User Reviews

It is quite a while I saw this controversial movie, but as nobody else wrote a comment, I feel compelled to do so. The film caused a scandal in Germany in the mid-eighties. The that-time Minister of the Interior Zimmermann, a conservative Roman-Catholic and a Bavarian like director Achternbusch, decided that such a blasphemous movie should not be supported and withdrew state funding which the production already had received. This created more publicity for the movie than, I guess, any other movie Achternbusch had made before. The film is actually quite funny. Jesus (played by the director) returns to present-day Bavaria, walks around Munich in a somewhat dazed manner and strikes up an affair with a nun, arguing that they are married anyway. Therefore, he refers to himself as "Ober" (waiter), obviously the male form of "Oberin" (Mother Superior). He occasionally transforms into a snake when being afraid and is finally carried up into the sky by the nun, who transforms into a bird of prey. Blasphemy? Sure, but in a rather bizarre fashion. The film obviously doesn't take itself too seriously - one particular highlight comes when two policemen try to defecate into two tiny Schnaps glasses. Like in many of his other films, Achternbusch targets Bavaria's everyday culture with his meandering, anarchic, quirky ideas, and like his other films, this has a deliberately amateurish look. The pacing is uneven and can become challenging, but the cinematography is at times quite beautiful. Overall, if you look for edgy, quirky films that deliberately defy standards of slick movie making, this can be some fun.

"Das Gespenst" or "The Ghost" is a West German German-language movie from 1982, so this black-and-white film has its 35th anniversary this year. It is perhaps the most known work for writer and director Herbert Achternbusch, a German filmmaker who is long retired now, soon turns 80, but had fairly prolific careers in both these two fields and also acted a lot. In his work here for example he also plays the title character, a modern reincarnation of the Christ who comes down from the Cross and we get to watch his interactions with a nun mostly and at the very end also with a couple where the woman cheats on the husband. So, there is at least as much sin in these 85 minutes as there is religion as this film by no means was a work that religious people would have loved back then. or would love today. Apart from Achternbusch, there are also other names in here that German film buffs have certainly heard about, namely Josef Bierbichler who is still enjoying a really strong career, or Fassbinder's lead actor Kurt Raab, who plays a booze-drinking cop in here who tries to take a shît as well. Or Werner Schröter, a successful filmmaker too and probably even more known than Achternbusch as of today. So yeah, by now you really should have understood that all the vulgarity and obscenity (for example a woman telling her lover to eat fish out of her vagina, is nothing that goes well with innocent sacred image the Church have about themselves, But besides being really critical towards religion, this is also a very Bavarian movie. The actors, the music and also the landscapes add to that a lot and Achternbusch also originates from Munich and Bavaria is certainly the most religious area of Germany, which adds additional spice to the whole subject. So yeah if you go to church every Sunday, then this is definitely not the film for you to watch. But if you love quality films, then it probably isn't either as I personally found the shock factor here dominant, but the story-telling not so much in terms of quality. This is also why as a whole I would give this film a thumbs-down. it is more interesting than good I guess and certainly nowhere near the best Germany had to offer back in the 1980s.