Buddenbrooks (2008) User Reviews (4)

Rushed job. Read the book instead.

[topitimo-829-270459 · 5/10 · 16 January 2020]

Director Heinrich Breloer has throughout his career shown interest in classic German literature. This is one of the more ambitious efforts by Breloer, an adaptation of Thomas Mann's massive family saga from 1901. It's not Breloer's first stab at the Nobel-winning writer, since he previously made a miniseries about his life (2001), with actor Armin Mueller-Stahl in the lead role. They re-team in "Buddenbrooks" (2008), with Mueller-Stahl playing the family patriarch. He gives the only memorable performance in the film.

Thomas Mann is near-impossible to adapt, not just because of the great length of his finest novels, but the psychological depth in them, the detailed depiction of the present moment and the philosophical nature of the dialogue. The bar has been set pretty low, with efforts such as Hans W. Geissendörfer's "The Magic Mountain" (1982), which turned the existential mystery of life into something resembling Kubrick's "The Shining" (1980). The worst offense you can commit against a writer like Mann in an adaptation, is to be in a hurry. And unfortunately, by choosing the format of a feature film instead of a television series, you are forced to do just that.

I personally prefer "The Magic Mountain" to "Buddenbrooks" as a novel. They have a quarter of a century between them, and Mann has clearly developed as a psychological narrator by "The Magic Mountain". Still, the earlier work is great as well, though it is more enjoyable near the beginning than near its end. This adaptation is two and a half hours long, so it doesn't feel like too much time has elapsed by the end of it. Yet, the super-fast tempo makes the whole very uninteresting. The characters aren't fleshed out to have personalities, and the financial decline of the family starts way too abruptly.

Breloer is clearly working with a considerable budget, as the outdoor scenes looked nice and fitting for the historical period. Yet every single scene in this film goes over too fast. You don't get to enjoy the epoch. Together with the rushed pace of the screenplay, the polished visuals make the characters look unrealistically clean, and empty in spirit.

Had he chosen to do this as an eight hour miniseries, this might be a pretty watchable adaptation. Yet I fear to say that even then Breloer would not have been a unique enough film-maker, and the end product would have been a visual re-telling of the novel, instead of a well-thought-out, personal art work of its own. If this makes you interested about Thomas Mann, it's good, but that's unlikely.

Read the book instead, it wins you over really fast.

The downfall of a family

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 1 January 2015]

The 2008 movie "Buddenbrooks", directed by Heinrich Breloer, is not the first time that this Thomas Mann novel was put on screen. Breloer made "Die Manns - Ein Jahrhundertroman" earlier, a film about the man who wrote "Buddenbrooks" and actually Armin Mueller-Stahl played Thomas Mann. Here he plays the patriarch of the Buddenbrooks family. Apart from him, this film has quite an interesting cast, some of Germany's finest actors and actresses: August Diehl, Jessica Schwarz, Alexander Fehling, Iris Berben, Justus von Dohnányi may all be known to those interested in German cinema. The film runs for roughly 2.5 hours and is very long, but I rarely felt that it dragged. Good job all in all. The first half hour is about Jessica Schwarz' character and her unhappy marriage with another merchant. She never loved him, but her father did not allow her to marry the one she actually loves as he lacked standing.

Actually, this film worked best as a pure drama. There are some moments when it tries to include some humor, but none of these really work, like the greedy cake eater or laughing about one guy's wart. If anything funny worked, it was Sylvester Groth's weird character with his very unique smile. However, I would almost say his complete inclusion and appearance was also, in fact, dramatic. I was a bit surprised to see Jean Buddenbrook already die before the one-hour mark, but from that moment on it was all about the lives of the three children. We find out about the next (unhappy) relationships from everybody involved, how one son is very fragile while the other tries to lead the company just like his father did and how these two keep having conflicts for the rest of the film. One scene I found particularly interesting is when Diehl's character's girlfriend, a singer, is pregnant and the other Buddenbrook son becomes a father too, with a violinist. The reactions from the mother played by Iris Berben are so different. The other son was played by Mark Waschke, not a name to many, but he held his own very well against the more famous cast members. Berben, however, is actually forgettable. Very stereotypical character and performance with little to remember. Mueller-Stahl stays in the mind much more.

In the end, there is a few more deaths and the downfall of the Buddenbrook empire is sealed, genetically and economically. As a whole, I enjoyed this movie. It is neither extremely outstanding nor bad, but I felt it was an interesting watch. One of the things I liked most was the makeup or maybe also casting work. Waschke looked a lot like Diehl in many scenes which makes sense as they were brothers and Schwarz' aging make-up is just as convincing as her similarity in looks compared to her movie mother Iris Berben.

Flat, ways too fast and bad acted

[onlinebirgit · 1/10 · 21 March 2016]

I didn't expect too much from a modern adaptation of the famous novel of Thomas Mann, but this movie is simply a bad joke. What a kitsch, what a flatness! The original novel is told slowly with a lot of humor, wit and delicacy; the movie instead tries to squeeze the whole plot into two hours, which results in an unbearable speed of pictures, scenes, half-told stories and fast & colorful scenes without sense, simply not nice to see any more. It takes twenty minutes until some recognizable scene shows up. Half of the story is invented, which is of course disappointing when you know the novel.

It could have been a good movie despite of all this, when you forget the novel and see it as a different story. But here, why on earth is the acting so poor? The actors talk, laugh, move and behave like an average 21th century German film-cast. No one talks the northern dialect and there is no sign of class differences in the language. They try, but they don't succeed. Just think of Gosford Park / Downtown Abbey, one of my favorites, where every detail just fits into the time picture.

Most ridiculous scene: main characters who play the violin but can't. Total no-go. Moving around with a bow, holding the instrument without moving the fingers, while great melodies are heard, come on, you can do this in some cheap production or in a TV commercial, but not in a movie that wants to be taken serious.

I tried to watch it anyway, just for enjoying some historic sites, but impossible. Stopped halfway. Boring, kitsch, annoying. Please excuse my poor English, I am still too upset... man... incredible.

poor picture of a family

[Vincentiu · 8 July 2013]

impressive if it remains invitation to discover the novel. nice if you know the Thomas Mann novel. interesting if you search atmosphere . short - it is a beautiful fresco. not exactly the best adaptation but an useful exercise to understand a piece of German history. the acting is almost good. the ambition to create a credible image of legendary work has seductive parts but, at all, it is far to be more than a project with too much ambitions. and mistakes. not bad, it is only vision of a team, testimony about a fight against pages and images.the locomotive - Armin Mueller - Stahl is an inspired Johann Buddenbroock but is not enough.a fresco for a family evolution. but far to be a good adaptation.