Film Review: Willkommen bei den Hartmanns

I've never actually written a movie review before except when I was asking my students' parents for permission to show a German movie in class, and those weren't really reviews. I just watched this new release yesterday, though, and I feel like trying my hand at writing what I thought of it.

The film is about a privileged three-generational family and their relationship problems - Opa should retire but doesn't want to because he's trying to fight off "being old", Oma is a retired teacher who wants to save every unfortunate creature she comes across, including the mice her cat catches in the yard, their son is a divorced workaholic who ignores his teenage son, their daughter is 30 and still studying, having changed her course of study six times, and the grandson is experimenting with all kinds of teenage things from hip-hop to drugs.

And the Oma decides to "adopt" a refugee.

I am willing to say that I'm glad I watched the movie, but I'm baffled by the praise: "Die Komödie des Jahres" (Bild - "the comedy of the year") and "zum Brüllen komisch" (die Welt - "howlingly funny"). Deutschlandradio said it "zählt zum Besten, was das deutsche Kino zu bieten hat" (counts among the best that German film has to offer") - ouch!!

You can watch a trailer here.

It is billed as a comedy, but unfortunately too many of the comedic bits get ridiculous. The hippy former colleague of Oma brings "der Afrika Club" to the Hartmanns' house after she hears they've taken in a refugee from Nigeria and throws a spontaneous wild party which includes a zebra and a howler monkey. Opa has a mild heart attack, and while his daughter's boyfriend (a young doctor he can't stand) is ministering to him, a swat team bursts through the living room windows to arrest the refugee, Diallo (but then they are ordered to abort the mission because Diallo is not the militant they're looking for). Opa, in his fight against getting old, hangs out with a creepy plastic surgeon friend of his who goes to discos to hook up with younger women, but he can't hear anything anyone says to him because the music is too loud. There's a Pegida-like protest outside the Hartmanns' glamorous home after the daughter's stalker finds out a refugee is living with them...

The most likeable character in the movie is Diallo, the Nigerian, and I wish the story focused more on him. He seems like little more than an incidental catalyist, though. The writers didn't allow him much depth, though the actor did the best he could with the content he was given. He often speaks volumes with just his eyes.

There were several opportunities for conversations that the writers just dropped. Diallo occasionally tells his hosts what he thinks of their behavior toward each other, such as when the daughter gets in a fight with Opa. Diallo tells her she should not speak so disrespectfully to him, but the discussion ends there. After the grandson tells his father on the phone "Either you come back [from Shanghai] to help Diallo, or you're an asshole for all time!", Diallo tells him he should respect his father and not speak to him like that again. The boy just rolls his eyes, and that's it. Diallo tells the daughter she is old and should be married with children, and she responds that things are different in Germany. Any of those moments could have turned into an exploration of cultural differences, but instead the writers just dropped it.

I wish the writers had treated the subject matter with respect and sensitivity - along the lines of The Blind Side. The movie surely had its moments, and I even got choked up a few times - when the focus briefly turned to Diallo and his struggles and hopes. But I think that had more to do with thinking about the refugees I know and the stories they've shared with me than the scene I was watching.

The supposed subject matter of this film (refugees integrating into German society and Germans overcoming their fears and reaching out to asylum-seekers) had so much potential, but the focus is far more on the wealthy, privileged family and their First World problems. It and the characters - except for Diallo and the daughter's eventual boyfriend - are superficial and cliché-ridden.

I don't really know who the intended audience is. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who is looking for an honest portrayal of what is happening in Germany these days, nor would I recommend it to someone who wants to see an hilarious comedy. It's not a film that would change anyone's mind about or encourage one to think meaningfully about refugees, Islam, Germans, cultural differences or family conflicts. And it's not that I didn't get the humor - I just think it missed its mark.

Never having awarded stars before, I'll give this movie two because I'm not sorry I watched it and because I had an idea what I was getting into.

This afternoon, though, I'm going to our shelves to find one of the many really good German films I have and watch one I think does fit in the "Besten, was das deutsche Kino zu bieten hat."


Bis bald!

Elisabeth & Death

I grew up with parents who loved (and still do love!) musicals. I've seen a fair number of the old ones on stage :
   Brigadoon, the Man of LaMancha, Oklahoma!, the Sound of Music, South Pacific, the Music Man, Fiddler on the Roof, 1776, the King & I, and West Side Story

some of the newer ones:
  Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Jesus Christ Superstar, Miss Saigon, and Mamma Mia

...and I've also enjoyed the Disney Movie-turned stage musicals like:
  Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan, and the Lion King.

