The Ultimate Guide To GOOD German Movies
Let me just say that you guys are all amazing. Thank you so much for all the kind words in your comments to my last post. lorrainemarker even wrote me fic.
And now on with my plan to distract myself...
The Ultimate Guide To GOOD German Movies
For millari and everybody else who wants to get to know the wonderful World Of Tropes You've Never Heard Of Before Except If You're Canadian Or British, if I've got my flist memorized right. Also featuring gay comedy and a lot of Nazis, sometimes at the same time. Plus, most of these pass the Bechdel test. Just like that. Yes, they do. And there's lots of sex.
We import most movies from America, and we're lazy. So if we can get it from Hollywood, we don't bother filming it ourselves. That means that few of the big cinematic German movies are love comedies, thrillers, and what have you. In television, one thing that's always heavily featured here are murder mysteries and other crime stories that heavily involve German locations and German law and so on. We do watch imported crime stories but seeing the exotic juries reaching the patriotic yet illogical collective conclusion is only interesting for so long. Sadly, we rarely do science fiction and fantasy. Although there are exceptions, of course. A good suspensive movie that isn't listed here would be "Run Lola Run" from 1998. A great fantastic movie would be "The Never Ending Story" from 1984, of course. Yes, that's a German movie. We can prove it. We still have the sets, and all. The flying dragon didn't look like my dog on accident.
Okay, so that last one's a lie.
Basically, there are three kinds of good German movies, and the rest:
War movies.
German war movies tend to be serious movies without a lot of humor, but they lack both the pathos and the glorified patriotism featured in American movies. No soldiers has ever died in a German movie while the score was playing Barber's Adagio for Strings. I do like that a lot about these movies, and in terms of execution, German war movies are yet unsurpassed for me by any other kind of war movie I've seen.
Das Boot / The Boat (1981)
Director's Cut (2h) on amazon.com -- Uncut Version (5h) on amazon.com -- Director's Cut on amazon.co.uk -- German trailer on youtube
Might just be me, but a good fight at sea with a destroyer shooting at things gives me the kind of reaction other women have to watching Lee Adama drop the towel. So I really love this movie. But it's a classic in any case. It's about a submarine crew in 1941. Yes, this is WWII for those of you who didn't listen in high school. :p It has excellent visuals, that generation's greatest actors (and some musicians, too, for some reason- fortunately, none of them breaks into song) and despite the fact that the extended version is ridiculously long, it doesn't ever get boring. It also has a truly excellent score.
If RDM knew this movie, "Daybreak" would have probably been called "Dawn," and BSG would have ended on an entirely different note.
Der Untergang / Downfall (2004)
on amazon.com -- amazon.co.uk -- trailer on youtube
We all know "Downfall" from Hitler's obsession with Kara/Lee, of course.
This is a movie about how Hitler and his staff spent the final days of the war in a bunker in Berlin. It's a very remarkable movie in many ways, none the least because it's virtually the first movie since the era of Nazi propaganda that depicts Nazis as people, not as caricatures. It's easily said, I know, but that was a big deal around here and people went to see this movie determined to find it sort of obscene. But that didn't happen, because it's an excellent movie and in a way, I think, it was overdue. It might be hard to keep all of the huge cast apart, because half of Nazi Germany makes an appearance. Bruno Ganz (who you might remember from watching "The Manchurian Candidate" for example) makes for a really remarkable Hitler. It also features one of my favorite German actors, Christian Berkel, playing a military doctor. I should add that this movie is said to be based on the memoirs of Hitler's secretary, who is the protagonist of this movie. But I'm saying "is said to be" because if you read the actual book, like yours truly, you'll see that the events of the movie are featured on approximately ten pages, so it's not like we're talking about a very detailed historical source here. Though like all German war movies, this one is researched very well and it's very accurate on all accounts one could get wrong.
It's also an excellent example of how to do a story set in a patriarchic society that still has a good amount of female characters in it. Talking to each other regularly. About something other than a man.
