"Mit deinen Augen" or "With your eyes" is a German television film from 2004, so this one had its 15th anniversary this year and it is bad enough already that this film was even made and released, but that tehy are still showing it on national television after all these years is the biggest travesty. Of course, "they" means our brave GEZ stations. This film runs for 1.5 hours and the director is Karl Kases and the script is Brigitte Blobel. Sound like Kleber and Gause, doesn't it? Well, not made up. The good nes is that both are apparently retired now. Austrian director Kases has not made a film in a decade and Blobel has not come up with a new script in almost half a decade and she is ten years older than him, so she certainly worked much longer. But Kases has the more interesting body of work, mostly because of his cinematography efforts for projects where you probably would not really expect him (or another Austrian/German) filmmaker to be a part of. Still what he did here is nothing to be proud of, even if I still thing the biggest effort is always the writing and not even Spielberg could turn such a script into a success. I will get into detail about the story later. The cast includes some people that are familiar faces here from Germany: Wussow, Fritsch, Cukrowski, Prager, maybe Dittmann and Bachmann are people you could have come across in many other projects, but their movie here is probably a contender for career-worst. Yes it is this poor. The worst is how the movie really dares to take itself so seriously as if it was really making an impact and realistic and authentic. But the mess is already very nicely summarized in the first scene. We have Wussow's character, a blind opera singer, at a recording studio and apparently she forgot to act blind there or the audience should not know yet, but her acting is extremely different from all that follos afterwards. The best example is how she is literally looking 100% in the faces of people behind a wall when she talks to them. Yeah right. And let's not even get started in terms of the music. It is so clear and obvious that we hear a voice from a tape and it is not Wussow's character actually singing there. The beginning to this movie shows straight away that you are in for a film by people that pay no attention to detail and whose approach to creative achievements can at best be described as clumsy, although incompetent seems the more accurate description.
There is a lot more. Just take the girl who is blind as well. She (or her mother) comes to Wussow's character as if the latter is some kind of saint ready to heal her and obviously she immediately makes a massive connection with the girl and the two get along so well, which results in a moment/scene that felt like the worst Miracle Worker" parody I have ever seen. I mean let's just accept that as fact and not care for the actual fact that the girl is not included anymore afterwards in the film basically with the exception of one scene when we find out that the protagonist is of course actually a saind because she will pay for an operation that can perhaps make the girl see again. We do not find out more about this operation or the outcome though because let's not forget that there is only one blind star in this film. By the way, have you ever heard that a globally famous opera singer performs regularly for the people in her neighborhood, just walks out and starts singing? I know I haven't, but hey she is a woman of the people. There is crime too. The singer's assistant and the maid or so are stealing famous paintings from under the protagonist's noses basically and exchanging them for fake ones, which the woman of course does not see because she is blind. Now this is where the film gets literally so absurd that it is almost an unintentional comedy. But of course, in the sense of the most unrealistic happy ending, the truth comes out there too and the bad guys have to flee. Pretty ridiculous how this comes out because the main character's new love interest discovers it while he is writing an article or book about the woman. Very realistic. The one played by Kohlund. He also has some of the most embarrassing moments in terms of comedy like when this lady from the hotel knocks at his door. If you think the first time is already embarrassing when she does so and although he responds that she shall not enter, she enters (since when does hotel staff do something like that?), then wait for the second inclusion when she comes into the room and he tries to get a sense (no pun intended!) of what it feels like to be blind and with his eyes covered, he accidentally grab's the hotel maid's breasts. Holy moly. How could they. So clumsy, so embarrassing. It's not sexist or anything, it just proves the complete absence of talent for Blobel here when it comes to comedy writing. And that is especially sad because she was already a relatively old woman and experienced filmmaker when working on this project. I already mentioned the new wonder healing from the end when of course Wussow's character can see again and they are truly going all in with the unrealistic stuff. Also with how quickly she performs after the operation as if nothing happened. Let me tell you I have had laser surgery in my life and it is not like that at all. You need time to recover. Also with the protagonist's age. We hear that she lost her vision when she was 12 and on one occasion the character says something like it's been xy years since she lost her vision, so we know how old the character is and I don't remember the exact number, but was way over a decade than Wussow's actual age when she appeared this movie. So yeah, no matter what perspective you take, this film is a big joke and a the good one, also in terms of everything involving the romance story, like when they meet initially and she hates him, but hey she has such strong emotions because she soon cares for him. Or their date with the accident and how they sit exactly at the window for the bad guy to lurk in and observe them. I would even go so far and say that the way blind people are depicted in this film is utterly offensive and an insult to actually blind people. Like they are so untalented here that it feels as if they are mocking this disability in fact, even if they obviously did not. Then again, blind people have the advantage that they will never see this travesty of a film at least. Highly not recommended. Truly an abomination, but given Wussow has literally never starred in a quality film and is an actress without range, this should not come as a surprise to anybody.
