"Wut" ("Rage", "Fury", "Anger") is essentially three films, each one hopelessly mixed up with the other and therefor no film at all. If these made for TV film is anything at all, it does mostly resemble a screenwriter's idea badly in need of some additional thought.
The first film is the most interesting aspect of this project. It deals with a young man, who has been born into a foreign country, a country that stays foreign to his parents but not to him. A country nonetheless that chooses to treat this young man as a foreigner. That's what fuels the protagonist's rage against the "system" and those who represent it. Can's tragedy is that he has become a German, whether he likes it or not, whether Germany likes it or not. I'm sure - though I can't proof it - that's the film (take not of the working title) director Aladag wanted to make in the first place.
The second film deals with a totally inefficient, incompetent and in its core dysfunctional German family. Well bred, well taught, well to do losers. The son is stupid enough to join ranks with the young turks again and again, humiliation after humiliation. The father, a professor, may know his ways around books and lecturing halls, but has no idea about real life. The mother is not a written role at all but just there because there has to be a mother. It's Corinna Harfouch's achievement to let this nonety appear as something substantial. If "Wut" is discriminating against anybody or anything, it's discriminating against this German family, whose members act stupid because the script needs them to act stupid - otherwise the whole movie would simply implode into the void. "Wut" suffers from the same problem as did Hark Bohm's "Yasemin" almost twenty years ago. The Germans have to act stupid in order to set the much needed dramatic events in motion. No stupid Germans, no film.
The third film is the most dispisible one. In allowing the young Turk to be the aggressor, the heavy it trumpets almost all the time: Taboo-breaking! Taboo-breaking! See here, we're not politically correct. Therefor we tell the truth. Rubbish! There are young Turks who are victims of the migration process their parents have thrown them into, and there are young Turks who made themselves a success story and there are young turks who are criminals. End of story. "Wut" isn't even the first film to cast its immigrants as the baddies. And it's no more true or false than the next film. What's best about it is the acting, the script is the worst part and the direction bounces from one extreme to the other.
The first film is the most interesting aspect of this project. It deals with a young man, who has been born into a foreign country, a country that stays foreign to his parents but not to him. A country nonetheless that chooses to treat this young man as a foreigner. That's what fuels the protagonist's rage against the "system" and those who represent it. Can's tragedy is that he has become a German, whether he likes it or not, whether Germany likes it or not. I'm sure - though I can't proof it - that's the film (take not of the working title) director Aladag wanted to make in the first place.
The second film deals with a totally inefficient, incompetent and in its core dysfunctional German family. Well bred, well taught, well to do losers. The son is stupid enough to join ranks with the young turks again and again, humiliation after humiliation. The father, a professor, may know his ways around books and lecturing halls, but has no idea about real life. The mother is not a written role at all but just there because there has to be a mother. It's Corinna Harfouch's achievement to let this nonety appear as something substantial. If "Wut" is discriminating against anybody or anything, it's discriminating against this German family, whose members act stupid because the script needs them to act stupid - otherwise the whole movie would simply implode into the void. "Wut" suffers from the same problem as did Hark Bohm's "Yasemin" almost twenty years ago. The Germans have to act stupid in order to set the much needed dramatic events in motion. No stupid Germans, no film.
The third film is the most dispisible one. In allowing the young Turk to be the aggressor, the heavy it trumpets almost all the time: Taboo-breaking! Taboo-breaking! See here, we're not politically correct. Therefor we tell the truth. Rubbish! There are young Turks who are victims of the migration process their parents have thrown them into, and there are young Turks who made themselves a success story and there are young turks who are criminals. End of story. "Wut" isn't even the first film to cast its immigrants as the baddies. And it's no more true or false than the next film. What's best about it is the acting, the script is the worst part and the direction bounces from one extreme to the other.