Love triangle versus capitalism
Film review: The Edukators
Star rating: ***½
Years ago, following a chance viewing of the Cohen brothers’ Fargo, I left the cinema wondering what all the fuss had been about. Everybody except me must have been high. Weeks later, though, the film haunted me, just wouldn’t let go. It still hasn’t. Not so with Good Bye Lenin!, a film in which Jan of The Edukators, played by Daniel Brühl, also starred. I expended scarcely a thought on it once I’d left the cinema. The Edukators on the other hand shifted my brain into a different zone, and now I feel jetlagged.
Perhaps it’s nostalgia for a variety of political idealism that doesn’t confront you often in New Zealand. I lived in Germany for 12 years and, for a while, Berlin was my favourite place. I remember it as a charged, electric city. I just don’t recall ever having heard young people in Auckland bars talking about revolution, anarchy and overthrowing the government. Either European kids are more dissatisfied with the status quo or Kiwis do their plotting in private.
The original German title of this film is idiomatic: Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei translates roughly as “the years of plenty are over”, which doesn’t work nearly as well in English, even if you can’t speak or understand German. But surely someone could have come up with a title a little more imaginative than The Edukators; the plot presents plenty of alternatives, after all.
Co-written and directed by Hans Weingartner, The Edukators is your classic love triangle scenario. Well, no it isn’t. Jule (pronounced “Yoo-luh”, played by Julia Jentsch) is a student teacher working as a waitress and trying to make ends meet, which they don’t. They don’t meet because, in one of those back-story moments (one she must constantly relive because it will potentially disfigure her life forever), she reached down to the glove compartment while driving on the autobahn and crashed into the back of a €100,000 Mercedes limousine driven by wealthy business executive Hardenberg (Burghart Klaußner). The problem is, Jule’s registration has expired and she isn’t insured. She’s run up thousands of dollars of debt trying to pay for the damage and is about to be evicted from her apartment.
Jentsch doesn’t quite have the charisma of Franka Potente of Lola rennt and Der Krieger und die Kaiserin or Audrey Tautou of Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (Amélie), but she’s entirely serviceable in the role of Jule. She moves in with her boyfriend Peter (Stipe Erceg) and his sullen and disapproving flatmate, Jan, but has to redecorate her old apartment if she wants to recover her bond. Jan helps her with the painting and wallpapering, during the course of which they rather too obviously develop a mutual infatuation, and Jule discovers that Jan and Peter haven’t, after all, been out on nightly bill-sticking jaunts with their anti-globalisation posters, as she’d been led to believe. Instead, they’ve been breaking into the luxury villas in Berlin’s suburbs.
But they’re no mundane burglars or vandals; they’re of a far more idealistic inclination. They’re The Edukators, and are naïvely trying to change the world by rearranging rich people’s furniture and leaving messages with the aim of terrifying them when they discover their Bang & Olufsen stereo in the fridge and a note on an antique table reading “Your years of plenty are over”, or “You have too much money”. Think of it as a 21st Century, politically correct Manson Family.
Jan takes Jule along with him one night while he reconnoitres a villa and, in the kind of fateful coincidence that might occur in a Russell Hoban novel, she discovers that they’re a matter of a street away from her creditor Hardenberg’s mansion. They cannot resist leaving him a calling card — especially when they discover that the house is shuttered-up and empty.
Annoyingly (both for her and the viewer), Jule drops her mobile in Hardenberg’s house, and she and Jan are forced to return there the following night — the risk that Hardenberg, once he’s retrieved his designer sofa from the swimming pool, will find it and link phone with girl is too great. Unfortunately, Hardenberg catches them in the act of retrieval, and Jan is forced to cosh him.
In one of the film’s tensest moments, the two have to decide what to do as Hardenberg lies unconscious. Their panicked sense of helplessness is palpable, and so is their reticence to call Peter to ask for his advice — after all, he knows nothing of their infatuation and betrayal. But their lack of imagination leaves them with no choice.
Peter’s advice isn’t smart, and they end up kidnapping Hardenberg and driving him to a remote Alpine cabin that belongs to an uncle of Jule. It’s at this Berghütte that the three confront their absurdly rich hostage about his greed and Hardenberg appears to lapse into Stockholm Syndrome. It should come as no surprise to you — although it does to them — that things aren’t as black and white in the life of the rich Schwein as they considered them to be. Hardenberg was a child of the 1968 revolution, a friend of some of the Red Army Faction big-Afros, and conveniently cohabited in a WG (“Wohngemeinschaft”, a flat-share, quaintly translated as a “commune”) with a group of free-loving women, one of whom is now his wife.