Next up, Gay Movies
Sommersturm / Summer Storm (2004)
on amazon.com -- on amazon.co.uk -- found it on youtube with non-pro subtitles, so it may suck -- but you could just watch the sex scene in German -- trailer on youtube
This is a gay teen movie that, hilariously, scored an "R" rating in America because of the sex scene I linked above. This is us rating for porn but not for sex, see. This is a movie about a gay teen called Tobi, who grew up in a Bavarian village and, in doing so, has not had a chance to come out yet. Also, he's in love with his best friend. Then his rowing team attends a training camp, encountering the members of an all-gay team which, of course, changes his whole life. Kudos for this movie include an excellent cinematography- the setting is just beautiful, as is the sex in a very "real" way. Also, Robert Stadlober doing a very emphatic, nuanced job portraying Tobi- although he insists he wasn't the one who did the tiny girlish whimpers in the sex scene. Let me also praise the extras because I know some members of that rowing team and they assure me that rowing slower than the protagonists was hard.
On the downside, there's lots of play on German dialects in the movie that won't translate at all, so there are some scenes that won't make much sense if you aren't a German native. All you're missing out is cultural references and questionable humor though. Also, this movie, not being a comedy per se, features a very peculiar and very German sense of humor. We use (gay) stereotypes on purpose and then we think it's funny. We're weird. So if you start feeling offended, be aware that the movie has probably just stopped taking itself seriously for a minute. Especially in the end, when the score breaks into a cheerful rendition of "YMCA" without any reason at all.
Männer wie wir / Guys And Balls (2004)
on amazon.com -- on amazon.co.uk -- full movie on youtube (subtitles go light on the violent language) -- trailer on youtube -- how's that for a first kiss?
This is a very straightforward soccer comedy about a goalie called Ecki, who is thrown out of his village team for being gay and swears to take revenge by beating his old team with an all-gay team. That isn't easy because gays aren't, traditionally, interested in soccer. At all. Again, this movie heavily features the funny stereotyping I mentioned above. Again it's rated R in America for whatever reason- I don't think we even assigned it a rating. Kudos for including a transgendered character (although she isn't featured a lot), though it's a little painful to watch how the black extras (Nigerian players on the gay team) don't get any lines (which I can only explain by unfortunate cutting, because their presence in the movie is a little ominious in the first place).
While this is a very lighthearted movie, featuring many silly moments, lots of gay pride and okay some fluffy romance, a slightly serious note is provided by the character Rudolf (played by Christian Berkel, who I've praised above), a gay who came out late and has to explain to his son why he is now living in a BDSM relationship with two leather-wearing chubby guys.
Aimee & Jaguar (1999)
on amazon.com -- on amazon.co.uk -- on youtube (don't know the quality of the subtitles) -- trailer on youtube (English dub)
We tried to nominate this movie for an Oscar for Best Foreign Movie in 1999, which cracks me up because I don't think a movie about lesbian Nazis will be winning an Oscar any time soon. So. This is a movie about a wife of a Nazi who falls in love with a Jewish woman. It's based on an autobiographical book, which was part of my thesis, so let me tell you right away that the movie is better. Some acting in it is really great; some other acting sucks. Though it's a very well-drafted movie that even features a message- a subtle one, one that you can ignore if you want. All these things are good reasons to watch that movie, if you're in the mood for something heavy and serious. It's still a pretty light movie, considering all that, but a happy ending it has not. I'm especially in love with one of the very first scenes, in which we are informed about an old lady's lesbianism because she oggles a young woman in a short skirt. It reminds me of all the directors who think a character needs to be involved in a relationship in order to have a sexual orientation. Me, I was single plenty of years but that didn't make me any straighter.
Parodies
Traumschiff Surprise & Der Schuh des Manitu / Manitou's Shoe
Traumschiff Surprise trailer on youtube -- I'm afraid there's a song, too (no subs for the German in it, but some of it is in English)
Manitou's Shoe on youtube with English subs -- Bad guy Sky du Mont fulfills a prisoner's last request and sings the Superperforator song
As far as I can tell, these movies are not available in America and the UK currently, but I'll link to the trailers anyway because otherwise millari will ask about them. ;)
We've had a lot of those Monty Python style nonsense movies for decades, and we've had a whole series of them in recent years because of a very popular comedy group centered around a guy called Bully. So I could rec a lot of other movies, too, but one of them, millari has already seen and these are all similar in style, anyway. So I've just chosen two of the most recent movies, two that have been especially successful. "Traumschiff Surprise" (<- this is a pun on "Traumschiff" = dream boat and "Raumschiff" = spaceship, "Raumschiff Enterprise" being the German name of Star Trek) is the best selling cinematic movie in the history of German movies, I'm a little ashamed to admit.
