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Markieman234
Reviews
Das Leben der Anderen (2006)
Movies like this one are all too rare..
I was fortunate enough to see "Das Leben Der Anderen" in April last year in Berlin when it was on general German cinematic release. As I find the historical topic of the Stasi and the former country, the DDR (GDR) in general of much interest and fascination, I visited many of the sites mentioned in the film, most notably the former Stasi prison, Neuenschönhausen, now been converted to a museum. I believe the sheer amount of cruelty and brutality the Stasi expelled on its prisoners to be comparable to that of Nazi Germany. The fact of the matter is that today, German people do not talk about the former east block country, in fact, they'd rather regard it more as a joke, laughing about "Trabant" cars or Spreewaldgurken, rather than taking it seriously. This film sparked a breath of fresh air and brought back the publicity and respect former East German political prisoners deserve, rather than being laughed at and humoured by the general media as they have done in the past.
To date I've watched this spectacular film five times and have recommended it to dozens of people, it is, in my humble opinion, one of the finest works to come out of German cinema so far in the twenty first century, if not cinema in general. The films actors and cinematography remind us as how much emotional power the medium itself can have on its audience. This film was so good that when the credits rolled up at the end, not one person out of an audience of 250+ people stirred or made a noise. We were that numbed.
I was very pleasantly surprised to see that DLDA is up for Oscar nomination. Perhaps the academy is not as biased towards Hollywood as I previously thought. Many of my American friends will not get the opportunity to see this film as it is only on "limited" release over in the US as of this month. In my experience "limited" means that only a very small minority of independent theatres in large cities will carry the film. It is a similar matter here in the UK, although movie theatres are not overtly controlled or monopolised by Hollywood studios as they are in the US.
Admittedly, I haven't really talked in very much detail about the film in question in the review, however, I urge you to watch it. It is gradually climbing the IMDb Top 100 after all. :)
Ett hål i mitt hjärta (2004)
Moodysson showing up the weaker points of humanity??
Hmph.. this film is strange, unsatisfying, and dull in places. It took a little more effort than it should have to watch until the end. There were a couple of interesting things Moodysson threw in that I noticed, one being that certain random objects get blurred out in most scenes. Initially I thought these to be only objects with brand names on, but upon closer inspection certain parts of clothing get blurred as well. Number two was an almost clever short reference to a far superior work of his, Lilya 4ever. In one of the films many short camera takes you see the porn starlet on top of a bridge, looking out at the road, making the viewer think she's considering suicide, as is the case in the final scene of the aforementioned movie. Having seen Moodysson's other work, "Show Me Love", "Lilya 4ever" and another title investigating life in a convent, another similarity shows up in this film; his rash, abundantly random use of trashy euro trance music. The director uses this to speed up the characters movement and their on screen activities, an unnecessary addition that only aroused annoyance. Perhaps the only remotely interesting quote from the film was shouted by the porn starlet shortly after being assaulted by the male porn actor: "Men are the ones who rape, who kill people, who start wars. Without men, humanity would be far superior". Let us hope that Moodysson's next piece of work will be more on par with his more credible titles.