Daniel Garber talks with Mascha Schilinski about Sound of Falling
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
There’s an old farmhouse near a river somewhere in Northern Germany where Alma, a little girl with blonde hair plays practical jokes on her maid; adolescent Erika stares longingly at a naked man with one leg; a brash young Angelika asserts her sexuality even as she hides her pain; and naive Lenka navigates her parents’ new home. All of this in and around a looming, ancient farmhouse full of repressed memories of violence and trauma… but separated by generations: WWI in the 1910s, the end of WWII in the 1940s, in East Germany in the1980s and the present day. Each chapter punctuated by a terrible thud, the sound of falling.
Sound of Falling is a complex, intricate and powerful new movie, that looks at a century of life in rural Northern 
Germany through the eyes of four girls and women, interweaving their separate stories throughout the entire film. It’s tender and horrifying, mundane and jaw-dropping. It’s co-written and directed by award-winning Berlin filmmaker Mascha Schilinski, her first feature after studying cinema at the Filmschule Hamburg and direction at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg. Her movie won the prestigious Jury Prize at Cannes, played at TIFF and is on the 2026 Oscar shortlist for Best International Feature.
I spoke with Mascha in Los Angeles via ZOOM.
Sound of Falling opens theatrically in Canada on January 23rd, 2026.
Different. Films reviewed: Father Mother Sister Brother, Primate, The Choral
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This week I’m looking at three very different movies from diverse genres: historical drama, suspense horror, and an arthouse tryptic. There’s a choir in England, a killer chimp in Hawaii, and three sets of adults visiting their parents in the US, France and Ireland.
Father Mother Sister Brother
Wri/Dir: Jim Jarmusch (Only Livers Left Alive, Paterson)
Jeff (Adam Driver: Ferrari, White Noise, House of Gucci, Marriage Story, The Report, Black KKKlansman, Paterson, Hungry Hearts, ) and Emily (Mayim Bialik) are on a long road trip to visit their dad (Tom Waites: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, The Old Man & the Gun ). They’re worried about him: his health, well-being and financial status, ever since their mom — his wife — died. Maybe he needs some money? He lives in a remote wooden house beside a frozen pond, somewhere in New England. But their annual visits are always short, awkward and perfunctory. Meanwhile, in Dublin, Ireland, two sisters Lilith (Vicky Krieps: The There Musketeers, Old ) and Timothea (Cate Blanchett: Black Bag, Borderlands, Tar, Nightmare Alley, Don’t Look Up, Stateless, Truth, Blue Jasmine, Hanna,) are visiting their Mom (Charlotte Rampling: Benedetta, The Sense of an Ending, 45 Years, ) for high tea. She lives in an elegant home where they meet once a year. But the adult daughters are too busy playing pranks and hiding secrets to pay much attention to their Mom’s petits fours. And sister and brother Skye and Billy (Indya Moore, Luka Sabbat) are paying a final visit to their late parents’ long-time flat in Paris after visiting the family storage locker. Can parents ever understand their kids? Are adult children really grow up? And can family dynamics 
ever evolve past childhood?
Father Mother Sister Brother is a triptych that looks at three sets of families in sequence: uptight, white-bread American sister-brothers with a cooler dad, eccentric sisters still terrified of their very chill mom, and hip Black-American sister-brothers from Paris whose much cooler parents recently died in an accident. The segments all share an unusual number of themes: Long drives, short visits, skateboarders on the street, discussions about water, whether a certain brand of wristwatch they’re wearing is real or counterfeit. So my immediate impression is it has great acting — Vicky Krieps, Tom Waits, Cate Blanchett, and Charlotte Rampling! I love Jarmusch’s distinctive style and wonderful cinematography, its visual and musical dynamics with a well-planned pace. But it’s way too repetitive to the point where it felt like an extended product-placement for Rolex. Once is cute, twice is funny, three times is just repetitive. But when I though about it some more, a week afterwards, I started to appreciate it as a baroque theme and variation, building on the original chapter but with slightly new twists each time. A slice-of-life from each family, put together to form a still life, a triptych.
Does it work? I’ll give it a qualified yes. It’s not my favourite Jim Jarmusch film, too long, too slow, too repetitive, but it does leave you with enough images to make it worth seeing.
The Choral
Dir: Nicholas Hytner
It’s a one-factory town in England during WWI. The local industrialist sponsors a chorus each year at Christmastime, there’s a noticeable dearth in participants with all the young men rushing off to join the army. Gone too is their chorus master. So they are forced to compromise and rehire someone controversial from their past, a certain Mr Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes: The Return, Conclave, A Bigger Splash). Though well- known in the music world, he carries a stain: he only recently returned from the Kaiser’s Germany, the enemy his country is fighting. The fact he had a male lover in Germany is also suspect but never spoken of. Another problem is what can they sing? All the local favourites are written by Bach, Brahms, Beethoven or Handel, Germans all. They decide to perform The Dream of Gerontius — an Oratorio by Elgar who A) is still alive, and B) still English.
Next they hold auditions and manage to find one returned soldier missing an arm, but with a angelic voice (Jacob Dudman), a young woman in the Salvation Army named Mary (Amara Okereke) whose notes are pure as the driven snow, and their benefactor — the industrialist — who sings an 
adequate baritone. But can the chorus be ready in time? And what will they do when Elgar himself shows up?
The Choral is a wonderful period drama about trying to put on a show despite all the hurdles in their way. With a large ensemble cast, it follows diverse storielines and covers wide ground: local prejudices, patriotism and hatred, first sexual experiences, love, valour, passion, rejection… and the dark cloud of war hanging over it all. I love the music, the acting, 
cinematography, but the movie itself is even bigger than the sum of its parts. I think we owe that to the writer, Alan Bennett, and the director Nicholas Hytner. You may be familiar with their past collaborations on stage and screen: The History Boys, The Madness of King George, and The Old Lady in the Van, to name a few. Like them the Choral is once again both grand and intimate, dealing with heavy issues but always light and clever.
I quite enjoyed this one.
