That Moment When You Recognize Someone But It Ends Up That They Just Look Exactly Like An Actor.

The first thing I’d like to comment on is David Brühl. Why? Because he’s a fantastic actor and there’s a whole little crack in the Tumblr wall dedicated to him. He’s also going to be in a movie with the British actor Benedict Cumberbatch somewhere within the next couple of years. Also, he knows how to speak like five different languages proficiently which is a lot a lot.

Also worthy of mention is Burghart Klaussner, he is also a good actor. I was just wondering if this genre of movies does as the BBC does and constantly reuses the same actors over and over? No? Must just be me then…

Well, it’s not letting me watch the second half of Goodbye Lenin, which is really, really depressing because I liked that one much more than The Edukators. Goodbye Lenin had a much better style of storytelling and honestly learned a lot about the reunification of East and West Germany. The Edukators on the other hand, whilst telling a different story, still had no excuse for moving so slow that it felt like a week’s worth of movie watching.

In both movies however, the same theme remains; the same theme in Baader-Meinhof, and Berlin Calling. The theme of escalation. In The Edukators it is when they end up kidnapping the man instead of just doing the rearrangement of furniture and in Goodbye Lenin it is Alex getting so caught up in lying to his mother that it becomes easier to unravel it.

Take a moment to also compare and contrast the two characters that Daniel Brühl plays. Alex, a much more innocent character trying to do his best to make up for giving his mother the heart attack that put her in a coma and Jan, the relatively stoic activist who breaks into people’s houses but doesn’t steal anything in the hopes that they’ll become completely paranoid about their money. In both movies money does play a big part. Remembering in Goodbye Lenin when East Germany was crossing over to the DM from the currency they were using before and Alex’s mother couldn’t remember where she’d stashed her savings and both the kids look disappointed. Money in The Edukators is slightly self-explanatory. Jan, Peter, and Jule are basically broke and are fighting for better working conditions and pay for people in Asia, so they go into rich people’s villas and rearrange everything until they end up kidnapping one.

Concerning The General Public

One cannot incite social change through violence. Its only result is fear.

When people fear each other and themselves, the general population no longer longs for revolution, but for the safety that a secure government provides.

In the case of Baader-Meinhof, it started out as a protest gone very seriously wrong. The Persian Shah hired his own people and they attacked when the student protesters (protesting for equal rights in the Middle East). The police didn’t do anything. That’s what ultimately pissed people off. And when they did do something, they attacked the protestors not the first acting aggressors. This caused the general public to start fearing the government, believing it was a police state rather than the government it was supposed to be. This prompted rebellion and it escalated quickly. It died off a little and then the RAF reemerged in full force. And people were happy with it. They liked that they were doing something. And then they started getting violent. Really, really violent. And the RAF lost the support of the public because the public began to become afraid of them. They didn’t know where the bombs were, didn’t know who was going to die next. And they welcomed it when the government cracked down on them, they were okay with being man-handled to find the RAF members.

Because they were afraid.

Afraid that maybe next time they would be in the wrong spot at the wrong time.

Afraid that their family members could be next.

The general public does not handle fear well.

Finally Berlin Calls

Drugs are ultimately Ickarus’ bridge from reality into a world where nothing matters. He’s so sick of not being at the rest of the world’s standards whether it be music or with his family that he desperately wants to escape it. There is also the fact that most of his fans do the same thing for basically the same reason, rebelling against the force that had restrained them. It also does not help that they feel as if they have no other way to control their own futures. The drugs they take are generally hardcore and/or hallucinogenic to make them feel as if they have truly escaped the world, with the addition of when they take them (generally listening to music (techno, rave, or trance)) adds to feelings they get. From the movie you can see that there and here have almost the same standards (with them likely being more lax on the restrictions). We both have a section of young adults who have generally ceased to care and have begun to do what they want. Then there’s the portion who do what the others are doing but only on their off time so it does not affect their work. In the case of Ickarus’ work ethic, he’s good at what he does, but until he went to rehab it wasn’t as exceptional as it was after he was clean. Alice was also good at what she does; however most people who do what Ickarus did do not get second chances. I also don’t think she was German…either that or she had an impeccable English accent. And industrial nation though, is dependent on its youth. With an aging workforce that’ll eventually get too old to work and thus the opening of jobs that require focus and discipline. The youth at the moment will not be able to step into their shoes and fill the rolls. As for cult movies, I don’t really know of any as it’s not really my area of movie watching.

 

 

I really enjoyed the film. Engaging storyline, good acting, and excellent music. I particularly liked the doctor and Ickarus (though he got really frustrating at points). Of course the film was different from American films, it’s supposed to be. As high tech as Hollywood is all the good actors come from Europe as they tend to put more stock in art forms than Americans (most of whom seem to only be in it for the triviality of fame and money, not all, but a good portion). Also, because American culture has a stick up its ass, it ruins a lot of things that could become excellent plots. This movie in the U.S. would have been at the very least rated R if not higher due to the sheer amount of hardcore drugs and nudity. Hell, they put a warning if someone is smoking at any given time. This creates curiosity in the children the parents are being so overly protective of and makes them want to go out and see what they’re missing. In class we’ve talked about how nudity isn’t that big of a deal in Germany and most of the rest of Europe but lo’ and behold if someone is missing an article of clothing in America-There is a comic, made by a Danish woman, that portrays America’s allowance and lack of sensitivity to violence and its over-sensitivity to  nudity.

