In the Aisles

In the Aisles is a gentle, slow-moving love story set in an East German supermarket. It's much larger and more dimly lit than we're used to in New Zealand and fork-lifts and power jacks (which feature prominently in the story) roam the aisles along with the customers.

Christian is a new recruit, and assigned to work in beverages with Bruno, who might be twice his age. Keeping the customer-level shelves stocked is a key element of the job and so is retrieving pallets of good from the stacks above the shelves (think Pak'n'Save on steroids) and attaining competence with the departmental forklift is key.

Christian falls in love with Marian, who works in sweet goods and the romance unfolds slowly along with the minutiae of Christian's days at work. Taking fifteen (which equates to taking a break) with Bruno and sometimes with Marian provides opportunity for the narrative to develop.

 In the Aisles is about the redemptive power of work, and how powerful the support of your co-workers can be. Everyone who works at the supermarket is tolerant, slow to judge, happy to help  and kind. There's really only one character who's a figure of authority, (although presumably there's a whole layer of management from "upstairs" that we never meet) and he is a guy who believes everyone is allowed to stuff up at least once.I think I'm making the film sound unfashionably Polly-anna-ish but it doesn't come across that way. It certainly emphasizes that it's "not all about you". You can provide support to a co-worker even if you're at a low point in your own life.

In the Aisles has likeable characters, excellent music and great visuals and is worthy of your viewing time, unless you're in an impatient frame of mind

Anne's rating 3.5/5

The Berlin Syndrome

Clare the Australian backpacker meets Andy the German school teacher out and about in Berlin. They hit it off, and meet up again the next day. He invites her back to his apartment, they have sex, she spends the night and when she wakes up in the morning  he's gone to work, and she's locked in. Not too perturbed, she waits for him to come home  and when he does, he takes the key he meant to leave her out of his pocket. They have more sex, she stays another night and when she wakes up she finds the key he left her doesn't fit the lock.

So now we're straying into nightmare territory. The windows don't open, and they're double glazed and reinforced. Andy appears to be the only occupant of an entire apartment complex. The apartment windows don't look out over the street, they look onto a courtyard. Andy has removed the sim card from Clare's phone, and there's no landline. When Andy returns he admits to detaining Clare on purpose, and we're definitely in nightmare territory.

The film moves into exploring the bad situation (augmenting the nightmare) and looking for the opportunity to escape. It's very tense and keeps us wondering what the outcome will be, particularly when we find out that Andy has pulled this stunt before. The Berlin Syndrome is not for the faint-hearted but I promise you won't be bored. It's well-acted and atmospheric. Just don't expect to drop off to sleep immediately when you get home.

Anne's rating 3.5/5 Ian's rating 3.5/5

Western

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet brought us British tradies in Germany. Playing the situation for laughs. Western brings us German construction workers in Bulgaria played completely straight. In both cases lack knowledge of the other's language and customs brings the locals and construction workers into conflict.

Western also employs elliptical storytelling: brief, disconnected scenes, fragmentary dialog, no overall plot, camera angles that often look accidental. It requires the audience to work out what is happening (which mirrors the confusion and dislocation as the work gang get to know each other and as the work gang and the locals size each other up).

Eventually, the protagonists arise out of the mass of characters. The new digger driver (Meinhard) and his foreman on the German side and an entrepreneurial villager and a young woman who can speak a bit of German on the Bulgarian side. Arrogance, frustration, and machismo motivate the German workmen. Pride, jealousy, and machismo motivate the Bulgarians.

Some of the story fragments have a bit of tension and others contribute to Meinhard's growing relations with people he can't talk to. While I guess the elliptical storytelling style is intended to feel natural it actually feels contrived and usually unnecessary.

Ian's rating 2/5

Toni Erdmann

The Germans are not famous for their sense of humour or, as far as I'm aware their comedy films. Go for Zucker is the only German Comedy I can remember seeing so I didn't know what I was going to get with Toni Erdmann. There was also the slight concern that it was two hours and forty-two minutes long which is a pretty long time if it wasn't funny.

I think you'd call Toni Erdmann a father-daughter comedy, or perhaps an embarrassing parent comedy. Winfried (the embarrassing parent) decides his only daughter Ines is too career-oriented to be a satisfactory child and that he will go to Romania ( where she lives and works)  to sort her out. Winfried is a practical joker from way back and never goes anywhere without his joke false teeth and so a visit from him should be viewed with trepidation. He dons a wig and the aforementioned false teeth and gatecrashes a number of Ines' work functions pretending to be a life coach. Not all her colleagues are convinced , but they do play along.

