Post-Unification German Cinema

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SubjectMovies
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CHOOSE 3 QUESTIONS TO ANSWER FROM THE DOCUMENT. mini essay per question (not combined) When you use essay format, you automatically define what your argument is, not only for the reader but for you too, so you know what you are arguing towards. 2. The middle part of your essay is your supportive arguments, which must be “unpacked” and explained in detail. a. lighting techniques used, b. camera angles used, c. actions of characters (smoking, drinking, kissing, bobbing leg up and down, etc.), d. posture of characters, e. costumes, f. soundtrack, g. mis-en-scene, h. what effects the described sequences have i. [cultura l, etc.] perspective of the viewer, j. why all these things are important to your argument 3. Finally, provide a conclusion which sums up your arguments. Direct references to thoughts or ideas expressed in the reading materials (with which you may or may not agree) always impress your instructor and often garner extra points. When you use essay format, you automatically define what your argument is, not only for the reader but for you too, so you know what you are arguing towards. 2. The middle part of your essay is your supportive arguments, which must be “unpacked” and explained in detail. a. lighting techniques used, b. camera angles used, c. actions of characters (smoking, drinking, kissing, bobbing leg up and down, etc.), d. posture of characters, e. costumes, f. soundtrack, g. mis-en-scene, h. what effects the described sequences have i. [cultura l, etc.] perspective of the viewer, j. why all these things are important to your argument 3. Finally, provide a conclusion which sums up your arguments. 1. Direct references to thoughts or ideas expressed in the reading materials (with which you may or may not agree) always impress your instructor and often garner extra points.

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Q3.

Run Lola Run is a thriller film produced in 1998 by Germany. It was composed and directed by Tom Tykwer. The main characters are Lola and Manni. The story follows a lady who needs to get 100,000 Deutsche Mark in twenty minutes to spare her sweetheart’s life. The notion of love is seen right from the beginning. So Lola must run for Manni, her lover, who has lost the cash he was carrying for his vindictive boss.

It is true that love is a redemptive force in the motion picture. The film is an intense, quick-paced action film with a somewhat simplistic plot and unexpectedly philosophical ramifications about love, romance, destiny, possibility, time, decision, and result. Not a second in this motion picture is exhausting as it is both physically and rationally straining.

Toward the start of Run Lola Run, two quotes are shown, one about time and investigation as kind of a patterned procedure and the other is a rational explanation of what an amusement and romance is. Although the life the characters live looks like a game, these two accounts offer ascent to love and care which is one of the important themes of the motion picture (Tykwer, 1998). At that point, the pendulum of a clock is indicated swinging forward and backward. The camera gets into the “mouth” of the expressionistic-looking time clock. The idea of time in this motion picture is consistently critical, and this activity of entering this bizarre looking clock infers that time is critical in the relationship between the two main characters, Manni and Lola.

On an exceptionally fundamental level, Run Lola Run demonstrates a confidence in the romantic possibilities of motion pictures. It isn’t beguiling or mysterious. However, Tykwer isn’t embarrassed about making the world where anything is conceivable: last-minute double-crossings or last-minute supernatural occurrences, the sudden spurts of good fortunes or misfortune that can get you giggling at the sheer fantasy of everything. He’s the sort of romantic who’s distinctly of the present moment, sprung from music recordings and Gameboys (Tykwer, 1998). The film is developed from a perspective of a kid who is defeated at an early stage of a game and therefore the child has to protect everything else that remains as her motivation.

The presence of the profound association and love between them both is built up to the viewer by Lola’s enduring inspiration to help Manni in any capacity conceivable. Essentially close-ups are utilized as Lola and Manni are on the telephone to catch the affection in both of their faces because of the circumstance. The outrage and dread controlled by Manni is additionally reflected in the camera shots. The shots of Manni on the telephone are moderately irregular, and various viewpoints are utilized indeed acting to typify his feelings. Conversely, the shots of Lola are for longer durations and are steadier mirroring her composure. In the flashback scenes medium shots and long shots are utilized as an approach to better demonstrate the love scenes the two had. The backing techno track raises the pressure and conveys the magical moments the two have.

