A sharp and thoughtful look at contemporary German approach to dealing with the country's weighted past. Finsterwalder crafts the film with strange and yet ordinary moments that make us think about our own morals, expectations, and judgments. We get a glimpse into the life of each character - a mere sketch - (but a very accurate one at that) and that is enough for us to fill in the gaps and relate to them; the viewer need not be of German descent to understand the inherent turmoil present in our parents' and grandparent' generations; it is all very fluid, very grounded, very human. However life is, with its good and its evil, we have to accept it and keep living - somehow, is what she seems to be saying. An excellent, and daring film.
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karlstevenson12 October 2014
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Gordon-112 November 2014This film tells the stories of a pedicurist, a bird lover, an elderly woman in an old age home, a group of students going for a day trip, a married couple who disliked Germany, a policeman who has a thing for fur, a teacher and a documentary filmmaker. Their lives are very varied but connected in some ways to each other. However, the biggest connection of all is the tragedy of reality. Every character in the film is flawed, and most of them end up in varying degrees of tragedy. It is a captivating film that makes me reflect on life, and appreciate the fact that reality is harsh and unwelcoming. Good things do not necessarily happen to good people is the prominent message.
Despite the depressing content, I thoroughly enjoyed watching this emotionally challenging film. -
thebadgeresss15 July 2019This movie is weird and ordinary at the same time. The viewer is left alone in astonishment, disgust and awe. Highly recommend it, if you want to think about the abyss of mankind and turn towards the sun after just to see it's the little things that count...
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Horst_In_Translation17 October 2013"Finsterworld" is Frauke Finsterwalder's first fictional film after two documentaries. On the one hand, the title is a play of words with her surname (translated Finsterwood), on the other it uses the German term for "gloomy". And this is a nice description for the general tone of the movie. It's really a bit of a nightmarish world and you could certainly make a point for putting this in the horror genre, at first really more subtle, but towards the end drama ensues on all fronts (some catastrophic, some minor). The film features a prominent cast, especially looking at the female actors: Sandra Hüller is one of the greatest German talents since "Requiem" (always reminds me a bit of Michelle Williams), Carla Juri just had her big breakthrough in Charlotte Roche's "Feuchtgebiete", Margit Carstensen is experience personified and already starred in Fassbinder's films back in the 70s and Corinna Harfouch may be the closest we have to Meryl Streep with lots of excellent performances under her belt (the most known possibly Magda Goebbels in "Der Untergang").
So all the ingredients are there, right? Well, unfortunately not. While the world created in the first 75 minutes was surely an interesting one and not really too different from ours with everybody having their very own flaws, the director seemed eager to end it with a bang on almost all fronts and sadly sacrificed credibility and tension for it. The outcast seems to have really no purpose in the story than to shoot the boy in the car near the end exactly when he discovers his very own path out of his chains. Quite the irony. What I liked though was the final scene of the Sandberg family, who's pretty much the center of the film and creates links to all sub-stories, at the nursing home. It teaches us to care for our elderly before it's too late. The storyline with Zehrfeld and Hüller as a couple, however, did add absolutely nothing to the movie, even if it was well-acted, and I got the feeling it was really only in there for the furry-part to kinda shock and amuse the audience at the same time. It just was not interesting at all. Actually I'd say, the two would have rather deserved their own film showing his police-work and fetishes and her job struggles, but the way it was displayed here, it just felt rushed in there shoddily with no real character development. Admittedly, the final shot at the bench was not too bad, maybe the best thing about their story.
As a whole, the movie suffered from too many incongruencies (yes it was weird and supposed to be so, but still) and here and there even a glaring plot hole. The shooting was unnecessary, the pushing into the chamber as well and I just can't believe the teacher could end up as the scapegoat anyhow. He freed her and, even if the situation could indeed have been misinterpreted initially, there's no way Juri's character wouldn't say that he got her out and she did not see who pushed her in. Of course it's the guys who keep bullying her and her friend all the time. That was really the main problem I had with the ending, not that she pretty much turned into "normal" afterward again, but how it all unfolded. Even if I didn't really like the film, I'd like to end it on a positive note. The Cat Stevens song used at the start and end was a nice inclusion and "Finsterworld" is packed with many interesting movie references. -
belden_fox8 March 2014This is one of those movies where multiple characters weave and interconnect through multiple stories which all reach their dramatic conclusions in a burst of activity at the end of the film. Unfortunately whatever charms this movie has in its first half evaporate in the second, when the director tries to inject a false sense of dramatic weight by having almost every storyline devolve into meanness and tragedy. In the final quarter the movie piles on more and more contrived events and inexplicable reactions from the characters, glossing over the more glaring ones by stuffing them into a where-are-they-now montage at the very end. And even the first half relies a bit much on caricatures, such as the German couple who spend an inordinate amount of time discussing how much they loathe everything German while simultaneously reveling in the wealth Germany's economic might has bestowed on them. If you're really in the mood for this sort of thing go watch Robert Altman's "Short Cuts" instead.
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"...And tell them we don't want to rent any Nazi cars like Mercedes, BMW, and Porches..."
Just saw about an hour and a half of this waste of my life, today. The ostensible message of this film is that below the bright, shining, cloud-free existences of each protagonist, there lies an unrelenting antagonist. That is not enough to make this worth the time it takes to realize you're not being entertained but manipulated.
This director was obviously trying to imitate the plot devices in both Babylon and Crash, in weaving together five stories that end up involving each other. Not an original premise. However, if done properly and in good taste, such plot devices can be entertaining for the short attention spans of modern audiences.
Problem is, you've got to have someone for whom you can root, for whom there is at least a modicum of compassion, in any movie that is to be worthwhile. Save for the nursing home mother who becomes the victim of a perverted pedicurist, and a bullied school boy, both of whom end up deceased, no one else in Finsterworld who survives will be given a second thought, regardless of the message.
What you're left with is the dubious imagination of someone who has not lived enough to reflect a life that is at least a possibility.