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German movies
Jul. 11th, 2007 09:46 amSo for a little background research, I checked out Der Himmel ueber Berlin, whichin English is called Wings of Desire. It's a German art film from the 1980s. I saw it at Arkansas Governor's School and also at freshman honors orientation in college. (My alma mater, BYU, had a huge international cinema program, and I suppose this was meant as an introduction.) I've got a character outside of mortality, looking on, and figured it would be a good idea to be aware of other variations on the theme. I think I'm getting more practical-minded with age (and with doing critiques all the time). Maybe I'm just not as intellectual as I used to be. I couldn't help thinking that nothing really happened in the first hour and a half (it's a two-hour movie). Yes, my kids kept climbing on me while I was trying to watch it, drowning out the not-very-intelligible text (the music track is slightly louder than the dialogue, and since most of it consists of these two angels listening to random people's random thoughts, you can't read lips, either). Not to mention them telling me, "Mom! This is boring!" To which I explained that I hadn't checked it out for them.
Anyway, basic story line: two angels wander around Berlin, listening to people think and trying to figure out the value of human experience. One of them falls in love with a trapeze artist and longs to be human, to experience rather than to just know things theoretically. Eventually he does.
Cool things: the angels see in black and white, the mortals in color. The small revelation about the movie producer was a nice moment, clinching the point of the film. The moment where the former angel asks what all the colors are called was really nice, too. And I agree with the point that the mortal experience IS necessary, that there IS joy in experience. I just wish the mortal world had been portrayed a bit more...cheerfully. It was kind of heavy on the streets-filled-with-garbage and the deeply-depressed-people and the we-don't-believe-in-smiling end, and pretty light on anything to balance it. If I'd been one of the angels, I'm not sure how tempted I would have been by what I saw! But I guess that's how "art films" are supposed to be.
Other random thoughts on German movies. The rating system is totally different than the American one. I have no idea what determines how films are rated here. I saw one film while I was searching for this one that I know is rated PG-13 in the States. it was rated "ab 6 Jahre" here (6 and up). In contrast, I found a Miyazaki film in the children's section and watched it--lovely visuals, as usual, but I totally didn't get it (that's a whole other entry). There was no swearing, no sex, less violence than in your average Saturday morning cartoon--and it was rated ab 12. Bizarre. Okay, so in the end, nothing happened in the film, and I was left scratching my head and saying, "Uh, so what?", which means that kids under 12 probably wouldn't be interested in it. So maybe that was the point of the rating. (It was Porco Russo, in case you're wondering. GREAT scene in the plane when he's describing what happened to all his fellow pilots in the war--but I couldn't figure out how it actually tied to the real-time story.)
Right now, though, I need to find a babysitter so I can see a movie with a real plotline--Harry Potter!
Anyway, basic story line: two angels wander around Berlin, listening to people think and trying to figure out the value of human experience. One of them falls in love with a trapeze artist and longs to be human, to experience rather than to just know things theoretically. Eventually he does.
Cool things: the angels see in black and white, the mortals in color. The small revelation about the movie producer was a nice moment, clinching the point of the film. The moment where the former angel asks what all the colors are called was really nice, too. And I agree with the point that the mortal experience IS necessary, that there IS joy in experience. I just wish the mortal world had been portrayed a bit more...cheerfully. It was kind of heavy on the streets-filled-with-garbage and the deeply-depressed-people and the we-don't-believe-in-smiling end, and pretty light on anything to balance it. If I'd been one of the angels, I'm not sure how tempted I would have been by what I saw! But I guess that's how "art films" are supposed to be.
Other random thoughts on German movies. The rating system is totally different than the American one. I have no idea what determines how films are rated here. I saw one film while I was searching for this one that I know is rated PG-13 in the States. it was rated "ab 6 Jahre" here (6 and up). In contrast, I found a Miyazaki film in the children's section and watched it--lovely visuals, as usual, but I totally didn't get it (that's a whole other entry). There was no swearing, no sex, less violence than in your average Saturday morning cartoon--and it was rated ab 12. Bizarre. Okay, so in the end, nothing happened in the film, and I was left scratching my head and saying, "Uh, so what?", which means that kids under 12 probably wouldn't be interested in it. So maybe that was the point of the rating. (It was Porco Russo, in case you're wondering. GREAT scene in the plane when he's describing what happened to all his fellow pilots in the war--but I couldn't figure out how it actually tied to the real-time story.)
Right now, though, I need to find a babysitter so I can see a movie with a real plotline--Harry Potter!
