User Reviews

"Der Trinker" is a German(-language) film from 1995, so it has its 20th anniversary last year. Tom Toelle is one of writers here and he also directs. It is probably his second most famous work after "Das Millionenspiel". His co-writer here is the fairly famous Ulrich Plenzdorf and the duo adapted the novel by Hans Fallada of a severely alcohol-addicted man. The lead actor is Harald Juhnke and he is probably the best choice one could think of for the title character. Juhnke is known today for his films, but also for being an actor who had problem with alcohol abuse during his entire career. So you can even see this as an autobiographical work occasionally. It also makes it a bit tragic to know that the man we see in here did really destroy parts of his life the same way the main character does.

It is a television production that runs for approximately 95 minutes. I don't think I am familiar with any of the other actors in here, but maybe you are if you are really interested in German films. They're no big names though. I think this was a pretty good film. It felt very real and authentic in terms of the actions of the main character. I am talking about his lies, his promises to stop drinking and how a mix of alcohol and not trusting the right people gets him to almost kill his wife. There is no reason to the main character's actions when he is under the influence. And there are quite a few scenes that stay memorable. The relationship with the other woman also added a lot to the film I think, even if it did not look like it at all that they would start dating. The ending is very sad, but I think it is good the way it ended. It is not a sad ending for the thrills of it, but something that feels really realistic after he lost both women in his life and cannot admit to his wife how he hit rock-bottom when she tells him about her divorce plans. All in all, this film had only very few lengths, but several really strong highs that make up for the negative moments. And there aren't that many anyway, which is why I give it a thumbs-up. Go check it out. A very touching performance by Juhnke that somehow represents his career and life, the good and the bad.

The two most famous German stories of self-confessing drinkers are Joseph Roth's "Legend of the holy drinker" (1938) and Hans Fallada's "The drinker" (1944). Fallada (1893-1947) is one of Germany's most famous novelists. "The drinker" and the subsequent novel "The incubus" (1947), in which he described his addiction to morphine, are Fallada's most personal novels. While "The drinker" has already been filmed in 1967 with Siegfried Lowitz in the main role (for which Lowitz was awarded with the Golden Camera), the present movie shows the unforgettable Harald Juhnke as the protagonist Erwin Sommer. As every German knows, Juhnke was a self-confessed alcoholic himself and a most renowned actor, and therefore predestined for this role.

The film which follows Fallada's novel pretty closely (except the end), shows Erwin Sommer's way from a successful businessman to an inmate of a closed psychiatric clinic. Sommer's career starts to fail. Because of his negligence, he loses a great job to his young concurrent. Sommer makes a business trip to Hamburg and starts drinking heavily. After his return, his wife learns about the miserable situation of their business and her husband's addiction. Against his will, she commits him to a psychiatric clinic, but Erwin Sommer jumps out of the ambulance. He tries to finance his further life by criminality, is arrested and brought first to prison and later into an asylum. When his wife visits him, she discloses him that she wants the divorce, because she got into a personal relationship with his young concurrent. Sommer flies into rage, and, after years long forced abstinence from alcohol, drinks ethanol that he finds in a medical cabinet. After that his stay in the asylum is prolonged until the end of his days. Desperate of having no possibility neither to get out nor to kill himself, he visits the department where the tubercular patients are and swallows their sputum. Shortly after, Sommer happily diagnoses in himself an increasing coughing. The end of his sufferings is close.