To contradict an earlier user comment, this movie is to me pretty much the opposite of "tedious avant-garde". I mean it's avant-garde in the good sense -- innovative but without foot-stepping some dogma that has been decreed by the Cahiers du cinéma -- and it certainly isn't tedious. Spils and Enke (the director and the male hero of the movie, who made this movie as a real-life couple) have done an exceptional, almost documentarian, job of capturing the mood of the times by condensing it into several outstanding characters.
If you have become used to the established Hollywood version of "The Sixties", where it's the Fifties in one scene, and then, bang!, the Sixties, cue "Turn! Turn! Turn!" from The Byrds and roll out the flowery shirts and nappy hairdos, then you're in for a surprise. It's the revolution, all right, but our heroes wear long-sleeved buttoned shirts, properly combed hair, the Vietnam war seems to be a hundred years in the offing, and the banjo-whistely soundtrack would have made Jimi Hendrix run for his tour bus.
Munich-Schwabing, where most of this movie was shot, had been Germany's political hotbed for some years, and in 1967 "the action" had just moved on to other cities. You can smell a whiff of the eternal Bavarian revolutionary credo in the air: "A bissl was geht allerwei!" -- which may be instantly congenial but is, unfortunately, completely untranslatable.
By the way, my favorite scenes are when the different characters enter the elevator and meet its inhabitant, an obscure studenty character who apparently lives there, and spends his time reading, writing, drinking coffee and smoking. Slightly embarrassed and nervous glances are exchanged, no explanation is ever given.
If you have become used to the established Hollywood version of "The Sixties", where it's the Fifties in one scene, and then, bang!, the Sixties, cue "Turn! Turn! Turn!" from The Byrds and roll out the flowery shirts and nappy hairdos, then you're in for a surprise. It's the revolution, all right, but our heroes wear long-sleeved buttoned shirts, properly combed hair, the Vietnam war seems to be a hundred years in the offing, and the banjo-whistely soundtrack would have made Jimi Hendrix run for his tour bus.
Munich-Schwabing, where most of this movie was shot, had been Germany's political hotbed for some years, and in 1967 "the action" had just moved on to other cities. You can smell a whiff of the eternal Bavarian revolutionary credo in the air: "A bissl was geht allerwei!" -- which may be instantly congenial but is, unfortunately, completely untranslatable.
By the way, my favorite scenes are when the different characters enter the elevator and meet its inhabitant, an obscure studenty character who apparently lives there, and spends his time reading, writing, drinking coffee and smoking. Slightly embarrassed and nervous glances are exchanged, no explanation is ever given.