I've seen others on TV or DVD and I attended the spring musical every year while I was teaching, but the above is what I recall seeing performed by professionals or semi-professionals. I hope I appreciated the theater experience when I was young, but I surely do now as I look back. Every musical I've seen has at least several songs that I really like and love to sing along with - when I'm alone! I've only seen the Lion King and Tarzan in German, and I actually prefer the German version of Tarzan.

There is an Austrian musical that will probably never make it into the English language (though it has been translated from the original German into six other languages including Finnish and Korean) because it is about a story unknown to most Americans. The musical is entitled Elisabeth, and it's about the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria and Hungary - affectionately called Sissi. She was a beautiful Bavarian princess whose sister was supposed to marry Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria, but Franzi fell in love with Sissi instead. Her story is as magical and tragic as that of Princess Diana. Sissi was young and beautiful, full of life, yearning for love but also freedom, wanted to decide for herself how her children would be raised, and was plagued by depression and weighted down by the rules of court and others' expectations of her. The musical was first performed in Vienna in 1992, but her story had been portrayed in several films before the film (trilogy) was released with Romy Schneider in the title role in the late 1950s.

portrait of Sissi by Xaver Winterhalter

I saw the musical last year, though only on DVD. There were several songs I had heard from it and really liked, and they were even better when I understood the plot and characters of the musical. Much of the rest of the musical, though...merp. It's very severe and somewhat techno - I don't know how else to describe it. But that's not really the point of this post.

After seeing a few scenes on Youtube, I noticed that there's a raging debate about who is the better Sissi and who is the better Death. That's right - Death is the second most important character in the musical - Emperor Franz Josef is just the guy married to Sissi. So the one school of thought says the original pair (Pia Douwes and Uwe Kröger) can't be surpassed and really embody the characters as they should be portrayed. The other school says the second best known pair (Maya Hakvoort, who took over for Pia after two years, and Máté Kamarás, who assumed the role of Death in 2003 and is playing him again now in the Germany-Austria tour) hit the mark.

I have watched several key scenes with both pairs, and I can fully understand the debate. Following is the final scene with both pairs. Choose carefully which one you watch first, because often the one we like best is the one we see first.

Pia and Uwe (forgive her the voice slip near the beginning; it happens):

Maya and Máté:

Seriously, Gänsehaut pur (pure goosebumps)! Sissi was assassinated in Genf by an Italian anarchist whose target was actually a different dignitary who changed his travel plans and didn't show up that day. He stabbed her in the heart with a small dagger, hence Death's passionate kiss at the end of the scene above. Sissi was anorexic and physically weak, depressed and lonely due in part to the death of her son nine years earlier, and had she known Death was coming that day, she probably wouldn't have minded. That is the scene in the clips above and my brief explanation for why she approaches Death somewhat hesitantly but mostly with relief. Throughout the musical Death has accompanied her and watched her, has sung and danced with her, and reminded her that she will be his and only his in the end, which is, in fact, true for us all.

For me, one version shows Death as he probably is - cold, emotionless, pale as a dead fish. It's a brilliant theatrical depiction. The other shows Death as I hope he is when it's my turn to meet him, and I just melt watching them. The way he looks at her...sigh. Interestingly, both Deaths have great hair, don't you think?

So...what do you think? Which pair do you prefer?

Although the text is far better in German, here is my loose and unrhymed translation for those who are curious what they're singing to each other:

Der Schleier fällt (The Veil falls)

Death:
  The veil falls (or slips away)
  Step out of the shadows.
  I have yearned for you so.
  Don't keep me waiting.

Elisabeth:
  Turn the night into dawn.
  Let me be freed and safe.
  Erase my memories
  and give my spirit a place to rest.

Death:
  Let the world collapse.

Both:
  I want to drown with you in nothingness
  to rise again with you as fire
  and vanish into eternity.

Elisabeth:
  I laughed, I cried,
  was dejected and hoped anew.
  But no matter what I did,
  I stayed true to myself.

Both:
  The world will try in vain to find
  the meaning of my/your life.

Elisabeth:
  Because I belong only to myself!
Death:
  Because you belong only to me!