The exchange during which Jan cross-examines Hardenberg narrowly avoids a cringing artlessness. It isn’t exactly saved by the cast (each of whom is entirely plausible), the editing or the direction, but rather by the impetus of the characterisation, which by this time benefits from our disbelief having been suspended; we now believe in the characters enough to set aside minor criticisms of dialogue. The Alpine scenes are also the most atmospheric, and some panoramic cinematography makes for a mellow, almost idyllic holiday mood.
Jan and Peter in particular are quick to recognise the error of their ways, and realise they aren’t much better than their hostage; merely younger and with fewer responsibilities. For his part, Hardenberg restrains himself from using his knowledge of Jan and Jule’s betrayal as overt ammunition against them, but he does drop at least one strong hint. When Peter finds out, his fury is momentary and the three are reconciled before they return their hostage to Berlin, with a businessman’s handshake from Hardenberg that he won’t tell the police. We know what one of those is worth.
The English subtitles dredge the usual, murky depths, although the German is hardly Nietzschean. Almost the first line in The Edukators is uttered by a child, who returns from holiday to discover her stuffed toy, unexpectedly, in the hallway, where it’s been placed by Jan and Peter on one of their anarchic sprees. “Fluffy, was machst Du denn hier?” she asks the cuddly animal: “Fluffy what are you doing here?” The subtitle rather more existentially reads, “Fluffy, why are you here?” Even more disturbingly, “Glotze”, German slang for the telly — from the verb “Glotzen”, to goggle — is later translated as “the boob tube”, which as far as I can recall is something else entirely.
Towards the end of the film the plot of The Edukators begins to take some less expected twists and turns, raising questions that, the IMDb forums suggest (registration is required, but it’s free), set a great many viewers thinking long after they’d left the cinema. The IMDb’s ‘Goofs’ section makes enigmatic reference to a boat scene, which doesn’t appear in the version that’s being shown in New Zealand cinemas — or, apparently, in most other countries around the world. Some of the film’s intended resolution has been left on the cutting room floor, it seems. I hope Weingartner approves and, if not, I wish studios and producers would either allow those they’ve entrusted with their IP to realise their visions or not hire them in the first place.
It’s startling how exhaustive the debate about the ending of The Edukators has become on the IMDb forums. There’s also some heated discussion about the movie’s politics and whether capitalism really is “bad”. It certainly seems to be a film that’s set people thinking. The critics are by no means unanimous. Among the best critiques are a couple of Four Word Film Reviews. My own suggestion was “Capitalism sucks… doesn’t it?” but the Powers That Be rejected that as too generic. So I’ve had another go, with “Love triangle versus capitalism.”
Some people never give up.
Star rating: ***½
Years ago, following a chance viewing of the Cohen brothers’ Fargo, I left the cinema wondering what all the fuss had been about. Everybody except me must have been high. Weeks later, though, the film haunted me, just wouldn’t let go. It still hasn’t. Not so with Good Bye Lenin!, a film in which Jan of The Edukators, played by Daniel Brühl, also starred. I expended scarcely a thought on it once I’d left the cinema. The Edukators on the other hand shifted my brain into a different zone, and now I feel jetlagged.
Perhaps it’s nostalgia for a variety of political idealism that doesn’t confront you often in New Zealand. I lived in Germany for 12 years and, for a while, Berlin was my favourite place. I remember it as a charged, electric city. I just don’t recall ever having heard young people in Auckland bars talking about revolution, anarchy and overthrowing the government. Either European kids are more dissatisfied with the status quo or Kiwis do their plotting in private.
The original German title of this film is idiomatic: Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei translates roughly as “the years of plenty are over”, which doesn’t work nearly as well in English, even if you can’t speak or understand German. But surely someone could have come up with a title a little more imaginative than The Edukators; the plot presents plenty of alternatives, after all.
Co-written and directed by Hans Weingartner, The Edukators is your classic love triangle scenario. Well, no it isn’t. Jule (pronounced “Yoo-luh”, played by Julia Jentsch) is a student teacher working as a waitress and trying to make ends meet, which they don’t. They don’t meet because, in one of those back-story moments (one she must constantly relive because it will potentially disfigure her life forever), she reached down to the glove compartment while driving on the autobahn and crashed into the back of a €100,000 Mercedes limousine driven by wealthy business executive Hardenberg (Burghart Klaußner). The problem is, Jule’s registration has expired and she isn’t insured. She’s run up thousands of dollars of debt trying to pay for the damage and is about to be evicted from her apartment.
Jentsch doesn’t quite have the charisma of Franka Potente of Lola rennt and Der Krieger und die Kaiserin or Audrey Tautou of Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (Amélie), but she’s entirely serviceable in the role of Jule. She moves in with her boyfriend Peter (Stipe Erceg) and his sullen and disapproving flatmate, Jan, but has to redecorate her old apartment if she wants to recover her bond. Jan helps her with the painting and wallpapering, during the course of which they rather too obviously develop a mutual infatuation, and Jule discovers that Jan and Peter haven’t, after all, been out on nightly bill-sticking jaunts with their anti-globalisation posters, as she’d been led to believe. Instead, they’ve been breaking into the luxury villas in Berlin’s suburbs.
