I sometimes have problems taking TV movies seriously. I mean, they look always different, somewhat "cheaper", they lack the quality a "real" movie has. Well, at least it is like that with most american TV movies. In Germany it's a fact that TV movies have more quality and money than movies than come into theatres. Not always, but most of the time.
This new episode in the "Tatort"-series is a good example. I rarely saw such an honest and realistic german film in a theatre.
The movie is about a massacre which happened in a school. A student seems to have gone mad and shot three teachers and then himself in the school. The headmaster of the school won't believe it, because it was his favourite student. But the investigators Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts) and her partner Kopper (Andreas Hoppe) find out that this boy belonged to a group which liked to blackmail their co-students and tried satanic rituals. And that's not all...
The story has its surprises and a lot of suspense. But this is not a whodunit story. It is more psychological, as the cops try to find out why a boy would do such terrible things. But the movie doesn't give that away with an easy solution. It doesn't answer the question of the motive. It shows us that there must be more behind such a deed than just a bad parenthood or video games or movies or bad experiences in school. These are never the reasons, maybe the release, but not more. There is something deeper and even if the movie doesn't know what it is, it asks us to look for it.
It succeeds with good actors (young and old), good camerawork and an ending which is not happy at all and leaves the viewer helpless.
This new episode in the "Tatort"-series is a good example. I rarely saw such an honest and realistic german film in a theatre.
The movie is about a massacre which happened in a school. A student seems to have gone mad and shot three teachers and then himself in the school. The headmaster of the school won't believe it, because it was his favourite student. But the investigators Lena Odenthal (Ulrike Folkerts) and her partner Kopper (Andreas Hoppe) find out that this boy belonged to a group which liked to blackmail their co-students and tried satanic rituals. And that's not all...
The story has its surprises and a lot of suspense. But this is not a whodunit story. It is more psychological, as the cops try to find out why a boy would do such terrible things. But the movie doesn't give that away with an easy solution. It doesn't answer the question of the motive. It shows us that there must be more behind such a deed than just a bad parenthood or video games or movies or bad experiences in school. These are never the reasons, maybe the release, but not more. There is something deeper and even if the movie doesn't know what it is, it asks us to look for it.
It succeeds with good actors (young and old), good camerawork and an ending which is not happy at all and leaves the viewer helpless.