There is a lot more. Just take the girl who is blind as well. She (or her mother) comes to Wussow's character as if the latter is some kind of saint ready to heal her and obviously she immediately makes a massive connection with the girl and the two get along so well, which results in a moment/scene that felt like the worst Miracle Worker" parody I have ever seen. I mean let's just accept that as fact and not care for the actual fact that the girl is not included anymore afterwards in the film basically with the exception of one scene when we find out that the protagonist is of course actually a saind because she will pay for an operation that can perhaps make the girl see again. We do not find out more about this operation or the outcome though because let's not forget that there is only one blind star in this film. By the way, have you ever heard that a globally famous opera singer performs regularly for the people in her neighborhood, just walks out and starts singing? I know I haven't, but hey she is a woman of the people. There is crime too. The singer's assistant and the maid or so are stealing famous paintings from under the protagonist's noses basically and exchanging them for fake ones, which the woman of course does not see because she is blind. Now this is where the film gets literally so absurd that it is almost an unintentional comedy. But of course, in the sense of the most unrealistic happy ending, the truth comes out there too and the bad guys have to flee. Pretty ridiculous how this comes out because the main character's new love interest discovers it while he is writing an article or book about the woman. Very realistic. The one played by Kohlund. He also has some of the most embarrassing moments in terms of comedy like when this lady from the hotel knocks at his door. If you think the first time is already embarrassing when she does so and although he responds that she shall not enter, she enters (since when does hotel staff do something like that?), then wait for the second inclusion when she comes into the room and he tries to get a sense (no pun intended!) of what it feels like to be blind and with his eyes covered, he accidentally grab's the hotel maid's breasts. Holy moly. How could they. So clumsy, so embarrassing. It's not sexist or anything, it just proves the complete absence of talent for Blobel here when it comes to comedy writing. And that is especially sad because she was already a relatively old woman and experienced filmmaker when working on this project. I already mentioned the new wonder healing from the end when of course Wussow's character can see again and they are truly going all in with the unrealistic stuff. Also with how quickly she performs after the operation as if nothing happened. Let me tell you I have had laser surgery in my life and it is not like that at all. You need time to recover. Also with the protagonist's age. We hear that she lost her vision when she was 12 and on one occasion the character says something like it's been xy years since she lost her vision, so we know how old the character is and I don't remember the exact number, but was way over a decade than Wussow's actual age when she appeared this movie. So yeah, no matter what perspective you take, this film is a big joke and a the good one, also in terms of everything involving the romance story, like when they meet initially and she hates him, but hey she has such strong emotions because she soon cares for him. Or their date with the accident and how they sit exactly at the window for the bad guy to lurk in and observe them. I would even go so far and say that the way blind people are depicted in this film is utterly offensive and an insult to actually blind people. Like they are so untalented here that it feels as if they are mocking this disability in fact, even if they obviously did not. Then again, blind people have the advantage that they will never see this travesty of a film at least. Highly not recommended. Truly an abomination, but given Wussow has literally never starred in a quality film and is an actress without range, this should not come as a surprise to anybody.