So "Traumschiff Surprise" is a parody on Star Trek in which all men are gay on general principle. "Der Schuh des Manitu" is the same, except it's a parody for a German series of "final frontier" novels (yes, as in the American final frontier). So you'll encounter a lot of really gay natives. Yes, it's painful to watch. No, I can't explain to you either why we make fun of your cultural heritage in our cinemas. Yes, a considerable amount of the German audience thinks these are hilarious.
Most people in the movies speak with a Bavarian accent. It's a German thing. We think it's funny. Especially since Bavaria is the most homophobic state we have left. All of the actors are able to speak without an accent, if they want to, and none of them are gay.
One thing I actually really like about Bully's movies is that despite the humor of nonsense, these movies do tend to have a rather classical, coherent story, unlike the Monty Python movies do. Another thing is that they involve actual smart, funny puns. It's one hell of a lot of work to make a pun work in German. Unfortunately, that also means that I have no idea how much of it would be lost in translation. Anyway, be prepared for an awful amount of gay stereotypes, ridiculousness, a vomitting horse and people spontaneously breaking into song (see link above). I'll just... throw this to the wolves and not say any more about it.
Others
Bandits (1997)
on amazon.com -- unfortunately very expensive on amazon.co.uk -- trailer on youtube
I'd been looking for a movie featuring Katja Riemann, because she's one of those actresses where I'd watch every last shitty movie as long as she's in it. So "Bandits" is a comedy with music in it, light entertainment of the kind we call a popcorn movie around here. It's about four women who escape from prison, forming a band and trying to sell their music while they're on the run. It's pretty good music, though the lyrics are in English and you'll have to judge yourself if the German accents and simplistic grammar do it for you. ;)
The humor with the stereotypes is a lot more subtle in this movie, compared to the ones I recced above. It's a very solid story, just realistic enough to be captivating but also unrealistic enough to be funny.
Katja Riemann plays the drummer, BTW. I always end up having a thing for the drummer- nothing hotter than a woman with sticks. ;)
Das Wunder von Bern / The Miracle of Bern (2004)
rarified copy on amazon.com -- it doesn't look much better on amazon.co.uk -- trailer on youtube
It's Germany in 1954. That won't mean a lot to you but it means all the more to German soccer fans. Because we won the world cup for the first time in 1954 (forget about the wars- remember 1954, 1974, 1990, 2010 ;)). This is a story about a young boy who doesn't have an easy family life because his parents don't have much money, and his father has been acting funny ever since coming home from the Russian prison camp. He is, however, friends with one of the players of the German soccer team, getting a lot of enjoyment out of this sport, and he is convinced that he needs to be present at the final game in Switzerland for the German team to win.
Even if you don't have the joy of recognizing all the important moments in the history of German soccer, this is still a beautiful movie that'll give you a very unusual look at German history at a point that isn't often the focus of stories. It focuses on one very important aspect of our culture, which is the fact that we basically went and replaced the patriotism by a fanatic love for all things soccer. ;)
Goodbye Lenin! (2003)
on amazon.com -- on amazon.co.uk -- on youtube (don't know the quality of the subs) -- trailer on youtube
More history! It's East Germany in 1989, and our hero is a young man called Alex (played by Daniel Brühl who just recently played the young Nazi hero in "Inglourious Basterds"). When his mother gets sick, eventually falling into a coma and waking up from it again, the doctors tell Alex to keep her away from upsetting news because otherwise she'd have a heart attack and die. The trouble with that is that his mother is a communist by heart, and while she was in a coma, Germany has been reunited. So Alex decides to hide this fact from her, starting to recreate the East German life in their apartment. He goes quite far. He films fake news reports and all.
This is a fun movie. I like Daniel Brühl as an actor in the first place- I always expect him to bore me to tears but then he doesn't. Plus, he agreed to star in a college movie to play a schizophrenic one time, without getting paid because he liked the challenge, and how can you not love him after that? But back to the movie. I like how this topic of East Germany that always makes everybody in literature whine and whimper was used for this cracky premise. This is a funny movie. Except when it's not. I also learned things about East Germany in it that I hadn't known before, so that's a bonus.
