Post by Capo on Oct 8, 2008 10:57:16 GMT
Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei
The Edukators
Hans Weingartner 2004 | Germany / Austria
Three young political activists kidnap a wealthy businessman when he happens upon them in his home, while they rearrange his furniture planting signs such as "You have too much money" and "Your days of plenty are numbered".
There's a moment early on here when Jule, a young idealist waitressing in a well-to-do restaurant, having been treated with casual disdain by customers, keys one of their cars, a plush Mercedes. The act pretty much sums the film: a big "fuck you" to the evils of capitalism, but with little intellectual content with which to deliver its intended punch.
At another point in the film, there's a dig in at American action films as being some sort of vague evil responsible for the civilised world's woes; but the argument is undermined moments later, when a gun (however defunct) is introduced into the story, and the love triangle at the centre of the film has all the predictable melodrama of any post-Dreamers (2003) political conflict, which in turn was an ode to Bande à part (1964), which in turn was an homage to the American B-movie. The film recalls Godard in other ways, too: the students are as one-dimensional as those in La Chinoise (1967), but whereas that film was more a political essay-on-film delivered with the ferocious bluntness of a hammer, this strives too for convincing narrative drama - and, caught somewhere between wanting to send a message and engaging us in a love story, it becomes messy and muddled quite early on (not to say anything of its many contrivances).
Also, Godard was never sure whether or not he agreed with his naive activists, whereas this is all for them. That's not necessarily a problem in itself, but the film needs to be more profound in its arguments. When the bourgeois businessman the trio of activists has kidnapped says they are holding the wrong man responsible for capitalism's tyranny, that he's simply just playing a game of which he didn't make the rules, the reply is, "It's not who makes the gun, but who pulls the trigger".
Well, not exactly: this analogy is central to the film, but in a world of increasingly unnecessary military conflict, with people signed up to the army and killing and being killed overseas, the allegory can't limit itself to wealthy businessmen exploiting the System. The System itself is the tyrant, surely; and it's quite a lazy, dishonest assumption to fabricate faces to point fingers at, when the problem is indeed the facelessness itself.
To the few IMDb recommendations associated with this film, I'd add (or replace the list altogether with) Godard's Tout va bien! (1972), whose penultimate scene - in a French supermarché - says more in ten minutes than this film does in two hours. Viva la revolution! indeed.
The Edukators
Hans Weingartner 2004 | Germany / Austria
Three young political activists kidnap a wealthy businessman when he happens upon them in his home, while they rearrange his furniture planting signs such as "You have too much money" and "Your days of plenty are numbered".
There's a moment early on here when Jule, a young idealist waitressing in a well-to-do restaurant, having been treated with casual disdain by customers, keys one of their cars, a plush Mercedes. The act pretty much sums the film: a big "fuck you" to the evils of capitalism, but with little intellectual content with which to deliver its intended punch.
At another point in the film, there's a dig in at American action films as being some sort of vague evil responsible for the civilised world's woes; but the argument is undermined moments later, when a gun (however defunct) is introduced into the story, and the love triangle at the centre of the film has all the predictable melodrama of any post-Dreamers (2003) political conflict, which in turn was an ode to Bande à part (1964), which in turn was an homage to the American B-movie. The film recalls Godard in other ways, too: the students are as one-dimensional as those in La Chinoise (1967), but whereas that film was more a political essay-on-film delivered with the ferocious bluntness of a hammer, this strives too for convincing narrative drama - and, caught somewhere between wanting to send a message and engaging us in a love story, it becomes messy and muddled quite early on (not to say anything of its many contrivances).
Also, Godard was never sure whether or not he agreed with his naive activists, whereas this is all for them. That's not necessarily a problem in itself, but the film needs to be more profound in its arguments. When the bourgeois businessman the trio of activists has kidnapped says they are holding the wrong man responsible for capitalism's tyranny, that he's simply just playing a game of which he didn't make the rules, the reply is, "It's not who makes the gun, but who pulls the trigger".
Well, not exactly: this analogy is central to the film, but in a world of increasingly unnecessary military conflict, with people signed up to the army and killing and being killed overseas, the allegory can't limit itself to wealthy businessmen exploiting the System. The System itself is the tyrant, surely; and it's quite a lazy, dishonest assumption to fabricate faces to point fingers at, when the problem is indeed the facelessness itself.
To the few IMDb recommendations associated with this film, I'd add (or replace the list altogether with) Godard's Tout va bien! (1972), whose penultimate scene - in a French supermarché - says more in ten minutes than this film does in two hours. Viva la revolution! indeed.