"David Wants to Fly"is a documentary from 2010 that is partially in the German and partially in the English language. The writer and director here is David Sieveking. And in order to make sure we don't forget that, he also appears in this film from start to finish basically. This is also my biggest problem with this movie. I found it really unbearable how he was putting himself into the spotlight of this 95-minute documentary. What is the subject here? Well, it is not really clear. That even rhymes. Early on, we hear about the filmmakers' ambitions to go see a certain convention because his idol, filmmaker David Lynch, is also holding a speech there, but the longer the film goes the more it turns into a critical discussion on Transcendental Meditation and whether it is a profit organization or can actually bring enlightenment to people. Sieveking himself is seeking enlightenment in this film as well. I was actually close to giving it one star out of five and I can see why some people would. But eventually, I will be a bit more generous because there is some information on TM and I had never heard of them before, so it had a bit of an informative value for me. However, still the sequences with his girlfriend and her mother and this strange preparation where she sits in a tiny room and then the break-up between Sieveking and his girlfriend felt all so unauthentic, fake and staged. I have no doubt that a lot of it was scripted for sure for dramatic purposes in a film where the maker's relationship status has absolutely no business being a part of. I guess they wanted to make this look like a more personal approach with this film, but it all went wrong. Sieveking has a tendency for that also looking at the film he made about his mother later on, where I am sure that a lot besides the death was also scripted. Anyway, we will talk about that one on another occasion I guess. His work somewhat reminds me of the approach Werner Herzog is taking, but Herzog still manages to tell great stories and even if we see him too on many occasions in his many many works, you never get the impression that he wants to be in the center of it all, in an almost narcissist fashion. I give this one a thumbs-down and highly recommend not to check it out.
Review of David Wants to Fly