Primate
Co-Wri/Dir: Johannes Roberts (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, The Strangers: Prey at Night)
It’s another perfect day in Hawaii, and Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) is really happy to be flying home again. Yes, she likes going to college but she also misses her family and home in Hawaii. Her late mom was a linguist who worked with apes in the style of Jane Goodall. And their dad (Troy Kotsur), is a bestselling author who was born deaf. So she and her shy little sister grew up speaking American Sign Language with their dad and another sign-and-spoken language with the chimpanzee Ben, who, though he sleeps in his own caged enclosure, is almost considered a part of their family. Coming home with her are her BFF Kate (Victoria Wyant), Kate’s brother Nick (Benjamin Cheng) who Lucy has a secret crush on, her frenemy Hannah (Jess Alexander), and a pair of himbos Hannah was hitting on aboard the plane.
And, as luck would have it, their dad is going away for a day to do some book signings, so they have the home — a multilevel glass- walled, playground with a stucco, lunar-landscape tunnel that leads to the backyard, and an Infiniti pool by the edge of a cliff — all to themselves. Which means it’s time to par-tay! They light up their pre-rolls and pop open their beers and start having fun.
But that’s when things go bad. Ben, the chimpanzee has rabies and is going ape-crazy, attacking and maybe even killing some of these college kids. Dad is far away, and all seven of them have misplaced their cel phones! Oh no! What can they do? Who will survive this murderous ape?
Primate is a suspense thriller/horror about college kids vs a 
killer chimp. It’s stupid-funny and basically plotless — just how to survive this rabid monkey till someone calls 9-1-1 — but it is fun. Lots of surprises, with the ominous chimp (still dressed in brightly-coloured kids clothes) swinging from the rafters, breaking through windows and, you know, killing people.
Personally, I found the goriness unnecessary — I don’t like watching people’s faces getting torn off — but I guess gorno is part of its horror appeal. And lest you think I’m spoiling it, the movie tells you about rabies before the first line is spoken, and Ben peels the skin off someone’s face in the first five minutes, so I’m not telling you anything they didn’t already want you to know.
Yes, it’s super-simplistic, and breaks down logically very quickly, but as a movie, it pushes all the right buttons.
Primate, The Choral and Father Mother Sister Brother all open in Toronto this weekend; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
War movies at #TIFF22. Films reviewed: The Inspection, The Greatest Beer Run Ever, All Quiet on the Western Front
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
When military budgets soar, and “war games” are held more frequently, when Presidents and Prime Ministers make speeches about liberty and democracy, when lots of military experts start appearing on cable news networks, rattling their sabres… it usually means governments are gearing up for war. And art imitates life. War movies — you know, the kind of films with all-male casts showing bravery and camaraderie, and lots and lots of guns, tanks and bombs — are becoming popular again.
This week I’m talking about three new war movies that had their world premieres at TIFF. There’s high schoolers in Germany who want to enlist in WWI, a guy from New York who wants to bring beer to his buddies in Vietnam, and a homeless black, gay man who wants to join the marines.
The Inspection
Wri/Dir: Elegance Bratton
Ellis French (Jeremy Pope) is a 25-year old man who sleeps in a homeless shelter in Jersey City, NJ. His single mother (Gabrielle Union), threw him out as a teenager when he came out as gay. He spent the next 10 years living on the streets. Now he plans a new beginning: to turn his life around by joining the marines. But bootcamp is not a nurturing environment. As the sergeants say, we are going to break you all down, and if you survive it, we’ll build you back up again. The breaking down process consists of bullying and violence visited on anyone deviating the norm, be they gay, muslim or just insecure. Sgt Laws (Bokeem Woodbine), in particular, has it in for French, and seems to want kill him — literally. Another recruit, Harvey (McCaul Lombardi) goes out of his way to make French’s life in bootcamp unbearable. 
Luckily he does find a few friends, including Sgt Rosales, who takes his side. Can he survive bootcamp and become a marine? And can he ever make his estranged mother proud of him again?
The inspection is based on the memoirs of the film’s writer/director Elegance Bratton. It’s a passionate and deeply-moving first film about a gay son and his fundamentalist 
mother, while trying to succeed in a toxic environment. There have been many movies before about life in bootcamp (especially Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket) even for a gay man (the South African film Moffie, for example) but The Inspection is still a new take. My only criticism is it seems to be, as a whole, an “oorah-oorah” celebration of military life, despite the prejudice and corruption within it. Without a negative thought, anywhere, about war itself.
The Greatest Beer Run Ever
Co-Wri/Dir: Peter Farrelly
It’s 1967 in Inwood, N.Y., a white, working-class neighbourhood in northern Manhattan. Chicky Donohue (Zach Efron) is a high school drop out who sleeps in everyday and during waking hours can usually be found getting drunk with his buddies at a local bar. Full of piss and vinegar, Chick has lots of big ideas but rarely follows through; no one take him seriously. Lots of his friends and neighbours either signed up or were drafted to serve in Vietnam, but his time served in the Merchant Marines exempts him. His sister marches in rallies against the Vietnam War at Columbia, but Chicky is firmly on the America, Love it Or Leave it side.
But one day, sitting at the bar with his friends, he wonders why no one
is doing anything for their buddies in Nam: Minogue, Pappas, Duggan and the rest. So he boasts he’ll buy them some beer and give it to them personally. And that’s what he does — fills a duffel bag with cans of PBR, signs up on a ship headed for Saigon, and just goes there. His ship captain gives him three days to find his friends if he ever wants to leave Vietnam. The only Americans who travel in that country are journalists or military. And no one goes north into battle zones voluntarily. Except Chicky. He starts tracking them down to everyone else’s disbelief. As they say, only someone as dumb as him could survive a trip like this.
He happily passes as a CIA agent until he witnesses what they actually do (like the torture and murder of prisoners). And the Vietnamese in the countryside aren’t welcoming him with open arms — they’re terrified he’s going to murder them. And those bombers all around? They’re dropping napalm everywhere. Later he joins forces with a journalist (Russel Crowe) to discover the truth. But will he ever get the beer to his buddies and make it back alive?
The Greatest Beer Run Ever is a fun and fast-moving bro-dramedy based on a true story. It’s set during the Tet Offensive as the war escalates. It has a terrific soundtrack of 60s pop and psychedelic music. Zach Efron is good as a dumb cluck who gradually wakes up to what the war is really about. And while there are some Vietnamese characters, like most American war movies, it’s all about America. It’s hard to tell whether this film is pro-war or anti-war; rather it seems to be pro-soldiers but against the war in Vietnam and especially the lies the generals told.
