"We declare war on you." This is
Je Suis Karl. This German drama film directed by Christian Schwochow and written by Thomas Wendrich. Not just some day - today. A parcel in a hallway. Alex, a husband and father of three, leaves his flat to get wine from his car. In the confusion that follows, he's torn from the routine of everyday life and fails to ever find his footing again. Maxi, his daughter and a strong young woman, sets out into what might pass as life. It's a brutal weaning process though, and she ends up angry and demanding answers. Karl set off long ago. He is beguiling, smart as a whip and has the answers Maxi craves. He entices her in, recognizing her rage and provides the prop outlet. Part of a growing radical movement, he dances with her on a razor's edge. Today in Berlin. Tomorrow in Prague. Soon in Strasbourg and all across Europe. This is a power grab.
The film stars Luna Wedler, Jannis Niewöhner, and Milan Peschel. Wedler gives a performance that deserves something more serious than an Oscar. It's a sublimely convincing portrayal of a young girl who is brutally determined to find out who took away her happiness is in order to seek retribution.
It strikes me as an honest, relatively complicated and humane effort-in many ways, quite remarkable-and one that provides little comfort for defenders of the status quo, in Germany or elsewhere. A daft and directionless thriller from Schwochow, cynically hijacking radical tensions to fuel the engine of an over-heated action vehicle. Schwochow's passion is clear, its intention good, the skill behind it immense; there is something brave about its decision to take politics into the multiplex. It's an incoherent film, as if Schwochow desperately wanted to say something important and could only come to the conclusion that killing is bad and we're all human. The film is an important story to be sure but an important movie isn't the same as a great one. It's told in such a muddled way the message is easily lost, except for the moments when it is hammered home at the cost of story-telling believability. It's difficult to imagine just what Schwochow was hoping to accomplish with this disastrously inept piece of work. Schwochow trades in hollow, spuriously cinematic gestures and in explicitly topical politics that I suspect will render this movie embarrassingly dated before decade's end. The brow-scrunching and ethical debates don't grow out of the terrorist attacks, they merely follow them, and are not only inadequate but irrelevant. While this courageous film lacks in narrative dynamics -- and factual precisions -- it deserves a medal for suggesting a higher law than laid down by the vengeful god of radicalisation. Shooting in a style that echoes classic Paul Greengrass thrillers, Schwochow orchestrates a number of terrifically exciting suspense scenes. Yes, it's violent, but the questions raised, the internal journey followed by the film's main character subtly tends toward peace, or at least rethinking all this violence.
Simon says
Je Suis Karl receives:
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