So again, we leave the country but keep the theme: yet another film about love. About love between men, and the problems it might bring about to try to pick up a guy at a bar, a park or a metro station at a time when coming out would mean you to loose your job, most of your friends and maybe even your life. One thing seems to be consistent throughout time and space: the existance of (ulta-)orthodox groups and their ability to create and sustain hate and violence on and against the slightest sign of otherness. But where there is oppression there is resistance and therefore “Milk” tells one story from the fight of american homosexuals against discrimination and for equal rights. And it tells it by the example of Harvey Milk a 70ies gay rights activist and politican who out of a personal dilemma became the leader of a whole movement.

At the beginning of the movie we observe Harvey Milk pick up another man, Scott Smith later on will become his lover, at a subway station. It is Harvey’s birthday and so they share his cake, his bed and his frustration about his existance in a state of permanent hiding. And contemplating over some smears of icing in Harveys face they decide to move to the more liberal San Francisco. But soon after their arrival they find that, while they might be able to openly show their love in public here, they are still subject to discrimination and violence. Gays are harrassed both by local police and citizens and Harvey is denied entrance into his districts merchants association. This is the tipping point where the frustrated individual Harvey stands up and becomes what is to be the figurehead of a political movement.

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It is this personal connection and its implications that drove Harvey Milk to that point and it is these personal issues that drive the story. The political story it tells, about the gay rights movement and its opponents from the christian-conservative milieu, while being important in its own right, draws its color, its flesh, its reason to be from the other story the movie tells and that is closely interwoven with the first one: the (love) story of Harvey Milk himself and the lively community that formed around his shop. That Gus Van Sant succeeds in depicting both his main protagonist and his surroundings in all their vividness is mainly due to two things: The extensive use of footage dating back to that time and the stunning performance Sean Penn delivers as Harvey White.

So, despite its tragic outcome and depressing theme “Milk” will not only educate you about one of the most important movements of the last century it will also entertain you by letting you share a couple of years with a fantastic person and enterainer called Harvey Milk.

Milk | Gus Van Sant | Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Diego Luna | 2008 | Focus Features | imdb, Wikipedia | Images Paramount Home Entertainment

Where to go from here? As I would like to keep a certain flow, a certain connectedness between the single entries of this column, and as we are leaving the Middle East for now, I guess it is only logical to keep the theme of last weeks entry: a more or less tragic love story between two men. Let’s see what we can spot in differences and similarities when we travel from an ultra-orthodox community in Israel to a sometimes similar orthodox community: a bavarian sports club, a rowing club to be precise. And let’s watch Summerstorm (Sommersturm) a german movie dating back to 2004 about the coming of age and coming out of two boys set in the context of a rowing competition.

Its main characters are Achim and Tobi, two members of a bavarian rowing team that is attending a training camp during some hot and sunny summerdays. The film introduces them as best buddies, sharing literally everything up to that point. Be it pranks and the follwing punishment at the boathouse, be it success with the rowing team or be it their first experiences with girls… during this summer and movie they are going to discover that they might not be willing or able to keep on sharing everything as they did. As it turns out there is more to bother about than the two boys girlfriends or the fact that their competing team at the camp is entirly queer, the thing that is going to bother both of them most, is their own relationship to each other, as they slowly realize that Tobi got feelings for Achim.

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If oppression was the key word when describing Eyes Wide Open, the key word for describing Summerstorm would be liberation. While there clearly are moments in this movie too where homosexuality gets stigmatized, the bigger obstacles to its characters lie in the freedom of choice the fact that they are coming of age offers to them and the general lack of orientation this brings. The topic of Summerstorm are less the restrictions society imposes upon peoples sexuality but the problems they themselves might have to define it. Due to this and its more comic setting Summerstorm stays on the brighter side of the problematic Eyes Wide Shut discussed without denying or playing it down. It therefore is clearly a movie you should see and why not on a warm and cosy summernight?

Sommersturm (Summerstorm) | Marco Kreuzpaintner | Robert Stadlober, Kostja Ullmann, Alicja Bachleda | 2004 | X-Film | imdb, Wikipedia | Images Edition Salzgeber

On a side note: Does anybody feel excluded by the change from German to English? Or offended by my reckless missuse of their mothertongue? Do you like my recommondations or don’t you care and all this is just a personal diary? In short: Do you like it or not?