Here is the link: http://satwcomic.com/anything-but-that

Though it is not in the form of film, but a videogame, it still proves the point.

1-2-3 1-2-3 Waltzing With a Hyperlink Trying To Destroy the World

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1emAa5TPzx2gI-D2XwgHW-ciyj09mO_2K_HBbUjOz3jg/present?pli=1&ueb=true#slide=id.p

The Innocence of Winging It

Talking points about the movie and the novel "All Quiet on the Western Front".

1. If you're going to include everything from the novel into the movie, why can't it happen in the order it was written? The dynamic of something chagnes everytime that happens even if it still portrays the same emotions as before.

2. Paul still believes in the innocence of youth deep down inside, if he didn't he wouldn't have lasted as long as he did. Even though most of war is luck, it still has a lot to do with mindset. The newbies in the trenches were likely to go crazy faster because they hadn't had time to adapt like the men who had been there longer. All about presence of mind.

3. The movie was banned from many countries (Italy (1956), Australia (1941), France (1963), and Austria (1980)) and almost banned in the U.S.because it was branded as "anti-military propaganda" and because it had a "sympathetic treatment of Germans".* And many versions of the movie were censored or cut to fit specific countries views. **

4. The director of the movie, while he was filming, actually put out a call for German WW1 army veterans to authenticate uniforms and equipment. Many were cast as officers in the movie and had them drill extras in the movie. **

5. A comical end note: Even though it is his death scene there was a large goof in production. Paul reaches for the butterfly with his left hand but in the close up it shows his right. The hand however, is not even Paul's actor to begin with. It is actually the director's. **








http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article.html?isPreview=&id=355269%7C357370&name=All-Quiet-On-the-Western-Front *

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020629/ **

Paul Baumer...My God That's One Letter Away From Bauman...

Paul Baumer is the narrator of the book, All Quiet On The Western Front. The book is narrated in 1st person and set up to be like a diary of Paul’s experiences during war.

When we start the story, he is a 19-year-old boy just graduated from high school with a mother, father, and older sister. Due to intense pressure from society (namely one of his school teachers), Paul enlists in the German army along with 27 of his other classmates. Paul begins the story with several friends, still a little green around the gills and optimistic about life. Most of the book is filled with Paul’s philosophical thinking, reflecting on the war and what it has done to him and the other men in his platoon. He talks about not only the physical limits he is pushed to, but also the psychological limits he experiences. Paul struggles with trying to keep his sanity while battling in a war he is losing, as well as dealing with the brutal situations which come with trench warfare.

"Just as we turn into animals when we go up to the line . . . so we turn into wags and loafers
when we are resting. . . . We want to live at any price; so we cannot burden ourselves with
feelings which, though they may be ornamental enough in peacetime, would be out of place
here.” (Chapter 7, All Quiet on the Western Front)

Paul speaks of how the war turned him into an animal during battle, because he could only rely
on his most basic instincts, or else he would surely die.

Paul Baumer is a kind and gentle young man, but because of the war and the pain it
induces, Paul learns how to disconnect his mind from his heart. By doing this, Paul becomes
unable to feel the heartache of his comrades’ deaths, as well as the ability to conjure the idea of
a future without war. The most disheartening thing that Paul loses because of the war was his
capacity to feel at home among his family and town that he once loved so much.



Mackenzie Branch
James Kreiman
Amanda Goedeke
Jake Mueller

All Quiet on the Western Front...Last Couple Pages...Does It Really Count As A Chapter?

By Chapter Twelve of All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer is disillusioned with his role in life and the role of his life as it used to be. All his adult life he has been entrenched in a war that has basically consumed everything about the world as he knew it and destroyed his perception of what everyone else would see as a normal and functioning society. As seen in the chapter where he visits home, Paul actually misses the battlefield when he is gone. He can no longer function under the normal pressures of society as his body has gotten used to being in high pressure situations all the time.

“Everyone talks of peace and armistice. All wait. If it again proves an illusion, then they will break up; hope is high, it cannot be taken away again without upheaval. If there is not peace, then there will be revolution.” (Chapter 12, All Quiet on the Western Front)

            And even though he’d miss the battlefield, it has grown old. Watching people die and living in constant fear that he could be the next to go.

“It cannot be that it has gone, the yearning that made our blood unquiet, the unknown, the perplexing, the oncoming things, the thousand faces of the future, the melodies from dreams and from books, the whispers and divinations of women; it cannot be that this has vanished in bombardment, in despair, in brothels.” (Chapter 12, All Quiet on the Western Front)

            It is possible though, that he still believes in the innocence of youth. That even though his classmates and other soldiers his age and younger have had to live and die on the battlefield, they still contain traces of the young men that they were. Hope for the future and hope of a future love still being held close to their hearts.

“There are not many of the old hands left. I am the last of the seven fellows from our class.” (Chapter 12, All Quiet on the Western Front)

            He is the last surviving character that was introduced at the beginning of the novel, which makes sense he being the narrator and all. Of course that all changes on the backside of the last page when we learn he died on the quietest day of the year in what is possibly the least descript death of a main character ever. What killed him? A sniper? Too much gas inhalation? A ninja? Maybe even a bee sting? It is unlikely however, that it was as is shown in the movie. There were no birds or drawings involved.

Amanda Goedeke
Mackenzie Branch
James Kreiman
Jake Mueller