Gradually Winfried does get Ines to loosen up and the film's best comedic moments ensue. Watching Ines' nude birthday brunch is a thing I will always treasure and it's worth waiting for. The delivery was mostly deadpan (unlike your average French comedy) and as its length suggests, it wasn't fast-paced. There was plenty of silliness and plenty of physical comedy to make up for the lack of speed and the film has more heart than many comedies. There are fart cushions and fake handcuffs and silly outfits and Ines' and Winfried's relationship is cemented as a result. My second German comedy was definitely a rewarding watch

Anne's rating 3.5/5

Diplomacy

How was Paris liberated in 1944 with so little damage? It is something I have never thought about long enough to research. So I watched Diplomacy from a position of ignorance. Since I watched it I have done some research and realised that depending on which version of events you believe, this film may make you angry. Though if you are in that camp, the advertising for the film would be warning to stay away.

Diplomacy is based on a play and compresses the events of August 1944 into one day for dramatic effect. The Germans are in retreat in France after the D-day landing in June that year, and the Allies on the outskirts of Paris. General Dietrich von Choltitz is under orders from Hitler that:

"The city must not fall into the enemy's hand except lying in complete debris."

The engineers have prepared demolition charges on the bridges and major buildings and are awaiting orders to blow the place up. As we know this didn't happen we are confronted with: how were the Germans stopped?

Before dawn while General Choltitz is giving orders for the final preparations at his HQ in the Hotel Meurice he gets an unannounced visitor, Raoul Nordling, the Swedish Consul. The neutral diplomat has come to talk the general into disobeying Hitler and saving the city (and its inhabitants). Nordling's only weapon is his powers of persuasion. Not just to talk the general out of blowing up the city but also to avoid being thrown out into the street by a busy general preparing for the approaching Allied forces.

The conversations between the two men are punctuated by events outside (reports from subordinates, phone calls to Berlin, breakfast served by a maid). This film could have been subtitled "Two old men in a hotel room", but this is a hang over from the play it is based on and not a criticism. Each man brings out arguments and counter arguments as preparations for the demolition reach completion and the Allies get closer. The battle inside the hotel room seems more vital than the fighting in the streets.

Whether or not you believe that Choltitz or Nordling (or neither) was the saviour of Paris this is a great illustration of the power of argument and how to use persuasion from multiple angles. Both lead actors are eloquent advocates for their point of view and while polite to each other, use their rhetorical powers to the full.

Ian's rating 4/5 Anne's rating 4/5

The Captain and His Pirate

In 2009 a German container ship was attacked by Somali pirates. The pirates held the ship for 4 months, while the company tried to wait them out. Once the ship was released the captain, Krzysztof Kotluk, was criticized and lost his job. Andy Wolff interviewed the bitter captain in Germany and travelled to Somalia to find Ahado, the leader of the pirate and hear his side of the story. Wolff interlaces the two strands of interviewing to tell the story of those 4 months concentrating on the relationship between the captain and the leading pirate.

As Ahado explains it is a standard pirate strategy to turn the crew members against each other. In this case the pirates befriended the Tuvaluan crew and they partied and broke into containers together. The relationship also broke down between Captain Kotluk and the other German officers, leaving Krzysztof isolated and lonely. It turns out that the pirate is a better judge (and manipulator) of human relationships that the captain or crew. Ahado recognised what had happened and took pity on Krzysztof and developed a friendship with him.

This film doesn't explore why Somalia is the centre of world piracy. Nor does it explore why convoys with naval protection are not used to counter piracy (last used in a major way in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war). It is a more personal story of two men and how their worlds collided in 2009, and how they learned to respect each other. It raises, but doesn't answer the questions of why one leader failed to maintain leadership while under pressure while the other succeeded (the pressures they were under were obviously not the same). Is leadership a personal skill or a cultural construct (that will fail when the structures of that culture are weakened or removed) or is it a two way relationship between the leader and those being led (where blame for failure is shared)?

Visually The Captain and His Pirate is not a documentary that needs to be seen on the big screen but I suspect your best chance of seeing it, is at a film festival.

Trailer

Ian's rating 2.5/5

Lore

World War Two and its aftermath feature in a lot of films, and just when you think that this is a subject you've watched thoroughly enough already, a film with a new slant comes along.

Lore is such a film. It's set in 1945 in Germany and its main character is Lore (short for Hannelore) who is a girl of fourteen or so. Her father is in the SS and from the contents of his bookshelves it would seem that he was deeply involved in the Third Reich's regime of oppression on racial and genetic grounds. We meet our characters in the family home in Berlin where her Father is burning the contents of the bookshelves and plotting to escape and her Mother is packing and organising the children (5 in all) to leave town.

Mother and the children evacuate to an isolated farmhouse in the forest and then  Mother sets off for civilisation to give herself up (we don't know what crimes she is guilty of - perhaps being complicit in those committed by her husband in the course of his job), leaving Lore in charge of her four siblings, the youngest of whom is only a baby and suggesting they make their way to Hamburg to be with their Grandmother, telling the younger children she will meet them there.

The film is the story of the journey. Most adults in 2012 would struggle  taking three children and a baby across Germany  mostly on foot, let alone in a newly occupied country with food shortages and a population on the move. That a teenager achieved it is nothing short of a miracle. She did have some help in the form of a guy a little older than herself, who is masquerading as a Jewish camp survivor. There's the beginnings of a romance there, but their circumstances and her prejudice prevent it flowering.