This weeks recommmondation comes from Israel – by coincidence or by design – and tells a quiet and tragic love story between two men. Quiet and tragic because they are members of an jewish orthodox community in Israel, a community that is governed by the strict obeyance to jewish orthodox beliefs, traditions, rites and that therefore condems the idea of homosexual love. Haim Tabakman’s movie “Eyes Wide Open” tells the story of the impossible love between these two men in slow and often close-up pictures, his protagonists do not talk a lot, they talk through their acts or non-acts. This storytelling fits the story extremly well, because it is essentially a story of oppression, of oppression of feeling, acting and even communicating in the name of an orthodox belief.

Oppression that is excerted both by the individuals living in this community on themselves and others. The means to keep people in line mostly is social tabooization and stigmatization, starting with sheer ignorance and bad words, ascending to signs that try to deter customers to buy at the corrupt shop and its owner, going further in physical threats and finding their maximum in the shattering of the shop’s windows and a fight in the streets. All this bears a terrible resemblance to another episode in recent jewish history, namely their prosecution during the time of the 3rd Reich. This impression is further underpinned in one of the most unsettling scenes of the movie, where one of the communities youngs discusses with the Rabbi the issue of the purity of their community and the impurity that the two men bring over them.

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“Eyes Wide Open” is a dark, unpleasant and apparently necessary statement against blind orthodoxy in a society that may be threatened by the extreme obeyance to the very values that helped to create and sustain it for over 2000 years. It also is a strong reminder that plurality and tolerance are values that are constantly threatened from new angles and therefore their final protection can never be finally achieved.

Du sollst nicht lieben (Eyes wide open) | Haim Tabakman | Ran Danker, Zohar Shtrauss | 2010 | Pimpa Film Productions | imdb, Wikipedia | Images Edition Salzgeber

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Last week we caught a glimpse what the live of ordinary Iranians looks like in a state and political system that might be not so ordinary and common. What brings up the question how ordinary people, how an ordinary people can end up with a political system and society that is unordinary enough to pose as the archetype of evil in a high percentage of western evening news flashes. In short, and more ordinary ( ) terms: It is time for a short lesson in the recent history of Iran. And who would be qualified better for this job then somebody who actually witnessed the whole thing? Somebody like Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian comic author and artist who wrote and drew both the comic and later the movie “Persepolis”.

“Persepolis” is an auto-biographical piece both about the first 30 years of Marjane Satrapis life and the last 30 years in the history of Iran. And it is this duality between the little auto-biography and the big history that makes “Persepolis” a storytelling masterpiece. While Marjanes live is at times quite eventful, it is her storyline, that, by following the story of a single person, herself, about the whole span of the movie, provides a simple one-dimensional guide, a clothesline, that the author Marjane uses masterly to bring some order into the complex mess that history, especially recent history, sometimes is. She does not try to give a comprehensive or detailed overview about recent events in Iran, she simply tells the most important anecdotes from her life and by that succeeds at giving the viewer a more comprehensive overview than any detail heavy documentary could do. All the work of the author, selection, reduction, ordering is already done by her, in the natural process of remembrance, maybe this is what makes her narrative so strong.

PS: For the sake of Danielle Darrieuxs awesome grandmotherness, watch the movie in french.

Persepolis | Marjane Satrapi | Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Simon Abkarian | 2007 | 2.4.7. Films | imdb, Wikipedia

We traveled on, but we did not get far. We are now in a country that appears even stranger to us than the Lebanon did, stranger because we tend to know even less about it. And that despite the fact that you could call this country by no means underrepresented in regard to its appearances in our daily diet of carefully selected information. Only, whenever the Iran becomes a topic in our daily news flow, it is rarely the country, its landscapes or peoples, that are depicted, it is the same handful of stereotypes that is repeated again and again. The same bunch of men with inexplicable beards and even more inexplicable views, turbines rotating in some remote facility or rockets crossing a blue sky. If you follow these pictures Iran sometimes might seem like the ultimate incarnation of every menace you could think of while in fact it pretty much is a country as ordinary as every other country.