But they’re no mundane burglars or vandals; they’re of a far more idealistic inclination. They’re The Edukators, and are naïvely trying to change the world by rearranging rich people’s furniture and leaving messages with the aim of terrifying them when they discover their Bang & Olufsen stereo in the fridge and a note on an antique table reading “Your years of plenty are over”, or “You have too much money”. Think of it as a 21st Century, politically correct Manson Family.
Jan takes Jule along with him one night while he reconnoitres a villa and, in the kind of fateful coincidence that might occur in a Russell Hoban novel, she discovers that they’re a matter of a street away from her creditor Hardenberg’s mansion. They cannot resist leaving him a calling card — especially when they discover that the house is shuttered-up and empty.
Annoyingly (both for her and the viewer), Jule drops her mobile in Hardenberg’s house, and she and Jan are forced to return there the following night — the risk that Hardenberg, once he’s retrieved his designer sofa from the swimming pool, will find it and link phone with girl is too great. Unfortunately, Hardenberg catches them in the act of retrieval, and Jan is forced to cosh him.
In one of the film’s tensest moments, the two have to decide what to do as Hardenberg lies unconscious. Their panicked sense of helplessness is palpable, and so is their reticence to call Peter to ask for his advice — after all, he knows nothing of their infatuation and betrayal. But their lack of imagination leaves them with no choice.
Peter’s advice isn’t smart, and they end up kidnapping Hardenberg and driving him to a remote Alpine cabin that belongs to an uncle of Jule. It’s at this Berghütte that the three confront their absurdly rich hostage about his greed and Hardenberg appears to lapse into Stockholm Syndrome. It should come as no surprise to you — although it does to them — that things aren’t as black and white in the life of the rich Schwein as they considered them to be. Hardenberg was a child of the 1968 revolution, a friend of some of the Red Army Faction big-Afros, and conveniently cohabited in a WG (“Wohngemeinschaft”, a flat-share, quaintly translated as a “commune”) with a group of free-loving women, one of whom is now his wife.
The exchange during which Jan cross-examines Hardenberg narrowly avoids a cringing artlessness. It isn’t exactly saved by the cast (each of whom is entirely plausible), the editing or the direction, but rather by the impetus of the characterisation, which by this time benefits from our disbelief having been suspended; we now believe in the characters enough to set aside minor criticisms of dialogue. The Alpine scenes are also the most atmospheric, and some panoramic cinematography makes for a mellow, almost idyllic holiday mood.
Jan and Peter in particular are quick to recognise the error of their ways, and realise they aren’t much better than their hostage; merely younger and with fewer responsibilities. For his part, Hardenberg restrains himself from using his knowledge of Jan and Jule’s betrayal as overt ammunition against them, but he does drop at least one strong hint. When Peter finds out, his fury is momentary and the three are reconciled before they return their hostage to Berlin, with a businessman’s handshake from Hardenberg that he won’t tell the police. We know what one of those is worth.
The English subtitles dredge the usual, murky depths, although the German is hardly Nietzschean. Almost the first line in The Edukators is uttered by a child, who returns from holiday to discover her stuffed toy, unexpectedly, in the hallway, where it’s been placed by Jan and Peter on one of their anarchic sprees. “Fluffy, was machst Du denn hier?” she asks the cuddly animal: “Fluffy what are you doing here?” The subtitle rather more existentially reads, “Fluffy, why are you here?” Even more disturbingly, “Glotze”, German slang for the telly — from the verb “Glotzen”, to goggle — is later translated as “the boob tube”, which as far as I can recall is something else entirely.
Towards the end of the film the plot of The Edukators begins to take some less expected twists and turns, raising questions that, the IMDb forums suggest (registration is required, but it’s free), set a great many viewers thinking long after they’d left the cinema. The IMDb’s ‘Goofs’ section makes enigmatic reference to a boat scene, which doesn’t appear in the version that’s being shown in New Zealand cinemas — or, apparently, in most other countries around the world. Some of the film’s intended resolution has been left on the cutting room floor, it seems. I hope Weingartner approves and, if not, I wish studios and producers would either allow those they’ve entrusted with their IP to realise their visions or not hire them in the first place.
It’s startling how exhaustive the debate about the ending of The Edukators has become on the IMDb forums. There’s also some heated discussion about the movie’s politics and whether capitalism really is “bad”. It certainly seems to be a film that’s set people thinking. The critics are by no means unanimous. Among the best critiques are a couple of Four Word Film Reviews. My own suggestion was “Capitalism sucks… doesn’t it?” but the Powers That Be rejected that as too generic. So I’ve had another go, with “Love triangle versus capitalism.”
Some people never give up.
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