Team Experience is adding two new members this week. Please welcome Sebastian! - Editor
Sebastian here, with my first dispatch from the outskirts of Germany, where I spend my days watching movies and occasionally writing about them. You might have seen my post about the unique ways Birdman deals with suicide and depression. Born in 1982, I’ve lived in Germany all my life. Currently residing in Trier (birthplace of Karl Marx; not affiliated with Lars von), I’ve dabbled in various pursuits ranging from photography to education, but movies remain my biggest passion, which is why I was thrilled when Nathaniel asked me to contribute to The Film Experience.
Let’s start out with a few thoughts on Wim Wenders’ latest dramatic effort, and a brief look ahead at some of the films aspiring to be submitted as Germany’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film this year.
With his Oscar-nominated documentary The Salt of the Earth still in theaters in the US, Germany has already seen the release of Wim Wenders’ follow-up picture, Every Thing Will Be Fine, which I saw here last week. [More...]
It stars James Franco as a writer who causes a fatal car accident and explores the emotional aftermath of the event in the years following it. Rachel McAdams, Charlotte Gainsbourg (airbrushed into oblivion on the poster), and Marie-Josée Croze round out the cast.
Critical reception has been mixed since it premiered out of competition at the Berlinale in February, though I liked it quite a lot. Wenders and screenwriter Bjørn Olaf Johannessen largely forgo typical narrative structures, fading out of scenes abruptly, making what can seem rather arbitrary time jumps. Viewers are left to fill in character progress on their own, relationships end and start off-camera. Developments that might be centerpieces in a different film telling a similar story are inferred or hinted at, but Wenders clearly isn’t interested in showing us scenes we have watched a thousand times before.
Every Thing Will Be Fine was filmed in carefully composed 3D by cinematographer Benoît Debie (Spring Breakers, Irreversible) and stereographer Josephine Derobe (Wenders’ Pina), making use of windows and reflections to paint deep, engaging images, contrasting characters with both nature and each other. Slow, deliberate camera movements, in concert with Alexandre Desplat’s haunting score, create an atmosphere of melancholy I was pleased to find myself in for 120 minutes.
Leading up to the film was a trailer for an upcoming German production that seems to tick off all the boxes that scream 'FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION.' Elser, from Downfall-director Oliver Hirschbiegel, tells the true story of Johann Georg Elser’s failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in 1939.
German Contenders for Oscar submission? ELSER, LABYRINTH OF LIFES, VICTORIA
Elser joins Im Labyrinth des Schweigens (Labyrinth of Lies), Giulio Ricciarelli’s drama about the large-scale cover-up of Nazi war crimes in the aftermath of World War II, as a possible front-runner for the Deutscher Filmpreis, and given Germany’s history with the Academy Awards, their war setting might play well when it comes to Best Foreign Language Film consideration. (Nathaniel liked Labyrinth of Lies a lot at TIFF and so did Sony Pictures Classics who picked it up for US distribution.)
But that’s a long way down the road, and there are other contenders, as well. Even sight-unseen, I’d be incredibly happy to see Sebastian Schipper’s single-take effort Victoria, winner of Berlin’s Silver Bear, make an Oscar bid, for no other reason than the fact that I just like the guy an awful lot. (His first feature, 1999’s Absolute Giganten, is maybe my favorite German movie.)
Anything you’re looking forward to coming out of Germany? Are you excited for Wim Wenders returning to 3D after Pina? Having acted for both Wenders and Werner Herzog now, which New German Cinema figure will James Franco work with next?