And now on with my plan to distract myself...
The Ultimate Guide To GOOD German Movies
For millari and everybody else who wants to get to know the wonderful World Of Tropes You've Never Heard Of Before Except If You're Canadian Or British, if I've got my flist memorized right. Also featuring gay comedy and a lot of Nazis, sometimes at the same time. Plus, most of these pass the Bechdel test. Just like that. Yes, they do. And there's lots of sex.
We import most movies from America, and we're lazy. So if we can get it from Hollywood, we don't bother filming it ourselves. That means that few of the big cinematic German movies are love comedies, thrillers, and what have you. In television, one thing that's always heavily featured here are murder mysteries and other crime stories that heavily involve German locations and German law and so on. We do watch imported crime stories but seeing the exotic juries reaching the patriotic yet illogical collective conclusion is only interesting for so long. Sadly, we rarely do science fiction and fantasy. Although there are exceptions, of course. A good suspensive movie that isn't listed here would be "Run Lola Run" from 1998. A great fantastic movie would be "The Never Ending Story" from 1984, of course. Yes, that's a German movie. We can prove it. We still have the sets, and all. The flying dragon didn't look like my dog on accident.
Okay, so that last one's a lie.
Basically, there are three kinds of good German movies, and the rest:
- war movies
- gay movies
- parodies of the kind that you want to hide in the antic with a cringe before the neighbors can find out
- the rest (including movies set in East Germany, which are only ever good by accident)
War movies.
German war movies tend to be serious movies without a lot of humor, but they lack both the pathos and the glorified patriotism featured in American movies. No soldiers has ever died in a German movie while the score was playing Barber's Adagio for Strings. I do like that a lot about these movies, and in terms of execution, German war movies are yet unsurpassed for me by any other kind of war movie I've seen.
Das Boot / The Boat (1981)
Director's Cut (2h) on amazon.com -- Uncut Version (5h) on amazon.com -- Director's Cut on amazon.co.uk -- German trailer on youtube
Might just be me, but a good fight at sea with a destroyer shooting at things gives me the kind of reaction other women have to watching Lee Adama drop the towel. So I really love this movie. But it's a classic in any case. It's about a submarine crew in 1941. Yes, this is WWII for those of you who didn't listen in high school. :p It has excellent visuals, that generation's greatest actors (and some musicians, too, for some reason- fortunately, none of them breaks into song) and despite the fact that the extended version is ridiculously long, it doesn't ever get boring. It also has a truly excellent score.
If RDM knew this movie, "Daybreak" would have probably been called "Dawn," and BSG would have ended on an entirely different note.
Der Untergang / Downfall (2004)
on amazon.com -- amazon.co.uk -- trailer on youtube
We all know "Downfall" from Hitler's obsession with Kara/Lee, of course.
This is a movie about how Hitler and his staff spent the final days of the war in a bunker in Berlin. It's a very remarkable movie in many ways, none the least because it's virtually the first movie since the era of Nazi propaganda that depicts Nazis as people, not as caricatures. It's easily said, I know, but that was a big deal around here and people went to see this movie determined to find it sort of obscene. But that didn't happen, because it's an excellent movie and in a way, I think, it was overdue. It might be hard to keep all of the huge cast apart, because half of Nazi Germany makes an appearance. Bruno Ganz (who you might remember from watching "The Manchurian Candidate" for example) makes for a really remarkable Hitler. It also features one of my favorite German actors, Christian Berkel, playing a military doctor. I should add that this movie is said to be based on the memoirs of Hitler's secretary, who is the protagonist of this movie. But I'm saying "is said to be" because if you read the actual book, like yours truly, you'll see that the events of the movie are featured on approximately ten pages, so it's not like we're talking about a very detailed historical source here. Though like all German war movies, this one is researched very well and it's very accurate on all accounts one could get wrong.
It's also an excellent example of how to do a story set in a patriarchic society that still has a good amount of female characters in it. Talking to each other regularly. About something other than a man.