The mise-en-scene of the whole film is set up in the scene where Lola gets to be related fundamentally with the colour red. Her hair is red; she has a red telephone, red candles, and red publications. These colors show romance and love. Manni is connected with yellow. The telephone stall is yellow and has blonde hair highlights. The spatial separations are all sensible, and the telephone corner and room measurements are typical. The phone stall Manni is in has a nearby, claustrophobic feeling, strengthening the pressure-filled “tight” situation that he has ended up in but at the same time showing respect for Lola’s love.

When the situation becomes typically very tight for them, lighting is used to show their feelings. Lola’s room is untidy with dim with worn out blinds just letting in a little measure of light as a sign of desperation since Manni is not with her. The sensible mise-en-scene Run Lola Run has, essentially puts the viewer on the same edge of thought as the characters. This both adds pressure to the scene and makes a more profound association the viewers have with the characters about decision and outcome.

Q2.

Goodbye Lenin is a German movie that can be described as one tragicomedy film. It was produced in 2003. The film’s setting is in East Berlin dating from 1989, a year after the German reunification. The movie presents Alex who lives with his sister Ariane and his mom. Ariane has an infant by the name Paula.

Christiane is shown as being a staunch supporter of the ruling party, Socialist Unity Part of Germany. Alex, on the other hand, is a supporter of the opposition. Alex is then arrested by the government which makes his mother suffer from a near-heart attack. He is later released and goes to check on his mother in the hospital where he meets Lara, a nurse from the Soviet Union.

It is during that period that the Berlin Wall falls and Erich Hoecker resigns from office. From then, capitalism finds its way to East Berlin.

Alex and Lara have made an effort to ensure that their Christiane does not know of the reunification of the East and West Germany. This is because it could have caused her situation to deteriorate (Becker, 2003). They, therefore, revert everything that is from West Germany to look like it is from the East. Alex is able to maintain that until the mother finally dies a year later without full knowledge that the East Germany she knew was long gone.

The film deviates from the historical accuracy in a way that it shows since right from the start, it shows East Germany as exhibiting a high level of precision. We can see Alex narrating how his mother works within the education system of the East. The system is shown as having a strong emphasis on the German language. This was not the case either. There are other inconsistences in the reunification of the two Germanys. The film shows East Germany’s government selling its people to the west for pharmaceutical companies to be used for experiments (Becker, 2003).

This movie plays a great role in showing the division and unification of the two Germanys. Despite its success in trying to combine comedy, perseverance, and history, the film, however, might distort the history of the modern Germany. Those people who might not have in-depth knowledge of the country might think that the Former Communist East Germany served aa great role in destroying the piece of the region.

The Lives of Others, on the other hand, which is a 2006 film shows the final years of the East Germany’s decaying socialist rule. The film tells the story of a loyal artist who is driven the coldly and dissent secret policeman who is assigned to tackle his case (Cooke, 2013). The police officer, however, is provoked by disillusionment and disgust thus becoming his furtive protector. The film, unlike Good Bye Lenin (2003) that showed serious issues but claimed little-sustained engagement of the Communist dictatorship regime, this one deals squarely with the role played by the ministry of state security that made efforts to secure the regime’s power over the people. The films provide an opportunity to revisit the history of the Eastern Germany through the sordid reality of surveillance and infiltration. The grubbiness of GDR is also shown through the events that happened then. The accuracy of the events that happened then is, however, questionable. The duties and responsibilities of the ministry of state security might have provided a deeper interpretation of its place in the German Democratic Republic society but then obscures as much as illuminates the happenings and the historical happenings of East German history.

The film shows limitations in authentic history depiction. The details presented in the film might be misleading and therefore distort the history of the recent Germany (Bauman, 2009). This is because the workings of the Staci are at particular points misinterpreted. A good example is where Wiesler is shown as a jack-of-all-trade that engages in different activities ranging from analysis, training, interrogation, routine surveillance and technical installation. In reality, the bureaucratic state had well-defined systems of division of labor and therefore all the above-named functions were spread out.