All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues)
Dir: Edward Berger
(based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque)
It’s 1917 and the world is at war. Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer) is a skinny student with glasses at a Catholic boys’ school in a German town. After a rousing speech by their schoolmaster — who dubs the boys “Iron Youth” — all of his classmates rush to join the fight for God, the Kaiser and the Fatherland. But Paul is still too young to enlist, so he forges a letter to sign up with his friends, looking forward to the fun and adventure that surely lies ahead.
But once they arrive in occupied northern France, they soon 
discover this war consists of an endless wasteland of trenches. The “new” uniforms they’re fitted with are recycled from the bodies of dead soldiers. They are forced to train wearing horrible gas masks, and thrown into battle. And a hellish fight it is. Paul — along with his friends Haie, Kropp, Müller, Kat and Tjaden — soon realizes that the only way they’re going home is in a coffin.
All Quiet on the Western Front is a scathing look at the machinery of war and how it uses soldiers as cannon fodder. Even while a German diplomat (Daniel Brühl) is busy negotiating armistice, the generals continue killing as many soldiers as they can until the bitter end. The film graphically shows soldiers incinerated by flame throwers, shot, bombed, stabbed by bayonets, and run over by tanks… even killed in brutal, hand-to-hand combat by the main sympathetic characters. While it provides some relief — one soldier steals a goose from a farm to the joy of his squad-mates; another falls for an art deco poster of a French woman that he sticks to the trench wall — there’s a feeling of doom pervading the entire movie. It has good acting, a 
soundtrack that is as brilliantly ominous as the theme from Jaws, the photography is deadly, and the makeup — soldiers’ faces coated in a deathly layer of mud and blood — is especially striking. It’s as violent as American movies like Saving Private Ryan, or Hacksaw Ridge, but without the veneer of heroism and bravery. It shows the futility of warfare in all its enormity. This is a gruelling and shocking testament against all war and the military industrial complex.
All Quiet on the Western Front, The Inspection and The Greatest Beer Run Ever all had their world premieres at TIFF, which continues through the weekend.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Films reviewed: Swan Song, Beyond Monet, Respect
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
With the end of lockdowns finally reaching Toronto, people are itching to catch up on what they’ve been missing — from getting their hair cut, going to an art gallery, or listening to a concert on the big screen. This week I’m looking at two movies and one experience. There’s soul in Detroit, hairdressing in Ohio, and French impressionism in downtown Toronto.
Swan Song
Wri/Dir: Todd Stephens
Pat Pitsenbarger (Udo Kier) was once known as the Liberace of Sandusky Ohio, known for his gaudy jewelry, his pastel pantsuits and his flamboyant style. The richest women in town flocked to his hair salon where he could accomplish miracles with just his fingertips and a can of hairspray. But now he’s long-forgotten, a penniless old man living in a nursing home with puke-green walls and fluorescent lights. What happened?
His protege Dee Dee (Jennifer Coolidge) opened up a larger salon across the street from his, poaching his longest clients, including Rita Sloan a millionaire and his oldest patron. Then his lover David died of AIDS. And since this was before same-sex marriage, their shared house was inherited by a distant relative, leaving him homeless. So for Pat, Sandusky is just history. Until a lawyer named Mr Shamrock arrives at his room with a new development. Rita has died, and in her will she insists Pat be the one to style her hair in her coffin. And if he does he’ll inherit 
25,000 clams. So Pat sets out on a long journey back to long-lost Sandusky, encountering strange people and places along the way. Will he get there in time for Rita’s swan song? And can he finish the job without any beauty supplies?
Swan Song is a very gentle, low-key, and slow- moving homage to the gradually fading world of small town gay life in America. Though nostalgic, it doesn’t present a white-washed version. It features Pat (loosely based on a real person) as an inveterate shoplifter, Eunice his best friend who is known for loitering in public toilets, as well as the seedy gay bar where they used to lip-synch torch songs. Udo Kier, the great German actor, has fun with his role, injecting his own trademark campiness. Swan Song is a cute and gentle, (though too slow-moving) LGBT comedy.
Beyond Monet
Claude Monet was a fin-de-siècle French painter who daubed his canvases with bright spring colours. Critics at the time referred to his work derisively as impressionism, thus providing a name for the movement. But as his fame grew, his eyesight faded, and by the end his works veered to the nearly abstract. Today, though, his paintings of fields, gardens, water and most of all waterlilies are among the most famous of that era. Beyond Monet is an exhibition, not of his art, but rather an immersive experience. His works are projected on a circular, 360 degree wall and ceiling, about the size of a football stadium. The works themselves are constantly rising, falling, or gradually turning around inside the exhibition space, so you can see all of it without moving from your area. It’s constructed around a large wooden cupola in the centre, along with shiny, round landing pads spread all around to sit on. The images are softly animated: waves in his paintings rise and fall; in his winter scenes, snow seems to blow against the landscapes, while flowers and lillies bloom before your eyes. And a constantly-shifting — and at times quite lovely — original soundtrack of music and sound effects (like birds, crickets or waves) adds to the mood.
The exhibition is in three parts. The first consists 0f a few curved wooden bridges and some gossamer sheets hanging from the tall ceilings. It also has a series of bilingual signs explain the art. You pass through a hallway festooned with cheap mylar strips, into the main room where the actual show takes place.
Is seeing an original canvas by Monet the same as a projection, however well-rendered and animated, in a large space? No… not even close. This isn’t art, it’s about art. It reminds me of those parks with miniature versions of the Eiffel tower and the Taj Mahal.
What it is, though, is a pleasantly relaxing experience for those who want to appreciate Monet without the trouble of seeing his actual stuff. Interestingly, the entrance features an assortment of empty wooden canvas frames, to remind us, I suppose, that the real art is still on museum walls. But with the pandemic on, perhaps Beyond Monet is a way to get the feeling of his work without travelling far. And the show is well- ventilated, well-spaced and with a limited number of guests at any one time.