But as in every other ordinary country this country too holds the potential for rather unordinary stories, like the one of Ali. Despite the fact, that he, being a guard at a teheranian factory and, because of his past as a political prisoner, having to always work the night shifts and therefore seeing his wife and kid only very seldom, Ali leads a happy life. Until one day he returns from work, finding that his wife and kid did not return home that day. After a couple of days of desperate search and obsequious inquiry at the local police station, he is told that both of them died in a shootout between police forces and “armed troublemakers”. In a desperate attempt to seek revenge on those being responsible for the death of his beloved he kills two random policemen with his hunting rifle and then flees to the woods in the north, where he used to go hunting. But of course the police is already on his tracks…

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What does not make “The Hunter” a great movie are not its actors that are quite restricted in their acting, it is neither its narrative, a man against the state, a man against injustice, a man taking revenge, well, maybe it is a little bit this revenge that is never justified in its random choice of its objects, but in the end the narrative is neither especially new nor brilliantly told, nor the dramatization that seems to aim at the full elimination of all dramatic moments through its constant deescalation. What makes “The Hunter” special is simply that it takes place in Iran, that it shows you Iran, its landscapes, its deep, green woods hanging full of heavy mist and in contrast to that the seven million people mega-city that Teheran is, its skyline and vast highways. By mere accident, while telling a story that in its self is quite unordinary you get a small glimpse into the ordinary live of Iranians, you get to know people as ordinary as you and me. The other is not the evil, the menace, the anti-thesis, the other is ultimately ordinary and in this common commonness the artificial opposition between the self and the other gets dissolved.

The Hunter (Zeit des Zorns) | Rafi Pitts | Rafi Pitts, Mitra Hajjar, Saba Yaghoobi | 2010 | Aftab Negaran Productions, Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA) | imdb, Wikipedia

We are still in this torn country where alliances, loyalities and borders are in constant flux, where events that you do not even recognice in the first place might bring deadly perils onto you and your beloved out of a blue and sunny sky. But this time when we visit Lebanon we are coming from a different angle: We are soldiers, soldiers from Israel, the good ones – or maybe not, it was long ago and we can not recall what happened back then clearly, we only have these strange dreams where we are chased by 26 dogs through a nightly town. We are Ari Folman, an israeli filmmaker on a journey to find out about what happend back then, we meet old friends and comrades, each of them holding surreal pieces of what might have been real back then.

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“Vals Im Bashir” (Waltz with Bashir) is not entirly fictional, it is not entirly documentational, it is based on real events, the Lebanon War and the massacre of Sabra and Shatila , the dialogues that the main character has with his former comrades and friends are real interviews, the dreams might be based on actual dreams he had, but nevertheless this movie is not documentational. It reaches beyond an ordinary documentation that is, no matter how good the editing or the narration, always bound to what you can observe, to the pictures it captured. A documentary is a constant struggle for the appropriate picture, the effort to always be in the right place at the right time, if you are not, there will be no pictures, no story, no documentary. But there are places, times and events where you might find it hard to be as a filmmaker. Combat zones are one such place, the inner workings, the psyche of a human is another. The great achievement of Ari Folman’s movie is to circumvent these problems by creating his own pictures of the real events he could not capture without falling for the temptation to also create the events.

But even if you do not want to think about the inner workings and restrictions of documentary filmmaking, “Vals Im Bashir” is a good movie insofar as he will teach you the most important lesson one can learn about the conflict in the Middle East: There are no goods, there are no bads, no black, no white, only shades of grey and the borders between these might change daily.

Vals Im Bashir | Ari Folman | Ron Ben-Yishai, Ronny Dayag, Gadi Erel, Ari Folman, Dror Harazi | 2008 | Razor Film | imdb, Wikipedia | Bilder © Pandora Film

Imagine being a small boy. Maybe you are around 10 years old, maybe you are living in a sunny country, maybe your name would be Zozo. You would go to school in shorts and shirt, your bag swung loosely over your back. On the way there you would meet your friends, you would joke about girls and how you are fascinated by them, you would also talk about this ‘sex’. In school you wouldn’t really listen to what the teacher said, you would be a 10 year old boy after all. And on the way home, in this nice and sunny country, you would maybe pull off some kind of charade with your friends in order to steal some warm bread from a guy selling it in the street. It would be a wonderful life, right? If this sunny country wasn’t the civil war torn Lebanon.

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When Zozos family, after a long struggle, finally decides to leave their home, their home-town and home-country, it is already too late. Only Zozo is lucky enough to survive the mortar shells, the car bombs and the marauding soldiers. Sheer luck brings him to the airport and from there on to Sweden into the arms of his grandparents living there. Zozo is supposed to start a new live there and the small boy shows a strong will to do so, but the memories of what happend in Lebanon and the present of a gang of bullies picking on the stranger don’t make this easy for him.

