotgun... (every character is embodied by real Yugoslavian movie stars!). Something happens again and again that stops the bus. Whether it's a burst tire or a fluttering bridge. But suddenly: A bomb from the Nazi Germans hits. All passengers except one gypsy couple die. The black comedy by Slobodan Sijan was shot in a very short time and on a correspondingly tight budget. In 1980, the year Tito died. A film from Europe? More likely from another universe!

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Alfred Hitchcock - To Catch a Thief  

If you depend on television or on such muppet formats as Netflix, you can hardly watch film classics anymore. A strange idea: A life without the Hollywood classics, which I love so much! So if you don't live near our video store, you can at least use our YouTube service. We are looking for films on YouTube that run it of good quality. Also classics! Just like Hitchcock's To Catch A Thief, in which a time revives that we almost forgot through today's rough and miserable America. The time of the American super-rich. Who knows, perhaps Hitchcock was one of the last people to present this type in such an extravagant, but also in such an adoring way: the kind of people who express their cigarettes in egg yolks. The setting for this: the south of France, which shines in cynicism, but also in discretion. And where else does the bright blue sky match the diamonds to which Hitchcock bows? That's why To Catch A Thief also starts with the screeching of a lady who had exactly these diamonds stolen. Cary Grant embodies John Robie, who leads an unobtrusive life on the Cote D'Azur. He used to be a jewel thief and that's why it's him you suspect right away. There's only one way Robie can clear his name: He must face the real thief. During this mission he meets the beautiful Francie, played by the ice-blond Grace Kelly. Francie is a spoiled American girl. Rich and bored, but the name John Robie makes her listen. Francie herself owns diamonds, which we understand as symbols of sex, but also of aloofness. Made for a thief! That's why she's trying to provoke Robie. He is like an "American in an english movie". Not authentic. That may be Francy's opinion, but it's not mine! I think Cary Grant is fantastic in his role! He plays Hitchcock's favourite part of the wrongly suspected man in a completely different way. Hitchcock's characters were always impeccable, yet they were mostly to blame (from a certain perspective). Grant, however, confuses not only Francie. He's not so much impeccable as he is decent. And innocent? 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Roman Polanski - The Pianist 

The pianist, that sounds simple. Almost too modest, because it tells the story of a Polish Jew who works as a classical pianist and survives the Nazi siege with a lot of luck and stoicism. It never creates false tension, never arouses false feelings. The Pianist tells the story of what happened back then. The Pianist is witness to what he himself saw. He survived - but not as a hero. What kind of victory would it be if everyone we love died? Roman Polanski doesn't often give interviews. But in one you can read that his mother's death in the German gas chamber was so terrible for him that only his own death will bring redemption. The pianist is Wladyslaw Szpilman and he plays Chopin in Warsaw - while the first German bombs fall. "I'm not going anywhere," was Szpilman's reaction. His family believes that the Germans will lose the war quite soon. Soon life would be back to normal. But that does not happen. All Warsaw Jews are forced to move to the cramped ghetto. Once we see the brick wall that closes off the ghetto. Only the Germans (and the American president) love walls so much. The long and unbelievable story follows of how Szpilman survives the war. He is embodied by Adrien Brody, who was not yet known as a world star at the time. Hager he seems. He is a thoroughbred musician, but not a man who is in the middle of life. You can tell that he has always kept his distance from people. In war he may seem optimistic. But that would be a fallacy. He just can't believe that it could end badly for someone like him who plays the piano so well. Roman Polanski also survived the Holocaust. On wikipedia you can read that his father pushed him through the wire barrier. Polanski survived - as accidentally as Szpilman did. Who knows, probably only luck and coincidence counted back then? For the first time since the early 60s, since his very first film, Polanski shot in Poland (and in Babelsberg!). You see the famous Babelsberg Street - where Szpilman is hidden from the Germans. There he waits, lonely, hungry, completely frightened. Then a German bomb falls and the running water does not work anymore... In the middle of the ruins is a piano. But he does not dare to play it. Then again a coincidence. The German commander Wilm Hosenfeld (Thomas Kretschmann) finds Szpilman's hiding place. Without betraying what happens, you will realize in this scene why hardly any other director achieves Polanski's skill! Survival stories in the Holocaust distort in themselves what happened back then: almost all Jews were killed. The survivors are crass exceptions. One may assume that these exceptions saved themselves through courage or audacity. But that would be nothing more than a cheap Hollywood message. The decisive point: Most of them could not do it at all! In the Nazi system they are not allowed to make a moral decision at all. Polanski is Szpilman and he knows that he survived only by luck and the kindness of some fellow citizens. But it could just as well have turned out differently. And his mother died - leaving a wound that never heals. Polanski's Szpilman is no hero and his survival is no triumph. And so you stay sitting for quite a while after the credits roll and tears roll down your face.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Krzyssztof Kieslowski - Three Colors: White (engl. subt.)  

The lowest point is reached when he tries to earn money as a street musician in the metro. Without an instrument, only with a comb on which he blows through a piece of paper. It sounds sad. His wife divorced him because he cannot satisfy her. He comes from Poland and is stranded in Paris because of her. He is homesick. But everything is gone, his money, his papers. How can he come back to Poland? His name is Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) and finally he is lucky. A stranger, a fellow countryman whom he has just met, takes him with him. Rolling together in a suitcase. Is that even possible? Wrong question. Because the suitcase (with Karol in it) gets lost or stolen at Warsaw airport. The thieves open the suitcase and find only Karol. They throw it on a garbage heap. It is bitterly cold. But Karol looks around at the rubbish dump. Finally at home! Krzysztof Kieslowski treats all this very objectively in the middle part of his "Three Colors" trilogy. But all films of the trilogy, which is based on the colors of the French flag, approach their protagonists with such irony that we can't take them seriously anyway. Three Colors: Blue, an anti-tragedy, now an anti-comedy, finally Three Colors: Red, an anti-novelty. Kieslowski is Polish and works in France. Now he looks at post-communist Poland. Karol is a hairdresser and now hires in his brother's family salon. But in capitalist Poland someone like Karol can make money! Karol works out an extremely complicated plan, which should not only make him rich, but also bring his ex-wife (Julie Delpy) back to Poland. And Karol is lucky - although in Kieslowski films we can only ever speak of apparent luck. His films never move from A to B, but only through the lives of their characters. That is to say, the meta-level counts! For us this means that it is impossible to predict what will happen next. In any case, Karol becomes almost intuitively successful in the new Poland. He traps the woman he loves (and at the same time hates) in order to regain control over her relationship. The white in the French flag stands for equality. Does Kieslowski mean revenge in this case? Irony of fate.