Respect
Dir: Liesl Tommy
It’s 1952. 10-year-old Aretha Franklin, known as “Ree”, lives in a middle class Detroit neighbourhood. Her father (Forest Whitaker) is a firebrand baptist preacher with a huge congregation. He is a colleague of the Rev Dr Martin Luther King, who Ree calls Uncle Martin. He holds Saturday night get-togethers where little Ree is the featured performer in a musical household. Still a child, she has the voice of a full-grown woman, and performs be-bop and scat singing, not just gospel. Her father intends to make her a star. By the late 50s he gets Aretha (Jennifer Hudson) signed with John Hammond at Columbia Records where she records old jazz standards with a full orchestra. But without any hits.
Then everything changes in the late 60s when she is taken under the wing of producer Jerry Wexler at Atlantic, the man who coined the term Rhythm and Blues. He introduces her to the back-up players at Muscle Shoals, men who know how to feel the music. Aretha brings in her sisters as back up singers, and 
the rest is history. She becomes the queen of soul and her songs internationally famous.
This music biopic follows her career over a 20 year period, from 1952 to 1972. And it’s not a smooth and steady ride. It’s called Respect partly because of her hit single but also to point out the lack of it she experiences from both her domineering father and her tempestuous relationship with the often violent and manipulative Ted (Marlon Wayans) her sometime husband and manager. It also exposes the harsh underbelly of her stable, middle-class life. She is raped at an early age (this is implied not shown) and gives birth to a number of sons while still in her teens (her grandma takes care of them.) Her father says she has “demons” inside, but maybe it’s just her trying to break free, whether through her music or alcoholism, from the relentless disrespect and physical and mental abuse she suffers for much of her young life.
Respect is part performance, part melodrama, alternating between a near constant flow of music interspersed with re-enactments with her family, business, and love life. We see her ups and downs (mainly her downs), along with many — maybe too many — fights, tantrums and meltdowns. Biopics have two choices: either hire great actors with mediocre or dubbed voices, or great singers. Hudson is the latter. She has a fantastic voice, featured here in so many genres — gospel, jazz, soul and pop — which holds the movie together. The melodramatic scenes are a mixed bag, some very moving, others cringe-worthy. Whitaker is really good as CL Frankin, and Hudson is in nearly every scene. While Respect is not a great movie, I greatly enjoyed watching it.
Look for Swan Song on VOD and digital formats. Respect opens theatrically in Toronto this weekend — check your local listings. And Beyond Monet is exclusively showing at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre now.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Good dramas. 1917, Uncut Gems, The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
A good drama is hard to find, and this week I’ve got three of them. There’s an action drama set in Europe in WWI, a melodrama set in Rio in the 1950s, and a dark comedy set in present-day Manhattan.
1917
Dir: Sam Mendes
It’s April, 1917 in the trenches. Two soldiers, Lance Corporal Blake (Dean Charles Chapman) and Lance Corporal Schofield (George Mackay) are summoned by an officer with an important mission. The Germans seem to be retreating and frontline soldiers are preparing to cross over no man’s land. But it’s a ruse. If the troops try to cross the fields they’ll be gunned down like lambs to the slaughter. And the telegraph lines are down. It’s up to Blake and Schofield to take a crucial letter to the isolated troops before they’re all wiped out. And to get there, they have to pass through enemy territory, inside German trenches, and across enemy lines. Why are two ordinary soldiers chosen for this impossible task? Blake has a brother in the squadron they’re warning. And Schofield? 
He happens to be nearby when Blake is summoned. Can the two men young men make it there in time? Or are they just another couple of casualties in this War to End All Wars?
1917 is a thrilling action movie set during WWI. It’s full of narrow escapes, shootouts, explosions and hand-to-hand combat, with our heroes riding, running, flying and swimming, all to get to their goal. It uses lots of tricks you’d expect to see in horror movies: from sudden encounters with piles of rotting corpses, to shocking encounters with rats. It’s also a “War is Hell” movie but it’s a bit foggy on the Us and Them narrative of a war from a hundred years ago. Should WWI German soldiers still be portrayed as evil, drunken cowards while British soldiers are brave, kindly, steadfast and resolute? Still, you do find yourself rooting for the heroes hoping beyond hope that they’ll survive.The acting, especially MacKay, is fantastic and it’s fun to spot all the famous actors with bit parts as military brass include Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong and Colin Firth. But the best part of this movie is in an unexpected area. Roger Deakins camerawork is incredible, with shadow and searchlight, glowing candles and burning flames throwing chiarascuro images across the screen. It’s stunning to watch.
Uncut Gems
Dir: Josh and Benny Safdie
It’s the diamond district in present-day Manhattan. Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) is a successful Bling jeweller peddling pricy kitsch to therich and famous in a small boutique encased in bullet-proof glass. He supports an unhappy suburban Jewish family, also setting aside money for his own peccadilloes: a mistress in a midtown apartment and tickets to NBA games. But he’s also a compulsive gambler throwing money at bookies. He’s in debt up to his neck, and the gangsters are circling. Two thugs in particular. Loan sharks, pawn shops, bookies, and legit 
business associates are all asking for their cut. But when Howard lands a lump of Ethiopian opals – the “uncut gems” of the title – he thinks all his problems are solved. By gazing into the glowing, coloured rocks he loses himself in a fantastical universe. He embarks on a complex plan: sell the gem to a superstitious star basketball player, pawn the priceless gaudy ring the player leaves as a deposit, and bet it all on a mammoth Las Vegas sports gamble. Will his plan pan out? Or will it all come a-tumbling down?
Uncut Gems is the latest Safdie Brother’s look at sympathetic, small-time losers and petty criminals, and the destruction they leave in their path. There’s a bit of excitement, but it’s more like a dark, absurdist comedy than anything else. They say Adam Sandler makes one credible acting movie for every ten horrible comedies. He proves his bona fides in this one, hands down. He’s great as the irrepressible and irritating Howard Ratner, complete with fake crooked and gummy teeth. But he’s a hard character to like…his problems are all of his own making, and his adulation for celebrity, sportsteams, cars and The Big Win is unattractive. I kinda sympathize with Howard but not really; I saw this four months ago at TIFF and remember feeling bothered and a bit angry by the end. But the humour, great acting, music, images, and elegant plot – from start to finish – helps redeem the unfomfortable feeling it leaves you with.
