| MIDDLE CLASS REVOLT! : Hans Weingartner's 'The Edukators' [5/10] |
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| Thursday, 07 July 2005 | |
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"The fat years are over" is a literal translation of The Edukators' original German title Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei - "Your days of plenty are numbered" is the slightly more poetic version presented in the English-subtitled print. This menacing phrase is the guiding principle of subversive anti-capitalist twentysomethings Jan (Daniel Bruhl) and Peter (Stipe Erceg), who carry out an unusual form of 'direct action' against their more affluent countrymen. They observe fancy houses and villas and, when they ascertain the occupants are away on holiday, break in and rearrange the furniture. This is a psychologically-disturbing prank once practised by Charles Manson and Family, who called it 'creepy crawling' - though there's no mention of this in Weingartner's script, co-written with Katharina Held. Just to ensure the 'victims' get the message, Jan and Peter then leave their slogan of choice (the pleasingly blunt alternative: YOU HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY) in a strategically-positioned envelope. All goes smoothly until Peter goes off on holiday to Barcelona, leaving Jan to entertain his girlfriend Jule (Julia Jentsch). Jule (pronounced 'yoo-la') has her own specific gripes against the German moneyed class: she was left with massive debts after a car-crash in which the BMW of financier Hardenberg (Burghart Klaussner) was totalled, and must toil as a waitress in a fancy restaurant to pay off the astronomical court-imposed balance. In Peter's absence, she and Jan find themseves drifting together into an illicit love-affair. One drunken evening she suggests they pull the furniture-arranging trick on Hardenberg who, it turns out, lives nearby and, very conveniently, isn't at home. Jan reluctantly agrees to her plan. Complications ensue, resulting in Hardenberg being taken hostage by the increasingly desperate young radicals... The Edukators gets off to a terrific start - the credits appear over moody CCTV footage of rich folks' opulent pads; we see a family return from holiday to discover Jan and Peter's handiwork; the father opens the envelope which reveals the film's title. Unfortunately for us, Weingartner seldom displays anything like this kind of sure hand in what follows - though what unfolds is often diverting and commendably thought-provoking, the fundamental clunkiness of the plot-development fritters away what is a very intriguing premise. The Austrian director isn't yet able to shape his material into an even shape, and longueurs set in well before half-way - there are only four proper characters, and this is essentially a somewhat thin (contrived, coincidence-heavy) story stretched over an unjustifiably protracted two-hours-plus. What this material cries out for is a guerrilla briskness, not a Hardenbergish fat-years bloat. Weingartner and Held seem much more bothered about the rather tepid love-triange between the (implausibly model-handsome) trio of Jule, Jan and Peter than in exploring the causes and characteristics of their various discontents - and while the arrival of Hardenberg as a major player provides a welcome change of pace in the second half, Klaussner's strong work is ultimately let down by the script's predictability and its increasing fondness for cheap twists in the third act. The moment Hardenberg asks to sample some of the kids' dope, for instance you count the seconds until the words "1968" pass his lips - and there isn't long to wait. We've had no shortage of films from Germany in recent years chronicling the clash between generations and/or ideologies - and, despite being selected for competition at Cannes 2004, The Edukators is a relatively undistinguished, schematic, sophomoric contribution to the debate. We're closer to the unfocussed politics and fuzzy good intentions of Stefan Krohmer's torpid They've Got Knut (2003) than to Robert Thalheim's niftily subtle Netto (2005) or Wolfgang Becker's crowdpleasing (and Bruhl-starring) Good Bye Lenin! (2003). And the team behind The Edukators have a lot to learn from what remains by far the most effective recent variant on this theme, Christian Petzold's The State I Am In (Die innere Sicherheit) from 2000. A case in point: The Edukators, like The State I Am In, ends with a mournful acoustic-guitar English-language lament - but whereas Weingartner's repetitive overuse of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah (performed by doomed-youth icon Jeff Buckley) may have you reaching for the sick-bucket, they way Petzold deploys Tim Hardin's How Can We Hold Onto a Dream will have you reaching for your handkerchief and/or your ammunition... Neil Young 7th July, 2005 THE EDUKATORS : [5/10] : Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei : Germany (Ger/Austria) 2004 : Hans WEINGARTNER : 124 mins seen at the Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), 30th June 2005 - public show |
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