Next up, Gay Movies
Sommersturm / Summer Storm (2004)
on amazon.com -- on amazon.co.uk -- found it on youtube with non-pro subtitles, so it may suck -- but you could just watch the sex scene in German -- trailer on youtube
This is a gay teen movie that, hilariously, scored an "R" rating in America because of the sex scene I linked above. This is us rating for porn but not for sex, see. This is a movie about a gay teen called Tobi, who grew up in a Bavarian village and, in doing so, has not had a chance to come out yet. Also, he's in love with his best friend. Then his rowing team attends a training camp, encountering the members of an all-gay team which, of course, changes his whole life. Kudos for this movie include an excellent cinematography- the setting is just beautiful, as is the sex in a very "real" way. Also, Robert Stadlober doing a very emphatic, nuanced job portraying Tobi- although he insists he wasn't the one who did the tiny girlish whimpers in the sex scene. Let me also praise the extras because I know some members of that rowing team and they assure me that rowing slower than the protagonists was hard.
On the downside, there's lots of play on German dialects in the movie that won't translate at all, so there are some scenes that won't make much sense if you aren't a German native. All you're missing out is cultural references and questionable humor though. Also, this movie, not being a comedy per se, features a very peculiar and very German sense of humor. We use (gay) stereotypes on purpose and then we think it's funny. We're weird. So if you start feeling offended, be aware that the movie has probably just stopped taking itself seriously for a minute. Especially in the end, when the score breaks into a cheerful rendition of "YMCA" without any reason at all.
Männer wie wir / Guys And Balls (2004)
on amazon.com -- on amazon.co.uk -- full movie on youtube (subtitles go light on the violent language) -- trailer on youtube -- how's that for a first kiss?
This is a very straightforward soccer comedy about a goalie called Ecki, who is thrown out of his village team for being gay and swears to take revenge by beating his old team with an all-gay team. That isn't easy because gays aren't, traditionally, interested in soccer. At all. Again, this movie heavily features the funny stereotyping I mentioned above. Again it's rated R in America for whatever reason- I don't think we even assigned it a rating. Kudos for including a transgendered character (although she isn't featured a lot), though it's a little painful to watch how the black extras (Nigerian players on the gay team) don't get any lines (which I can only explain by unfortunate cutting, because their presence in the movie is a little ominious in the first place).
While this is a very lighthearted movie, featuring many silly moments, lots of gay pride and okay some fluffy romance, a slightly serious note is provided by the character Rudolf (played by Christian Berkel, who I've praised above), a gay who came out late and has to explain to his son why he is now living in a BDSM relationship with two leather-wearing chubby guys.
Aimee & Jaguar (1999)
on amazon.com -- on amazon.co.uk -- on youtube (don't know the quality of the subtitles) -- trailer on youtube (English dub)
We tried to nominate this movie for an Oscar for Best Foreign Movie in 1999, which cracks me up because I don't think a movie about lesbian Nazis will be winning an Oscar any time soon. So. This is a movie about a wife of a Nazi who falls in love with a Jewish woman. It's based on an autobiographical book, which was part of my thesis, so let me tell you right away that the movie is better. Some acting in it is really great; some other acting sucks. Though it's a very well-drafted movie that even features a message- a subtle one, one that you can ignore if you want. All these things are good reasons to watch that movie, if you're in the mood for something heavy and serious. It's still a pretty light movie, considering all that, but a happy ending it has not. I'm especially in love with one of the very first scenes, in which we are informed about an old lady's lesbianism because she oggles a young woman in a short skirt. It reminds me of all the directors who think a character needs to be involved in a relationship in order to have a sexual orientation. Me, I was single plenty of years but that didn't make me any straighter.
Parodies
Traumschiff Surprise & Der Schuh des Manitu / Manitou's Shoe
Traumschiff Surprise trailer on youtube -- I'm afraid there's a song, too (no subs for the German in it, but some of it is in English)
Manitou's Shoe on youtube with English subs -- Bad guy Sky du Mont fulfills a prisoner's last request and sings the Superperforator song
As far as I can tell, these movies are not available in America and the UK currently, but I'll link to the trailers anyway because otherwise millari will ask about them. ;)
We've had a lot of those Monty Python style nonsense movies for decades, and we've had a whole series of them in recent years because of a very popular comedy group centered around a guy called Bully. So I could rec a lot of other movies, too, but one of them, millari has already seen and these are all similar in style, anyway. So I've just chosen two of the most recent movies, two that have been especially successful. "Traumschiff Surprise" (<- this is a pun on "Traumschiff" = dream boat and "Raumschiff" = spaceship, "Raumschiff Enterprise" being the German name of Star Trek) is the best selling cinematic movie in the history of German movies, I'm a little ashamed to admit.