Zozo tells a story about the universal cruelty of war as well as about the personal tragedy it brings. It also tells a story about the fate of being a stranger, an outsider, and about the human ability and will to struggle with and maybe even overcome that fate. Zozo is inspiring in the way that it reminds us of three things: about how lucky we are to be born at exactly the peaceful time and exactly the peacefull place that Europe is today, about how ignorant we are to the incredibility of this fact and how ignorant we are about the fate of others that were less lucky then us.

Zozo | Josef Fares | Imad Creidi, Antoinette Turk, Elias Gergi, Carmen Lebbos | 2005 | Memfis Films | imdb, Wikipedia | Bilder © Memfis Films

Silentium ist ein österreichischer Film. Und auch wenn er nicht in Wien, im Urbild der morbiden Alpenrepubliksstadt, spielt, passt das ganz hervorragend – denn Abgründe und der lakonische Umgang mit ihnen… Das passt ganz wunderbar in das Klischee, aber auch die Sprache unseres Nachbarlandes.

Der heute wieder aktuelle Abgrund – der war schon da. Und das lakonische, um das muss man sich vielleicht bemühen, aber Haas’ Buch, Regisseur Wolfgang Murnberger, Hader und das ganze Ensemble liefern das achselzuckend, trocken und ohne eingespielte Lacher vom Band. Wie es sein soll.

Da ist der Titel-Anti-Held Brenner in Salzburg gestrandet, als Kaufhausdetektiv in der Provinzoperettenstadt… Und der FM4-Moderator Hermes flüstert es als Off-Stimme schon ganz zu Anfang: “Jetzt ist schon wieder was passiert”. Der Mann der Festspiel-Prinzessin ist vom Mönchsberg in Tod gestürzt – und war doch gerade dabei einen Prozess gegen die katholische Kirche anzustrengen, behauptete, als Kind sexuell missbraucht worden zu sein…

Irgendwer ganz anders muss es herausfinden, und irgendwie ist es der Brenner, der das tun muss. Sich in das Klosterinternat einschleichen. Und das wäre eine ganz schön simple Krimigeschichte, wäre der Film nicht so unverfroren in seinen Bildern: Da muss der Brenner als getarnter Hilfsarbeiter ein übermannsgroßes Kruzifix durch die Gänge tragen, von dem eben noch der Jesus abgeschraubt wurde, der Pfarrer gibt den Judaskuss – und schon längst wäre unser sarkastischer Antiheld in der zu seiner Abwehr gestrickten Intrige hoffnungslos verfangen worden… Würde für die Salzburger Polizei nicht das Wort der Festspielsippe alle Zweifel bei Seite wischen… Und die, die Kulturelite, bekommt natürlich auch ihr Fett weg.

Am Ende kommt ohnehin noch ganz anderes zum Vorschein, und das ist nicht nur der Brenner, der sich mit einer Treppe aus Kästen feinstem Salzburger Bier der Marke Stiegl einen Treppenweg ins Freie baut. Und wissen Sie schon, wie das mit den Knackwürsten und dem Leberkäs ist?

Erschreckend und kritisch und feingeistig und sarkastisch und ein Lachen zur Auflockerung – this is as bright as it gets, wenn der Weg in Österreichs Düster führt.

Auch empfehlenswert sind freilich die anderen beiden Teile der Brenner-Trilogie: In Komm süßer Tod geht es um die Leichen in den Krankenwagen Wiens, in Der Knochenmann um verzweifelte Liebe und ihre grausligen Folgen im Nirgendwo der Land- und Bergwelt. Dazwischen stolpern der Hader, also: Der Brenner und sein Freund Berti umher, und so nebenbei passiert eine Einführung in die amüsanten Abgründe der Volksseele, untermalt von den Sofa Surfers.

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Silentium | Wolfgang Murnberger | Josef Hader, Simon Schwarz, Maria Köstlinger, Joachim Król, Jürgen Tarrach | Musik: Sofa Surfers | 2004 | imdb, wikipedia |

Titelfoto: (c) DORFilm, Pedro Domenigg

Völlig moderne Menschen sind es, die über den Bildschirm flimmern: Daniel, Legastheniker und Taugenichts im eher sachten Gewirr der dänischen Hauptstadt Kopenhagen, sprüht in einer Mischung aus Naivität und Pragmatismus für immer zu wenig Schwarzgeld Liebeserklärungen an die Hauswände. Der Junge, den sie Opa nannten arbeitet im Schlaflabor und versucht seinen Lebenstraum vom Überblick als Schiedsrichter für den Dänischen Fußballbund zu verwirklichen. Franc wohnt im Haus ihrer Mutter – und verliert ihren Bäckereijob, als sie auf Pilzen versucht Zimtschnecken zu verkaufen.

