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Vienna “crime scene” about the homeless: the pride of the street

2020-12-18T12:10:47.867Z


I act, therefore I am: the street-smart Viennese »Tatort« leaves the drinkers and tricksters on the street their residual dignity. The paranoia ending looks a bit clumsy.


Icon: enlarge

Viennese »Tatort« commissioners Eisner (Harald Krassnitzer), Fellner (Adele Neuhauser) with Tina (Maya Unger): Nothing works without a deal

Photo: Philipp Brozsek / ARD

This "crime scene" takes place on the street, it is about people who have lost everything.

Everything - except their ability to act.

Because between the booze bar and night asylum, the homeless of Vienna show an astonishingly weatherproof actionism in this episode entitled "Below".

One of them has an old trailer under a highway bridge in which he makes crystal meth.

At some point it will blow up, »Breaking Bad« sends its regards.

The other has set up a small business where he lets old ladies' dogs go with him and then brings them back for a finder's fee.

As he whispers to the investigator in the Checkerton case: "Dognapping, you understand?"

A third homeless man manically researches a story centered around a hospital chain called Senthamed.

The man used to be a reporter, but then got kicked out of his newspaper because he had written about a bank that was also the newspaper's best advertiser.

Is he an honorable lone fighter?

Or is it just a madman with delusions?

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Harald Krassnitzer in the »Tatort« episode »Below«: a body found in a demolition house

Photo: Philipp Brozsek / ARD

Rather the latter, believe Fellner (Adele Neuhauser) and Eisner (Harald Krassnitzer), who are confronted with the story of the ex-journalist after his body has been found in a demolition house.

As they rummage through the victim's locker, which he had in an emergency shelter, relevant books and magazines fall towards them.

Eisner grumbles: "Conspiracy-theoretical bullshit!" At the same time, the man gathered information before his death that appears to be worth examining.

Does the health company Senthamed, which operates exclusively private clinics, really have a mess?

It's good how the creators of this »crime scene« (book: Thomas Christian Eichtinger, Samuel R. Schultschik) allow the whores, have-nots and drunkards to have their own subplots.

The characters are not staged as supplicants, begging for alms and taking them with shining eyes to briefly give the audience a warm feeling.

If they print information to the police, then only in the form of a sovereign deal, even if the result is only a hot cup of chocolate.

Survival as a question of the right deal

The homeless remain actors, which is important because the bustle of the impoverished characters stands for a kind of residual dignity: I act, therefore I am.

It's called street smartness.

If there is such a thing as street pride, it could look like this.

Despite its programming before the holidays and despite its touching topic - it is also about a young mother who seeks shelter with her son - this “crime scene” is not the little Christmas movie with a cleansing effect and a fairytale ending.

Survival here is a question of the right deal.

Attack of the motorcycle thugs

Unfortunately, at some point the filmmakers (director: Daniel Prochaska) inflate their trickster-and-drinker tableau into an all-too-striking conspiracy thriller.

At the moment there is a tendency at Vienna's »Tatort« to spice up the themed crime thriller with action cutlery and paranoia plots.

That was also the case recently with the homeopathy crime thriller with Fellner and Eisner, where the criticism of the globules industry was partly in the guise of a mafia stunner.

In the new episode, masked motorcycle thugs attack the homeless, while the gentlemen around the suspicious health company Senthamed meet for charity events at which donations are collected for the homeless.

In this »crime scene«, the top and bottom are cut against each other in such a manipulative manner that in the end you shouldn't be surprised if the conspiracy theories about the Senthamed snobs of the murdered ex-reporter come true.

Rating:

6 out of 10 points

"Tatort: ​​Below",

Sunday, 8:15 pm, Das Erste

Icon: The mirror

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2020-12-18

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