The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão
Dir: Karim Aïnouz
It’s 1950 in a middle class family in Rio de Jeneiro. Guida and Euridice are inseparable sisters who do almost everything together. Guida (Julia Stockler) is 20 years old, small, buxom, adventurous and mature. She’s looking for love in all the wrong places, where she meets Iorgos, a handsome sailor from Greece. She leaves a note with her sister that she’s off on a ship to Europe to marry her love and will be back in Brazil soon. Euridice (Carol Duarte) is 18, the good daughter, tall with long, curly hair. She devotes all her energy to practicing the piano, with the hope that someday soon she’ll be accepted into the conservatory in Vienna.
But both of their plans are stymied by unwanted pregnancies. Guida comes home, pregnant and alone. Iorgos is a rat, with a wife and kids in Greece and a girl in every port. But when she walks through her door, her father throws her out, saying, 
“you’re dead to me, I never want to see you again”. She’s forced to move to a working class neighbourhood, get a job (she works as a welder at the docks) and raise her son.
Meanwhile, Euridice gets married to Antenor (Gregório Duvivier) the son of a business partner of her dad who owns a bakery. He’s a boor and an inconsiderate lover. She’s preparing for her Vienna audition in a few months but despite her church-sanctioned birth control methods, she ends up pregnant too, scotching any plans to study in Vienna. Guida assumes her sister is in Europe, and Euridice thinks Guida has disappeared without a trace (their parents block any communication with Guida, and both sisters have no idea the other is living in Rio.) Will the sisters ever see each other again? And will their ambitions be realized?
The Invisibie Life of Euridice Gusmao is subtitled, “a tropical melodrama” and that’s what it is: a passionate, lush story about the lives of two strong-willed women, torn apart against their will. Guida forging a new life as a single, working class mom, as Euridice navigates Brazil’s repressive middle class life in the ’50s. I loved this movie.
The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao is now playing in Toronto, and Uncut Gems and 1917 both opened on Christmas Day; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Highbrow, middlebrow, lowbrow. Films reviewed: The Hustle, Tolkien, Be My Star
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Some people mistake upper-class and working-class characters with highbrow and lowbrow films. This week I’m looking at three movies with upper-class and working class-characters. There’s a middlebrow biopic about an orphan at a private school, an arthouse drama about working-class kids in Berlin, and a lowbrow comedy about a boorish con artist at an elite resort.
The Hustle
Dir: Chris Addison
Josephine (Anne Hathaway) is a British aristocrat who lives in a cliffside mansion in Beaumont-sur-mer, a casino resort on the French riviera. Fluent in many languages, the high-stakes gambler and 
seductress knows all the shakers and movers on the Côte d’Azur. But her life of luxury is disrupted by a hefty and boorish Aussie named Penny Rust (Rebel Wilson) who is passing through town. Penny 
is a small-time con artist whose M.O. involves catfishing men online using stock photos, then tricking them out of more money when they meet face to face. Penny is arrested mid-scam, tossed into prison and kicked out of town. What she doesn’t know is
she’s been played– the policewoman who arrested her worked actually for another con artist, none other than Josephine! When she discovers the truth, Penny and Josephine agree on a competition: whoever succeeds in scamming a random man out of half a million dollars can 
stay in the resort, and the other one must leave. Their victim is an innocent, Mark Zuckerberg look-alike (Alex Sharp). Which of them will win over the tech millionaire?
If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because The Hustle is a remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels but with Anne Hathaway in Michael Caine’s role and Rebel Wilson replacing Steve Martin. Recasting successful comedies with women in formerly male roles is popular these days, but doesn’t always work. But in this case it sure does. The Hustle is better, funnier and more subversive than Scoundrels. Hathaway is clever as the multilingual aristocrat, but it’s Rebel Wilson who steals every scene with her physical humour, facial contortions and bawdy language. She is brilliant. Maybe the concept of con artists on the Riviera is a bit dated, but it still had me laughing loudly during most of the movie.
I rarely endorse comedies, but I found this one hilarious.
Tolkien
Dir: Dome Karukoski
It’s the early 20th century in Birmingham, England. Young J.R.R. Tolkien (Nicholas Hoult: The Favourite, Warm Bodies) is an orphan who finds himself in impecunious circumstances. Luckily, a wealthy Catholic priest, Father 
Francis (Colm Meaney) takes him under his wing and sponsors him to study at a prestigious school called King Edward’s. He was home schooled by his mother before she died, leaving his head filled with stories of 
mythical dragons and elves. He may be the poor kid, but he immediately impresses everybody with his knowledge of Latin, Old English and mythical languages he creates just for himself.
After initial misgivings, he falls in with three other boys: 
Christopher, Geoffrey and Robert. Together they form the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, a four-man group that hangs out in tea shops discussing art, music and poetry as well as concepts of bravery, fellowship and loyalty. He meets a beautiful 
young woman named Edith Bratt (Lily Collins), also an orphan, who lives in his boarding house. His friendship with the boys grows, even as his love for the piano-playing Edith deepens.
He is eventually accepted to Oxford on a scholarship, but is separated from Edith and some of his friends. And his
world is torn apart by WWI, when they are all sent off to the trenches, where he witnesses carnage and total destruction. Who will live and who will die? And will he ever see Edith again?
Tolkien is about the boyhood and youth of JRR Tolkien, long before he 
wrote the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. The movie flashes back and forth between memories of his growing up, and the film’s “present day” when he is stuck in the trenches of The Battle of the Somme in WWI. And it gives a a few hints at his future as a writer of the famous fantasy books. He imagines fire breathing dragons on the 
battle front, with the scenery like Mordor. The four friends are like Frodo, Sam and the gang in The Fellowship of the Ring. It also touches on Wagner’s Ring Cycle’s influence on Tolkien’s Ring trilogy. So it’s kind of interesting to watch if you’re into his books. And I liked the period costumes, scenery and good acting.
But the movie never seems to go anywhere. It falls into the category of biopics about revered subjects where you can’t show passion, adventure or sex, at the risk of tarnishing his pristine image. (Ironically, Tolkien’s heirs still refused to endorse the film.) No sparks in this hagiography, just a few kisses and some unrequited, longing glances.