The nature of inclusiveness, therefore, makes The Lives of Others seem to make a greater contribution to the history of Germany as compared to Good Bye Lenin. It covers more aspects that encompassed the two Germanys than the latter.

The film weaves together interfacing stories to make a randomly woven artwork of the peculiar side of human experience; every story concentrates on an intense unrealised desire or an impartially tragic human failing, rendered redeemable in the hazily funny setting of the film. The film is a blend of a progression of occasions extending from a journey through a strange Germany, a cop in a bear costume. A female documentary filmmaker who can’t get an intriguing story, a pedicurist who painstakingly puts aside the hard skin he had removed from the feet of one of his old female patient. A rich couple that declines to sit in a German-fabricated auto. A history student uninterested in a class visit to a concentration camp to a wild man spending time with a raven in a forested area.

In this anthology film, all characters are either bound by family ties or a moment of an incident in a nation where the sun dependably sparkles, and everyone is wonderful, gracious, efficient or upbeat. That is until they discover their darker side, and we find that the progression from idyll to Inferno is a short one. Finsterworld is an unexpected film brimming with malevolent perceptions and sharp-tongued comments that show what Germany was in the past.

Looking at a few loosely connected stories, the film investigates German identity and the failure of individuals to be genuinely themselves and admit to other people who they truly are or what they truly need. Finsterworld brings the feeling of a sprawling mosaic in the main reel, as new characters and situations continue featuring, but as the story advances, the connections and the characters’ issues take shape rapidly and unmistakably. The opening’s valuable pedicurist, Claude, is en route to his most loved customer, the elderly Mrs. Sandberg. Her moderately aged child and his demanding wife (Harfouch) need to go to Paris yet can’t get a plane, so they choose to drive. “No Nazi autos!” she barks into the telephone at the agent who seeks to get her a rental automobile.

Sandberg’s’ preppy child (Gierszal) is on a school trip when he spooks easy targets like Dominik and his companion, the bespectacled Natalie. At first, it’s merely verbal insults, yet at the concentration camp, they’re accompanied by their class teacher who is depicted as being self-satisfied.

A different strand inspects the relationship of the documentary-maker, Sandra Huller in emergency and her man, Tom, the cop who stopped Claude in the opening and who, in spite of his uniform or maybe as a result of it, ends up being somebody in desperate need of some human warmth (Finsterwalder, 2013). At a fairly compromising moment, that necessitates a change of outfit. A man, (Johannes Krisch) who lives in the woods, and clearly in concordance with nature spies on Tom at that particular moment.

The film changes apparently normal individuals – at least for a moment – into a sort of unrecognizable creatures. Every story is convincing and nuanced, testing the view of the edified self and what individuals can do. A lot of the characters have nothing noteworthy in their lives and battle to acquire or even characterize it, something that may partially be because of an absence of good role models for the Germans, as one of the characters proposes. Indeed, Finsterwalder is so aspiring and handles large subjects, for example, German identity head-on, putting some exceptionally savvy disclosures in the mouth of some of her most young heroes (Finsterwalder, 2013).

Finsterworld’s youth request for a reason and social striking nature in a nation where their biggest and only typical export is a toothbrush mustache. Finsterwalder’s shadowy world longs for genuineness and the past that simply isn’t there. Amid the visit to the concentration camp: while the teens shuffle in boredom, the instructor tries frantically to accentuate the outrages of the Nazis, but to no avail.

The film gives an overview of Germany’s past which is pasted as having no creativity. It also shows the effects of the Nazi regime; no country was willing to do business with leaving them with too little to export. Misery was part of the citizens’ daily experiences.

References

Bauman, Z. (2009). Modernity and the Holocaust. Cornell University Press.

Finsterwalder, F. (2013). Finsterworld. Walker+Worm Film/Munich, in co-production with Lhasa Films/Berlin, BR/Munich.

Becker, W. (2003) Good Bye, Lenin! ‎X-Filme Creative Pool, Germany.

Cooke, P., (ed.): (2013) The Lives of Others, Contemporary German Film. A Companion. De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston,

Tykwer, T. (1998). Run Lola Run. Film Quarterly (ARCHIVE) 53.3