So "Traumschiff Surprise" is a parody on Star Trek in which all men are gay on general principle. "Der Schuh des Manitu" is the same, except it's a parody for a German series of "final frontier" novels (yes, as in the American final frontier). So you'll encounter a lot of really gay natives. Yes, it's painful to watch. No, I can't explain to you either why we make fun of your cultural heritage in our cinemas. Yes, a considerable amount of the German audience thinks these are hilarious.
Most people in the movies speak with a Bavarian accent. It's a German thing. We think it's funny. Especially since Bavaria is the most homophobic state we have left. All of the actors are able to speak without an accent, if they want to, and none of them are gay.
One thing I actually really like about Bully's movies is that despite the humor of nonsense, these movies do tend to have a rather classical, coherent story, unlike the Monty Python movies do. Another thing is that they involve actual smart, funny puns. It's one hell of a lot of work to make a pun work in German. Unfortunately, that also means that I have no idea how much of it would be lost in translation. Anyway, be prepared for an awful amount of gay stereotypes, ridiculousness, a vomitting horse and people spontaneously breaking into song (see link above). I'll just... throw this to the wolves and not say any more about it.
Others
Bandits (1997)
on amazon.com -- unfortunately very expensive on amazon.co.uk -- trailer on youtube
I'd been looking for a movie featuring Katja Riemann, because she's one of those actresses where I'd watch every last shitty movie as long as she's in it. So "Bandits" is a comedy with music in it, light entertainment of the kind we call a popcorn movie around here. It's about four women who escape from prison, forming a band and trying to sell their music while they're on the run. It's pretty good music, though the lyrics are in English and you'll have to judge yourself if the German accents and simplistic grammar do it for you. ;)
The humor with the stereotypes is a lot more subtle in this movie, compared to the ones I recced above. It's a very solid story, just realistic enough to be captivating but also unrealistic enough to be funny.
Katja Riemann plays the drummer, BTW. I always end up having a thing for the drummer- nothing hotter than a woman with sticks. ;)
Das Wunder von Bern / The Miracle of Bern (2004)
rarified copy on amazon.com -- it doesn't look much better on amazon.co.uk -- trailer on youtube
It's Germany in 1954. That won't mean a lot to you but it means all the more to German soccer fans. Because we won the world cup for the first time in 1954 (forget about the wars- remember 1954, 1974, 1990, 2010 ;)). This is a story about a young boy who doesn't have an easy family life because his parents don't have much money, and his father has been acting funny ever since coming home from the Russian prison camp. He is, however, friends with one of the players of the German soccer team, getting a lot of enjoyment out of this sport, and he is convinced that he needs to be present at the final game in Switzerland for the German team to win.
Even if you don't have the joy of recognizing all the important moments in the history of German soccer, this is still a beautiful movie that'll give you a very unusual look at German history at a point that isn't often the focus of stories. It focuses on one very important aspect of our culture, which is the fact that we basically went and replaced the patriotism by a fanatic love for all things soccer. ;)
Goodbye Lenin! (2003)
on amazon.com -- on amazon.co.uk -- on youtube (don't know the quality of the subs) -- trailer on youtube
More history! It's East Germany in 1989, and our hero is a young man called Alex (played by Daniel Brühl who just recently played the young Nazi hero in "Inglourious Basterds"). When his mother gets sick, eventually falling into a coma and waking up from it again, the doctors tell Alex to keep her away from upsetting news because otherwise she'd have a heart attack and die. The trouble with that is that his mother is a communist by heart, and while she was in a coma, Germany has been reunited. So Alex decides to hide this fact from her, starting to recreate the East German life in their apartment. He goes quite far. He films fake news reports and all.
This is a fun movie. I like Daniel Brühl as an actor in the first place- I always expect him to bore me to tears but then he doesn't. Plus, he agreed to star in a college movie to play a schizophrenic one time, without getting paid because he liked the challenge, and how can you not love him after that? But back to the movie. I like how this topic of East Germany that always makes everybody in literature whine and whimper was used for this cracky premise. This is a funny movie. Except when it's not. I also learned things about East Germany in it that I hadn't known before, so that's a bonus.