Be My Star (Mein Stern) 2001
Wri/Dir: Valeska Grisebach
Nicole (Nicole Gläser) is 14-year-old girl who lives in Berlin with her two sisters, Monique and Janine. She’s at a turning point in her life. It’s the age when you try out a job (she chooses to intern at a bakery because she likes the way it smells). She’s also becoming sexually aware. First she dates any guy who asks her, but later becomes more discerning. She approaches Schöps (Christopher Schöps) a soccer-playing teen to give it a go. He’s interning as a plumber and gets his own apartment. They have cigarettes, alcohol and privacy to share, but they don’t 
quite know what to do. Is this love, and are they a real couple? Or just a couple of kids?
Be My Star is a very sweet and beautiful coming-of-age story made 20 years ago. It’s acted by kids using their real names, in a verité style and setting, 
but it’s clearly a drama not a documentary. It’s also an excellent example of the Berlin School of filmmaking. This tender and intimate examination of first love (and first break up) is realistic and moving. Its showing as part of Past Forward: German Directors Before Cannes, a series of seminal works by German directors who later became famous.
I really liked this one.
Tolkien and The Hustle both open today in Toronto. Check your local listings. And Goethe Films is showing Be My Star one time only at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on May 14th at 6:30.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Surprising twists at TJFF. Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground, A Fortunate Man, The Golem
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Spring Film Festival Season continues in Toronto. Hot Docs comtinues on through the weekend and TJFF — the Toronto Jewish Film fest — opened last night. This week I’m looking at three new movies with surprising twists, all playing at the TJFF. There’s a Golem (who’s not from the Hobbit), a historical romantic drama (that’s not based on an English novel), and a doc on an experimental filmmaker (that’s not about a man).
Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground
Dir: Chuck Smith
It’s the 1960s. Barbara Rubin is an outspoken teenager in Queens, NY. So outspoken, her parents lock her up in a mental hospital… which serves as her crash course in how to use drugs. She emerges as a savvy artist and drug expert and dives straight into the world of underground cinema, just heating up in New York. She studies under the wing of Lithuanian-American filmmaker Jonas Mekas. One of her first films creates a sensation. Shot against her own apartment’s white walls and floor, “Christmas on Earth” 
features naked men and women whose entire bodies are covered in either black or white paint, with their breasts and genitals painted the opposite colour. (Basically they writhe on the floor in a continual orgy.) But the two reels of film are projected simultaneously on the same screen – something never done before. She releases this film when she is still 18 years old.
Barbara and Jonas fly to Belgium for an experimental film competition, and cause an international scandal when she occupies the projection booth to show a banned movie — Flaming Creatures by Jack Smith. Later she falls in 
with Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and his lover Peter Orlovsky, pop artist and experimental fimmaker Andy Warhol, the already legendary Bob Dylan, and the seminal band the Velvet Underground. She’s the one at the centre of these disparate figures who 
introduces them to one another, leading to some major artistic projects, collaborations and record albums that never would have been made if it weren’t for her.
Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground is a fascinating documentary about an important figure who you’ve probably never heard of. Tragically, she died in her thirties, after adventures that bounced across the Atlantic and back again, spanning England, France and rural New Jersey, delving into sexual experiments, psychedelic expression, lost loves, and Jewish mysticism.
A really good movie.
A Fortunate Man
Dir: Billie August
(Based on the novel Lykke-Per by Henrik Pontoppidan)
It’s the late 1800s in Jutland, Denmark. Per Sidenius (Esben Smed) is a bright young man off to Copenhagen to study engineering. But his strict father, a fundamentalist preacher, withholds his money, to teach his headstrong son a lesson in humility. Broke and hungry, he struggles to survive in a slum, while attending university classes. He already knows what he wants to do: create a complex system of canals in Jutland to bring Denmark into the modern era. But is he too big for his britches?
Luckily he spies a member of the illustrious Salomon family in a café, and pitches his idea to Ivan (Benjamin Kitter). Ivan is intrigued and introduces him to his family, including the erudite and elegant Jakobe (Katrine Greis-Rosenthal), heiress to the family fortune. Educated in 
Switzerland, Jakobe speaks many languages and looks down on the ambitious but clumsy Per. She is standoffish and rebuffs his attempts at wooing her – she’s engaged to a widower with two daughters. But he wins her over when he runs like a deer hunter beside her horse and carriage. They are engaged to be married.
Meanwhile, the Salomons and their friends express interest in investing in Per’s grand scheme. But first, Per – a young man who never apologizes – must humble himself before an important government figure. And the Salamons are a Jewish family, while Per comes from a long line of fundamentalist Protestant ministers. Are their backgrounds, classes, religions 
and philosophies too different? Will Per reconcile with his family? Will he learn to be humble? Or is he too brash and immature ever to fit into Copenhagen’s mannered society?
A Fortunate Man is a 2¾ hours long saga of the lives of Per Lykke – Lucky Per – and Jakobe Salomons, but I was never bored. If you devour these long historical dramas, but are getting tired of the same old, same-old british Victorians, this one introduces totally new worlds and characters. It feels like a Thomas Mann saga. I’ve seen the movie, now I think want to watch the whole miniseries. Great acting, beautiful period costumes and sets, and a compelling unpredictable drama
The Golem
Dir: The Paz Brothers
It’s 1673 in an impoverished, isolated Jewish shtetl village in eastern europe. Hanna (Hani Furstenberg) is a young woman with pale skin, green eyes and bright red hair. She and her husband Benjamin lost a son, but are still in love. He studies religion all day — which is only open to men — while Hanna eavesdrops on lessons through cracks in the floorboards. She studies the Kaballah, a mystical text on numerology, in secret, on her own. But all is not well. One 
day she spies outsiders in the woods burning corpses. They are dressed in bizarre, birdlike masks and leather capes It’s the plague! It hasn’t reached their village yet, but these outsiders are blaming them for its spread. The outsiders are led by Vladimir (Aleksey Tritenko) whose daughter is dying. He rides into town on horseback with a threat: Unless their village healer can save his daughter, he’ll burn down the village and kill them all.
Hanna decides it’s time to act. Using her knowledge of Kaballah, the 72 sacred names, some red string and a mound of fresh dirt, she creates a golem, the mythical Prague monster. The golem comes to life, but with a difference. Not a huge beast, this golem is just a little boy. But one that is fast, strong, and vengeful. He feels whatever Hanna feels, and kills whoever he thinks she doesn’t like. And when the golem is hurt she feels his pain. Can the golem save the village from destruction and death? Or will he end up killing them all?
