My review was written in March 1993 after a MoMA screening in Manhattan.
An original dramatic film about handicapped youngsters in a German rehab center, "Passages", with proper nurturing, could attract the same American audience that supported similar visionary works by Werner Herzog in the 1970s.
Debuting Turkish-born filmmaker Yilmaz Arslan, himself an alumnus of such an institution, demonstrates a flair for dramatic composition in creating a mood of loneliness and genuine strangeness within the confines of a huge institution. His cast is drawn from non-pros, friends who, like Arslan, stayed there.
Vignette structure economically introduces a diverse group of youngsters, suffering various disabilities ranging from no arms to crippled legs, each coping as best he can. Unlike the usual docu or drama on this type of subject, Arslan expresses the rage of the inmates without moralizing or sentimentality.
Best performance is by Dieter Resch, a dwarf with atrophied arms who nonetheless plays a mean drum solo, paints impressive portraits with his feet and is even a bit of a Lothario with paraplegic Nina Kunzendorf.
Film is bookended by scenes of the center's rep, Christian Verhoeven, giving civic-minded visitors a guided tour of the facility, obviously missing all the very human stories therein. Resch embodies the spirit of the place and at film's end, after he's been busted by the police for drug possession, his legacy is transferred to a sympathetic young boy with paralyzed legs, MarcoNeumeier, who started out as an incorrigible playing games with elevators but was taken under Nina and Dieter's protection.
Key subplots involve an African-American singer, Juana Volkers, whose blues chants punctuate the action until she is taken away by her straitlaced military dad; also a weird boy on a bike who nearly falls in love with a spastic girl but is raped on an elevator (by director Arslan, taking a role he says everyone else turned down) and goes crazy.
Film includes considerable controversial material, especially rumbles between the patients, as well as sex scenes that are vivid and realistically grotesque. Throughout there is a strangeness that recalls some of Herzog's best work, notably in "Heart of Glass" and "Stroszek". Like Herzog, Arslan includes several non sequitur scenes of suggestive but cryptic behavior, and punctuates the picture with extremely black humor.
With moody lighting by Izzet Akay, "Passages" is remarkable in its sustained atmosphere of a constrained world, parallel to but quite different from the one inhabited by the viewer. Getting inside Arlslan's vision is difficult (pic will definitely alienate audiences who can't take Tod Browning's horror classic "Freaks", for example), but is well worth the consciousness expansion.
Tech credits are okay, though Ralph Graf's distorted electronic musical score is overbearing.
An original dramatic film about handicapped youngsters in a German rehab center, "Passages", with proper nurturing, could attract the same American audience that supported similar visionary works by Werner Herzog in the 1970s.
Debuting Turkish-born filmmaker Yilmaz Arslan, himself an alumnus of such an institution, demonstrates a flair for dramatic composition in creating a mood of loneliness and genuine strangeness within the confines of a huge institution. His cast is drawn from non-pros, friends who, like Arslan, stayed there.
Vignette structure economically introduces a diverse group of youngsters, suffering various disabilities ranging from no arms to crippled legs, each coping as best he can. Unlike the usual docu or drama on this type of subject, Arslan expresses the rage of the inmates without moralizing or sentimentality.
Best performance is by Dieter Resch, a dwarf with atrophied arms who nonetheless plays a mean drum solo, paints impressive portraits with his feet and is even a bit of a Lothario with paraplegic Nina Kunzendorf.
Film is bookended by scenes of the center's rep, Christian Verhoeven, giving civic-minded visitors a guided tour of the facility, obviously missing all the very human stories therein. Resch embodies the spirit of the place and at film's end, after he's been busted by the police for drug possession, his legacy is transferred to a sympathetic young boy with paralyzed legs, MarcoNeumeier, who started out as an incorrigible playing games with elevators but was taken under Nina and Dieter's protection.
Key subplots involve an African-American singer, Juana Volkers, whose blues chants punctuate the action until she is taken away by her straitlaced military dad; also a weird boy on a bike who nearly falls in love with a spastic girl but is raped on an elevator (by director Arslan, taking a role he says everyone else turned down) and goes crazy.
Film includes considerable controversial material, especially rumbles between the patients, as well as sex scenes that are vivid and realistically grotesque. Throughout there is a strangeness that recalls some of Herzog's best work, notably in "Heart of Glass" and "Stroszek". Like Herzog, Arslan includes several non sequitur scenes of suggestive but cryptic behavior, and punctuates the picture with extremely black humor.
With moody lighting by Izzet Akay, "Passages" is remarkable in its sustained atmosphere of a constrained world, parallel to but quite different from the one inhabited by the viewer. Getting inside Arlslan's vision is difficult (pic will definitely alienate audiences who can't take Tod Browning's horror classic "Freaks", for example), but is well worth the consciousness expansion.
Tech credits are okay, though Ralph Graf's distorted electronic musical score is overbearing.