For a last treat, this is part of a Helene Fischer show that was aired a few years ago in which you hear the most well-known song from the musical ("Ich gehör nur mir" / "I belong only to myself") sung in the seven different languages in which the musical has been performed, by leads who have played the part. The last singer is the hostess, Helene Fischer, a popular deutsche Schlager singer.

The languages are: German, Hungarian, Japanese, Finnish, Korean, Dutch, Swedish, and German again.

Sissi's sepulcher to the left of the Kaiser's
their son Rudolf lies to the right
Kapuzinergruft, Wien/Vienna

Bully Herbig und der Schuh des Manitu

When I read that fellow American expat blogger, Adventures of La Mari, was pondering a post about Michael "Bully" Herbig, I contacted her and tossed about the idea of tag-teaming a few posts about his work from the point-of-view of a couple of Americans. She wrote a great introduction to Bully and I started contemplating how I could follow up.

Bully has recently taken over the ads for Haribo Gummibärchen from Thomas Gottschalk, another famous German TV personality, and that transition was fun:

For those whose German is shaky, Bully says he's not sure about taking this job because he's never done commercials before... Gottschalk tells him to think about it and leaves the room. When he pops his head back in, he asks Bully. "Everything ok?" Bully says, "I'm still thinking about it."

Humor is usually a tricky thing, especially cross-culturally. I've heard and read so often that Germans don't have a sense of humor, but that is so completely untrue. To a German not everything "is the funniest thing ever"; their humor is often more subtle, which is probably why their humor is missed by many of my Landsleute.

But not so with Bully's three most popular movies, which La Mari mentioned in her post. These are spoofs of films that are well-known in Germany (ok, Star Trek & Star Wars are known almost worldwide), and I decided to write a little about my favorite of the three - der Schuh des Manitu, or Manitu's Shoe.

No child growing up in Germany can reach the age of 12 without knowing who Winnetou was. Winnetou was a fictional noble hero and son of the chief of the Apaches, who is once saved by and becomes blood brother to Old Shatterhand, a greenhorn from "the south". He got his name because he could knock a guy out with one punch. His rifle had a name, too - Bärentöter (Bearkiller), because...well, you know. The stories were first a collection of novels written by the German writer Karl May (1842-1912), who never got further west in the USA than St. Louis. Through Winnetou German boys learn that "ein Indianer kennt keinen Schmerz!" (an Indian knows no pain!"). They learn about doing one's duty, being honorable and fearless even in the face of death, and protecting one's womenfolk. I asked M if he had a crush on Nscho-Tschi, Winnetou's virtuous and beautiful sister, and he said, "Oh sure. Everyone did."

My students affectionately called her Nacho Cheese, because her name
is pronounced "N'Cho-chee"

If you haven't seen any of the  Winnetou movies, you can still get a laugh watching Schuh des Manitu if you've seen a few westerns. You'll miss the language puns and jokes aimed directly at Winnetou, but here's the bigger issue - it's just not as funny in English. The "Extra Large" DVD has an English track, but a third of the fun of the original is Ranger's Bavarian (ähm...southern) dialect. Those who dubbed the voices into English sound like midwesterners. 

Some of the funny bits still work, like this one:

But if your German is ok, this clip is a good example of where the humor is lost in translation:

I can't tell you how many times M has used the lines, "dann morgen hamma koan Stress mehr" and "Ich bin mit der G'samtsituation unzufrieden."

Here it is in English:

The meaning of the original text is there, but it's just not as funny. This commenter (Addison DeWitt) on IMDb explains the problem really well. Monty Python doesn't work in a language other than English because much of the humor comes from word puns and cultural quirks of the Brits, and Mel Brooks' films lose much their humor when dubbed into German. Dramas, mysteries, action and suspense films work well enough when dubbed. But comedy is too closely connected to culture and language to be simply translated or dubbed.

Films are very useful tools for learning about culture and language. I used films in the German classes I taught at all levels - with English subtitles for the lower levels and German subtitles for the upper levels. There were always memorable lines that the students retained, even as simple as Ranger and Abahatschi's greeting, "Servus!" (Bavarian for "Howdy!!"):

Der Schuh des Manitu is a real gem and loads of fun. It gets a bit silly at the end as spoofs often do, but I think the plot is easy enough to follow even if you miss some of the dialog.

Back to you, La Mari!