The Golem is a new twist on the classic horror movie: It’s Fiddler on the Roof but with a Stephen King killer-kid with special powers, An interesting combination I’ve never seen before. Is it scary? A little. There’s lots of blood, without too much gore. Hanni Furstenberg is great as Hanna, as is Konstantin Anikienk as the boy golem.
For a new take on horror, you should check out The Golem.
The Golem, Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground, and A Fortunate Man are all playing now at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with Oscar-winning filmmaker László Nemes about Sunset
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photos of László Nemes by Jeff Harris
Irisz is a pretty, young milliner from Trieste who is visiting a grand hat shop in Budapest celebrating its 30th Jubilee. She is there to apply for a job, but the owner hands her a first class ticket home the moment he hears her name.
It’s Leiter, a name both famous and infamous. It’s the name of the hat store, suppliers to the royal family, and founded by her 
own parents who died in a fire. But it’s also the name of a man who started the fire and murdered a count. Is he a madman… or a revolutionary? Irisz vows to find out who he is. But will the visit lead to a happy anniversary? Or is it the final sunset for the famous millinery house?
Sunset is also the name of a new film from Hungarian director Lázsló Nemes, who created the Oscar-winning Son of Saul. 
Sunset gives a multifaceted impression of pre-WWI Budapest, using sound, light, motion, colour and voices as experienced by Irisz. It shows the decadent Austro-Hungarian empire teetering on the brink, even as the new shining city arises. Sunset is a film filled with chaos, confusion and conflagration.
I spoke to Lázsló Nemes on location at TIFF in September, 2018.
Sunset opens today in Toronto at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Shells. Films reviewed: Journey’s End, Ready Player One, The China Hustle
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s a holiday weekend filled with eggs, whether hard boiled or made of chocolate with a prize inside. So this week I’m looking at three new movies about… shells. There are VR gamers looking for a hidden easter egg, Wall Streeters investing in shell corporations, and WWI soldiers dodging mortar shells.
Journey’s End
Dir: Saul Dibb
It’s March, 1918, in the WWI trenches of northern France. Underground, where the officers stay, it’s dark, dank and smelly. Up on the surface its deadly dangerous, with snipers aiming at your head. Four British divisions rotate their stays at the front at one week per month. It’s like a lottery – with a one in four chance of dying. And the soldiers in Company C are just trying to stay sane and alive. There’s the fatherly Osborne (Paul Bettany) who everyone calls “Uncle”, the indefatigable cook Mason (Toby Jones), and the shell-shocked Hibbert.
So no one can understand why the green, idealistic Lt Raleigh (Asa Butterfield) pulls strings to join this benighted group. Why? His upper classman Captain Stanhope (Sam Claflin) is stationed there and he wants to see him 
again. But he doesn’t realize the level of death and despair that has taken hold there. And that his hero, Stanhope,
is now a mean and bitter alcoholic. The soldiers there are forced to make pointless raids in daylight so as not to interrupt the dinner schedule of far-off Generals. And things reach a boiling point when 
word gets out the Germans are about to attack on Thursday, right there. They’re essentially sentenced to die at the front. How do they all handle this?
Journey’s End – based on the classic play – is a tense retelling of an old war story, exactly 100 years later. It deals with the futility of war, the rigid British class system, and the male comeradery of life in the trenches. The acting is very good, and the camera wonderfully captures a world lit only by flickering lanterns. Even so, it was hard to sympathize with the stuff-upper-lip, tally-ho language of the script. The long theatrical conversations might might work on stage but not on the screen. The main emotions I got from this movie were depression, disgust claustrophobia and fatalism. It all felt too long, too slow, and too distant, especially once you know their fate… Just die already!
Ready Player One
Dir: Steven Spielberg
It’s 2045 in Columbus, Ohio and the world is a mess. People live marginal existences in ramshackle towers beside huge corporations. Wade (Tye Sheridan) is an 18-year-old orphan who spends most of his time online in a wildly- popular VR fantasy world called Oasis. Its creator left a trillion-dollar prize to whoever can solve the puzzles hidden within this digital world. First they must complete three levels of games and collect three keys and claim the hidden easter egg. Wade he surprises the world by appearing on the boards as Player One, the top ranked player in the world. But he’s not the only gunter (egg hunter) trying to win. His closest virtual rivals are Art3mis (Olivia Cooke) a fiery red-head, Aech, a muscular giant and genius mechanic; plus Daito and Sho whose avatars look like a samurai and a ninja, respectively. Wade calls himself Parzival. Like the Wagner opera 
character, he’s searching for a holy grail. And he’s in love with the lovely Artemis. But as best-bud Aech keeps telling him: you only know her avatar – that’s not what she’s like in real life. And lurking in the shadows is the rich and evil Sorrento, (Ben Mendelssohn) the head of IOI, the corporate rival to Oasis’s company. He pretends to be a champion gamer, but he’s actually a fake who hires employees to play for him. But he’s out to win — and take over the world — at any cost. Which of the hunters will figure out the puzzle and find the easter egg? And can they defeat the villainous Sorrento?
Ready Player One is an incredibly fast-moving sci-if action movie. Oasis’s inventor, whose puzzles they’re all trying to solve, was obsessed with the 80s, so the movie feeds you a random hodgepodge of Back to the Future and Iron Giant, Gandam and Street Fighter, New Order and Van Halen, a non-stop shower of pop culture, to the point where you can’t tell self-referential jokes from cheap product placement. (Maybe they’re both?) But why would kids in the 2040s care about the 1980s? I can’t call this a good movie; it’s incredibly commercial, felt more like a theme park ride than a film, and parts were like watching a video game with someone else holding the controls. But you know what? I still enjoyed it. And it does have that classic Spielbergian look and sound.
China Hustle
Wri/Dir: Jed Rothstein
After the Subprime Mortgage crisis, American investors, pension funds, and ordinary moms and pops were looking to make some money. But where? Chinese people were making millions investing in their red-hot companies, but those stocks weren’t traded on Wall Street. Until, suddenly, they were. Hundreds of Chinese startups were being bought and sold and making big bucks. And companies like Roth Capital were holding lavish parties known as “investment conferences” to reel in buyers. They were backed by reputable auditors like 
Deloitte. It’s a win-win proposition – everyone makes money. Until, that is, some suspicious investors fly to Shanghai and looked around.