Das Leben ist ein Spiel – und in den Farben der Fernsehfrühzeit wirkt diese Sorglosigkeit, als wär sie schon vergangen. Oder ist tatsächlich am Kippen: Alles geht ein wenig schief, klappt nicht so ganz. Daniels und Francs Nordsommerliebe bekommt sehr reale Folgen, Opas Welt will sich nicht in das Planraster fügen, und die Sprayerei endet vor Gericht… Zeit loszulassen. “Voksne mennesker”, erwachsene Menschen, heißt Káris Film im Original.

Das schmerzt ein bisschen. Aber da sind auch noch die Erwachsenen im Film: Daniels Vater, Francs etwas verdrehte Mutter, und vor allem Daniels Richter – der das Schlafen verlernt hat, in seinem schönen Vorstadthaus, und den Weg heraus sucht… Und da gibt es auf einmal keinen Zielpunkt mehr, nur Menschenleben in schwarz-weiß, solche Einzigartigkeiten, die im Mittel ein Grau ergeben. Ein verschwimmendes, vergehendes. Und die eine Szene in Farbe: Franc schlafend auf Daniels Beifahrersitz, und eine Entscheidung. Menschen.leben.

Noch schöner als in der deutschen Version ist der Film auf dänisch mit englischen Untertiteln. Zum einen klingt die deutsche Synchronisation wie ein Gespräch in einer Sardinenbüchse – zum anderen: Dänisch ist eine wunderbare Sprache für das Bild des Biographiengewirr am Rand des Mainstreams.

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Dark Horse/Voksne Mennesker | Dagur Kárí | Jacob Cedergren, Tilly Scott Pedersen, Nicolas Bro, Morten Suurballe, Bodil Jørgensen | Musik: Slowblow | 2005 | imdb, wikipedia |

Hot Fuzz ist etwas in dieser Art. Edgar Wrights und Simon Peggs Nachfolger für den – naja, zugegebenermaßen – komischen Shawn of the Dead. Eine Zombie-Horror-Persiflage war das, britisch.

Hot Fuzz spielt zunächst in einem realen – und gar nicht übermäßig klamaukigen – Setting: Der Londoner Spitzenpolizist Nicholas Angel (eine Biographie wie ein erwachsenes Fast-Track-Kid) wird aufs flache gloucestershirisches Land versetzt: Die Festnahmequoten wurden seinen Vorgesetzten langsam gefährlich: Zuviel Konkurrenz belebt das Geschäft zu sehr.

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Angel übertreibt es auch im Nirgendwo etwas mit der Genauigkeit, inhaftiert die Dorf-Kids für ihren minderjährigen Alkoholkonsum, kabbelt sich mit den schlafmützigen Dorffahndern, findet immerhin einen gutmütigen Vertrauten – dass irgendwann eine Mordserie einsetzt überrascht kaum, und die Erklärung ist weder umwerfend komisch, noch irgendwie relevant; die Mordfälle überzeichnet, gut… Nichts was einen bierernsten Arte-Konsumenten begeistert hätte.

Und dann folgt das 40-minütige Finale furioso: Es hagelt Szenen hollywoodesker Heroerei, Schießereien mit rentnerischen Supergaunern, Fischwerfereien im Supermarkt, markige Sprüche, eine Seemine explodiert und Bruce Willis hätte sich gerne einmal diese Menge an Maschinengewehren umgeschnallt. Aaron A. Aaronson und ein Schwan haben ihren Auftritt. Selbst eine Godzilla-Referenz darf nicht fehlen, und ja, bitte, nun: Wenn schon Special Effects, dann so. Was für ein praller, satter business-zynischer Spaß. Ganz ehrlich. Schöne Grüße nach Hollywood. – Und vielleicht nahm man den Aufgalopp, nun ja… etwas zu bierernst.

Hot Fuzz | Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg | Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Timothy Dalton, Jim Broadbent, Eve Draper | 2007 | imdb, wikipedia |