It's hard to place this movie, because in my opinion, two principles are clashing here. On the one hand, there's what you learn in screen writing class: Protagonists should have an aim and a need. On the other, there's the reality of life on the streets, where one day is pretty much the same as the day before, small incidents excluded. This said, one probably has to accept the fact that the main character Hagen Trinker is pretty aimless for most of the movie, drifting passively along. One assumes that there must be a backstory, a life he's fled, a crisis he couldn't manage but by drinking, but we learn very little about it. Around the midpoint of the movie, his implicit need for love is brought out in the open when he is finally giving in to a teenage runaway's wish for sex. It is very touching to see how the mechanic movement turns into something more Trinker didn't expect, and how this gives him an aim for some time: Find the girl, who has been brought back to her parents. But at the end, he's drifting again - and we can only hope he'll be finally able to do something with his life. It's interesting that the supporting characters, on the contrast, have very clearly defined aims: Edgar wants to go to Acapulco with Liane, Tom wants to see Cambridge. One succeeds, one doesn't. In the end I have to admit that I admire the screenwriter's and director's courage to leave questions unanswered. Still, one would have liked to learn more about those people under the bridge (who were still moving and talking very much like dressed down actors, I'm afraid).
4 Reviews
Not comparable with the book
tedben3 October 2016
As said in other reviews the film is watchable without knowing the book behind it also due to the performance of Jürgen Vogel.
However in Helmut Kraussers book "Fette Welt" Hagen is a deeply pessimistic, cynical but yet intelligent and highly sophisticated character. Despite all of his flaws. The film can't really express these complexity not to mention the complicated connection between Judith and the protagonist, his dark childhood or, without spoiling, the revelation of Herodes at the end.
Furthermore it isn't able to transform the sober poetics and slightly philosophical passages of the book into picture or to deliver the special aesthetics towards dirt and decay described sensitively in the text.
The question is, if this is possible at all. During a few scenes the movie at least tried.
However in Helmut Kraussers book "Fette Welt" Hagen is a deeply pessimistic, cynical but yet intelligent and highly sophisticated character. Despite all of his flaws. The film can't really express these complexity not to mention the complicated connection between Judith and the protagonist, his dark childhood or, without spoiling, the revelation of Herodes at the end.
Furthermore it isn't able to transform the sober poetics and slightly philosophical passages of the book into picture or to deliver the special aesthetics towards dirt and decay described sensitively in the text.
The question is, if this is possible at all. During a few scenes the movie at least tried.
Good movie,if I hadn't known the book
metti-bauer14 April 2003
I read the book "Fette Welt" by Helmut Krausser before having watched the movie.The book is so detailed and really shows you the way life on the street looks like.
The problem with the movie is that you expect something different when you know the book.The movie is an average love story,which only plays on the street.The director cut out some scenes that made the book for me very amusing,so there is nothing extraordinary about the movie anymore.Maybe he left out some of the disgusting scenes,because he thought that you can't show that in a movie,but some of these scenes make the book so macabre and sometimes funny.
Actually Jürgen Vogel does a good job and proofs once again that he is one of the most talented German actors.He plays the role of Hagen Trinker very convincing,but that alone doesn't make it a good movie in my opinion.Maybe the director hoped too much that Jürgen Vogel alone would make it a good movie,but that idea didn't work.You need more than only an excellent main-actor.Possibly I would have liked the movie better,if I had seen it before having read the book.
If you want to see a real good German movie,than you have to watch "23" , "Good bye Lenin" or "Die Apothekerin".
I give it 4/10,because of Jürgen Vogel and the fact that I could have liked it better without having known the book.
The problem with the movie is that you expect something different when you know the book.The movie is an average love story,which only plays on the street.The director cut out some scenes that made the book for me very amusing,so there is nothing extraordinary about the movie anymore.Maybe he left out some of the disgusting scenes,because he thought that you can't show that in a movie,but some of these scenes make the book so macabre and sometimes funny.
Actually Jürgen Vogel does a good job and proofs once again that he is one of the most talented German actors.He plays the role of Hagen Trinker very convincing,but that alone doesn't make it a good movie in my opinion.Maybe the director hoped too much that Jürgen Vogel alone would make it a good movie,but that idea didn't work.You need more than only an excellent main-actor.Possibly I would have liked the movie better,if I had seen it before having read the book.
If you want to see a real good German movie,than you have to watch "23" , "Good bye Lenin" or "Die Apothekerin".
I give it 4/10,because of Jürgen Vogel and the fact that I could have liked it better without having known the book.
Bittersweet romance
justusdallmer26 September 2004
Warning: Spoilers
*** Spoilers *** A sad, sweet, bitter love affair with no future. (Different lives, different ages.) A documentary approach with not much talk. (The DP shot many documentaries before.) Always on the edge of hope and despair. Interesting, how sex pushes the relation. I don't know the book, so I was very much impressed. The murder on the riverbank reminds me of Herzog's "Woyzeck":
such a sad way of killing his beloved girl; who was just too lost in this world.
such a sad way of killing his beloved girl; who was just too lost in this world.
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