Turns out, many of these companies operate as “Reverse Mergers”. Existing Chinese corporations buy shell companies already registered in the US, take them over, change their name, and they’re open to make money.
But their books here don’t look like their books there. Idle factories in China are said to be making ten times what 
they’re actually earning. And no one’s checking up on them.
So a few maverick investors decide to short sell their stock (like in that movie The Big Short) counting on its value crashing soon. And they speed this along by publicising the corruption and questionable accounting of the parent companies back in China. The result, riches for a few, terrible losses for many.
The China Hustle is a fascinating documentary looking at the shady practices behind deregulation, auditing and investments, as told by three American short-sellers. I thought its view of China as a monolithic villain was superficial and rather one-sided; for example, it shows how these fraudulent investments affect ordinary Americans’ lives, but not how they affect ordinary Chinese.
But it does expose in detail a huge scandal I knew nothing about.
Ready Player One opens today in Toronto; check your local listings. Journey’s End and The China Hustle are in theatres and Video On Demand. This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Goethe Films: Margarethe & Barbara. Films reviewed: Hannah Arendt, Rosa Luxemburg, Marianne & Juliane
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Margarethe von Trotta is a leading German director and one of the only women in the New German Cinema (Neuer Deutscher Film) of the 60s, 70s and 80s. She co-wrote and co-directed (with Volker Schlöndorff) the first commercially successful film of that movement – The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum. Though her films are about dynamic women and told from a female point of view, von Trotta has distanced herself from some schools of feminist cinema. She creates movies about women, but not “Frauenfilm” (women’s movies).
She started her career as an actress, so she knows how to draw amazing performance from her actors. And she has a decades-long working relationship with one actor in particular: Barbara Sukowa.
Barbara Sukowa is a reknowned actor with a beautiful, square face that she completely transforms to match each character she portrays. She can play a role as both passionate and restrained, her emotions churning just beneath the surface.
This week I’m looking at three great films (based on historical figures) directed by Von Trotta and starring Sukowa. They’re part of a special series called Goethe Films: Margarethe and Barbara playing on the 3rd, 5th and 12th of October at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. There’s a melodrama about a revolutionary, a family drama about a terrorist and her sister, and an intellectual drama about a journalist-philosopher.
Hannah Arendt (2012)
It’s the 1960s in New York city. Hannah Arendt (Sukowa) is German-born writer and philosopher who is part of the intellectual scene in that city. She studied philosophy under Heidegger – and was his lover — but when the Nazis came to power she was stripped of her credentials as a Jew, while he embraced Nazism. She fled to France and later the US. Now she is offered a strange assignment by The New Yorker magazine – to cover the upcoming trial in Jerusalem of the notorious Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann was one of the main architects of the Holocaust and the murderer of millions. He testifies in a glass booth. Eichmann denies everything and paints himself as a gentle bureaucrat.
But Arendt’s description of Eichmann’s behaviour as the Banality of Evil — that of an ordinary-looking man who killed so many – meets with widespread shock and criticism, even among her friends and colleagues. Her writings on totalitarianism, guilt and responsibility reverberate around the world.
Hannah Arendt is a beautiful and magisterial depiction of a major intellectual figure as iconoclast, a hero fighting the tides. It’s also a biopic, given to long pauses of contemplation. And one that somehow seems kinder to Heidegger than to Arendt’s critics in academia.
Rosa Luxemburg (1986)
It’s 1900, the start of a century of change. Revolution is brewing in Russia and Germany is close behind. Rosa Luxemburg (Sukowa) is an educated, Polish-Jewish woman who walks with a limp. She is also a social democratic revolutionary, a firebrand who writes articles and gives passionate speeches. Now she lives in Berlin after being jailed and nearly executed in Warsaw.
She’s in a tempestuous relationshio with her sometime lover and fellow revolutionary Leo Jogisches (Daniel Olbrychski). But when she discovers he is having an affair, she begins a relationship with a friend’s adult son. And, with Karl Liebknecht, she 
founds the Red Flag newspaper and the Spartacus party, a Marxist (but not Leninist) Socialist party.
She calls for a massive strike to resist the war but nationalism is on the rise. Bloody Rosa is arrested and jailed during WWI as a political prisoner. Will her political dreams ever be realized, or will nationalism prevail?
Rosa Luxemburg is a fascinating historical biopic, told in a melodramatic style. There are as many scenes of her shouting to cheering crowds as there are of her gardening in prison or writing letters. A costume drama, this captures nineteenth-century romanticism in its music, poetry and idealism.
Marianne & Juliane (1981) Die bleierne Zeit
It’s the 1970s. Juliane (Jutta Lampe) is a journalist who writes for a feminist magazine. She grew up in a large family with a bible-thumping father, a conservative minister. Her sister Marianne (Sukowa) looked up to her as a teenager. Julianne was the rebel. She smoked, talked back to her teacher, wore pants – not a skirt! – and caused a furor when she danced alone to a Vienna waltz ata high school dance. The two are shattered by the documentaries they see in school on Nazi mass murder, and vow they will never let it happen again. But the two have taken different paths and their roles have changed.
Marianne is now a brash, self-centred woman who 
rejects concepts like marriage, family and money. She doesn’t ask for things; she demands them. She’s a member of the dreaded Red Army Faction — a terrorist group that sets off bombs and hijacks planes — and is on the run from police. She also has a young son, Jan, but can’t take care of him. When she is caught by the police, it’s up to Juliane to visit her in prison to keep her sane and alive. She smuggles in notes hidden in tissues, and passes on her messages. Can Juliane’s marriage and job — and Marrianne’s son — survive the prison sentence and the widespread public hatred of the crimes she committed?
Although this is a fictional drama, it’s based on RAF member Gudrun Ensslin and her journalist sister. This powerful drama is not a historical biopic; it was made just a few years after the events it portrays.
All three films encorporate historical black-and-white film footage and prison scenes, about heroes (and villains like Eichman) encaged and restrained. Together, these three films provide a century-long view of modern Germany through the eyes of three women.
Marianne and Juliane, Hannah Arendt, and Rosa Luxemburg are all playing next week on the big screen at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto — $10 per ticket — with Barbara Sukowa introducing Marianne and Juliane. Go to Goethe Toronto for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
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