Horst_In_Translation Review of A Light in Dark Places

A Light in Dark Places (2003 TV Movie)

Dramatic for the sake of it, lacks the required authenticity

[4/10 · 22 September 2017]

"Das Wunder von Lengede" or "A Light in Dark Places" is a German 3-hour movie that may be watched best in two parts with each one running for slightly over 90 minutes. Director Heidelbach was already pretty prolific when this came out while writer Roeskau wasn't a rookie anymore, but still relatively at the beginning of his career. This one here is from 2003, so as of today it will have its 15th anniversary next year. The cast includes many fairly famous actors that people who know a bit about German film will certainly have seen another projects already. The likes of Ferch, Liefers, Rohde and Makatsch are some that may score through charisma more than range and yes this is a problem. But the script fits the cast very nicely because honestly it is so packed with scenes that are truly dramatic or emotional or significant that the makers did not even realize the it only stayed attempts at achievements in these three fields I just mentioned. Honestly, the film lacks authenticity from start to finish and with one "great" scene after the next, it is almost an insult to the people who were in fact part of this tragedy in reality as this film is based on a real event, but only very loosely and everybody will realize that when he sees it. Those people who fought for their lives down there deserve better. So yes I already mentioned the biggest weakness here, namely that it is on par with the other German 3-hour catastrophe films out there and honestly 14 out of 15 really suck. Other problems here are almost all of them linked to the story like the rushed in assisted suicide story near the end. Luckily they built up a new partner in Makatsch's character's life. The actors did the best with what they had to work with I guess. Ferch is the emotionally tortured alpha male as always, Liefers the physically struggling pretty boy. Uhl proves she is not a weaker actress than Makatsch, even with less baity material, or maybe because of? Talented actors like Brambach or Groth or Wöhler are somewhat wasted for irrelevant characters. Brambach is actually a perfect example of how horrible the writing is here. He has a physical confrontation early on with one of the protagonists, so of course he dies down there in the mine to show he is inferior to our heroes. It was a horrible film in terms of character writing. Shades are nonexistent at all, they're either good or bad, and this way the makers made this film for audiences too stupid to make up their minds on their own and sadly the latter is the minority in Germany these days. Also, character development is non-existent. The film should have been kept down at 2 hours as one movie and not two as there were some lengths in here and like I said it is a film of extremes. You will rarely find a scene in here that is not uninteresting or over-the-top. The more I write, the more I feel like this film does not even deserve a 4/10 rating. The only somewhat surprising moment for me was the death of Liefers' character, even if in retrospective there are indicators. All in all I give this Sat1 "television event" (ugh!) a thumbs-down of course and you really want to skip it. With the real life tragedy behind it, the people who made this should really be ashamed of their "achievement" here.