It's a bleak story and not one to see if you need cheering up. Watching it did mean I contemplated the suffering the war caused to Aryan Germans, particularly their children,  in a way I haven't done previously. Very well acted, it definitely tugs at the heartstrings.

Anne's rating: 3/5,  Ian's rating 2.5/5

Barbara

These days it seems that every year there is a new German film about life in East Germany. This year it is Barbara. Barbara is a doctor under surveillance after being released from jail and being sent to work in a small town hospital in the middle of nowhere on the Baltic coast. She has no intention of staying put in her new environment and tries to avoid entanglement with her neighbours and co-workers (who might be working for the Stasi anyway). We all know how badly that is going to work out in a small town; and her boss tells her that straight away. Not only does her standoffish behaviour, her urban chic and taste for West German cigarettes attract attention from her co-workers, her skills and compassion as a doctor do too.

Gradually her burning desire to escape the night visits and body searches by the Stasi and flee to West Germany is undermined by her dedication to two of her young patients and the attentions of her ever-so-nice boss. Unlike The Lives of Others where I was convinced all the way through that things were going to turn out all right in end, Barbara kept an element of doubt right to the end. I think this is because the characters aren't black and white. Barbara, her nice boss, the sadistic Stasi officer, the West German visitors and their local "girlfriends" are all humans that have been corrupted by "the system" in one way or another, and leaving East Germany means leaving other people behind.

I'm sure someone can read something into German film makers current obsession with East Germany just as someone can read something into Hollywood's current obsession with comic book superheroes. But if the product of this German obsession is more films as good as this one then let's have more obsession.

Ian's rating 4/5

A few other recent films about East Germany

• The Lives of Others - won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
• The Tunnel - based on a true story
• Peaceful Times - fear of the West and nostalgia for the East
• Good bye, Lenin! -  a nostalgic comedy (I'm not sure why goodbye is two words in this title)
• Go for Zucker - a comedy about West versus East through a Jewish lens

Le Havre

Described by its Finnish director, Aki Kaurismäki, as an “unrealistic film”. Described by the the Film Festival programme as a comedy. Described elsewhere as a political movie. While there is lightest sprinkling of funny moments in Le Havre and illegal immigration is a political issue, I agree with the director.

Le Havre is a simple story of an old shoe-shine man who tries to save a refugee. It is told in an unrealistic style that is reminiscent of 1950s films in a way that is hard to put your finger on. For me the stand-out character is Inspector Monet (Jean-Pierre Darroussin - the gardener in Conversations with my gardener) who drives a Renault 16 and channels Casablanca's Captain Renault (Claude Rains) - I doubt this is a coincidence. Unfortunately this one performance, the few odd-ball moments and Elina Salo's smile don't add up to the ticket price.

View trailer

Critics at Cannes liked this film, but in my opinion Romantics Anonymous is a far better French comedy.

Ian's rating 1/5 Anne's rating 2/5

Boy

Boy is one of those rare things - a New Zealand film that's doing well at the box office (a week ago it had almost made as much money as Sione's wedding), that doesn't take itself too seriously and that isn't (too) black. It's comedy, and while it has tragic undertones you don't have to dwell on those if you don't want to.

Boy has been described as a coming of age movie but I think it's more a "this is what my childhood was like" movie. It's told in a very matter-of-fact way and part of its charm is that the boy narrator seems completely unconscious of what an amazing story it is - how an eleven year-old whose mother is dead and whose father is in prison can be left in charge of four younger siblings and cousins while their care-giver grandmother goes to a tangi in Wellington. Boy draws us a very vivid picture of life in a mainly maori community not far from East Cape in the 1980s where normality is no-one having any money, having a more intimate relationship with your pet goat than with your father, your friends having picking marijuana as their after school job, and being fascinated with Michael Jackson. Boy is the aforementioned eleven year old and his little brother Rocky (who might or might not have magic powers) is an almost equally important character

Into this normality comes Boy's father(Alamein), who roars onto the scene in a big black Chrysler Valiant with two fellow gang members (this gang affiliation is not to be taken too seriously since the three of them are all the members!) with the intention of finding the proceeds of a robbery that is buried in a field near his mother's house. And the crux of the story is Boy adjusting to the real Alamein, after having had a fantasy father figure for the last seven years. Alamein introduces Boy to drugs and alcohol with almost tragic results, and Boy finds the buried money with differently tragic results.

There are lots of things to love about this film - the cars, the clothes, the child actors, the dialogue and the accents. On of my favourite scenes was Boy serving his father and fellow gang members cups of tea in the Chrysler and another was Boy doing battle with the school floor polisher which was almost as big as he is. The finale (a Michael Jackson dance number which involves almost the entire cast) is a particular gem.

Watch the trailer here

Anne's rating: 4/5