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Films of the week: »Munich: In the face of war«, »No one is with the calves«, »Maya«

2022-01-20T19:31:22.671Z


Netflix can now also Hitler, Cate Blanchett and Bradley Cooper lose themselves in »Nightmare Alley«, Saskia Rosendahl mixes up country life: These are the current film tips for cinema, streaming and media libraries


Enlarge image

Christin (Saskia Rosendahl) dreams away from her life in the country

Photo: Max Preiss / Filmwelt

In cinemas from January 20:

»No one is with the calves«

Get up, milk, muck out. Everything in the life of Christin (Saskia Rosendahl), a temp on her boyfriend's father's farm, seems to follow a set pattern. Even their food is monotonous: yoghurt, soda, schnapps. The 24-year-old feels these constraints, but she cannot free herself from them with words. When an elderly man, wind power engineer Klaus (Godehard Giese), turns up in her village in the north-west of Mecklenburg, she tries to take action – and for the first time gets a sense of the destructive powers that lie dormant within her.

Based on the novel of the same name by Alina Herbing, director and author Sabrina Sarabi has made a completely unembellished provincial film with »Nobody is with the calves«.

Thanks to leading actress Rosendahl, however, it is never as monotonous as the life it captures.

Rather, an unexpected tension builds up around Christin.

One wishes for her to break out and yet becomes more and more frightened of her.

Such an abysmal character study, of a young woman at that, has not been dared in German cinema for a long time.


»No one is with the calves«, D 2021. Written and directed by: Sabrina Sarabi.

With: Saskia Rosendahl, Godehard Giese, Elisa Schlott, Rick Okon, Andreas Döhler.

Read our portrait of Saskia Rosendahl here.

»Nightmare Alley«

Film noir thrillers are often about men with criminal tendencies who think they are particularly clever and meet women they are no match for. Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), wandering around rural America in the 1940s, is one such guy. He's handsome and a little overconfident in his ability to seduce. He gets hired at a fair and quickly learns how to use all sorts of tricks to get the money out of the audience's pockets.

In his new film »Nightmare Alley«, the Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, who was awarded several Oscars four years ago for his fantastic horror fairy tale »Shape of Water«, initially follows his male protagonist on the way to the top . In glorious images, del Toro celebrates the funfair as an elemental form of entertainment and a direct cousin of cinema. At the same time, the film seems to take place in an endless night, the sun is rare. Instead, the sophisticated blonde Lilith (Cate Blanchett) suddenly steps into the sparse light and outshines everything.

It's a pleasure to watch as she ensnares and blinds the hero, as the balance of power reverses and it becomes increasingly unclear who is cheating on whom and how.

Although the film is clearly too long and throws a few snags that you can see coming as a halfway awake viewer, this homage to the Hollywood cinema of the golden era is fun for a long time.

Lars-Olav Beier


»Nightmare Alley« USA 2021. Director: Guillermo del Toro, script: Guillermo del Toro, Kim Morgan.

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Colette, Willem Defoe, Rooney Mara.

150 minutes

Read our in-depth review of the film here.

Streaming January 21:

»Munich: In the Face of War« (On Netflix)

In the film's most exciting scene, the floorboards in Adolf Hitler's apartment in Munich's Bogenhausen district creak. In September 1938, Hitler, played by Ulrich Matthes, glared at a young German English translator (Jannis Niewöhner). "It's just you and me here," he languishes at the guest. "What do you think?"

The brilliant and the obscene lie side by side when German-speaking actors play protagonists of Nazi rule in films directed by German directors. Christian Schwochow directed the »Munich« film based on a novel by Robert Harris. He tells of the Munich Agreement of autumn 1938, which was celebrated at the time as a feat by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain (played by Jeremy Irons with wonderfully shuffling elegance in the film) to prevent a European war that had already been recognized as inevitable. Against this background, the fictitious story of two young men who try to intervene in world history takes place.The young German diplomat and translator Paul von Hartmann (Niewöhner) and Chamberlain's private secretary Hugh Legat (Georg MacKay) know each other from their studies in Oxford.

Schwochow recently shot two episodes of the British hit series »The Crown« and here, too, shows an, if necessary, ahistorical chutzpah for gender revaluation and in favor of modern psychologization. Sandra Hüller in the role of a German resistance fighter and Anjili Mohindra as the super-clever British civil servant are quick-witted. The Chamberlain of the actor Irons is a hedonist determined to save the world; actor Matthes' Hitler, who often plays with a slightly shaggy wig, trembling shoulders and cheeky looks, seems to largely give a damn about external similarities and is nevertheless a warmongering villain.

»Munich – In the Face of War« is not an outstandingly successful, sometimes surprisingly low-tension film.

After all, it offers intelligent entertainment over long distances - and a view of history and people that the bright operators of Netflix apparently like.


»Munich: In the face of war«, D 2022. Director: Christian Schwochow, script: Ben Power.

With: Jeremy Irons, Ulrich Matthes, George MacKay, Jannis Niewöhner.

123 minutes

Read our double review of "Munich: In the Face of War" and "The Wannsee Conference" here

From now on in the media libraries:

»Maya« (In the Arte media library)

French Mia Hansen-Løve is known for her autofiction films. Just a few weeks ago, her »Bergman Island« was shown in cinemas, a playful and ruthless coming to terms with her relationship with fellow director Olivier Assayas. For once, the self-discovery drama "Maya" from 2018 has no biographical references - and that's probably why it didn't even start in Germany. Now the film can be caught up in the Arte media library for the first time.

With the usual casualness, Hansen-Løve begins to tell a story that is spectacular in itself: After months of imprisonment and torture in Syria, the French journalist Gabriel (Roman Kolinka) is finally free. But in his native Paris, neither his ex-girlfriend nor work can reconcile him with life. The man in his mid-thirties suddenly travels to India, where he lived as a child. There, the encounter with Maya (Aarshi Banerjee), the teenage daughter of his godfather, finally lures him out of his reserve.

Neither she nor Hansen-Løve seems to know where the two of them are headed.

Together they lose themselves in the pictures of star camerawoman Hélène Louvart, who also knows how to unfold her magical sensuality here.

Her pictures could have made »Maya« a big trip around the world if Hansen-Løve had found a real connection to her characters.

In the end, however, the film was just a short trip out of the director's comfort zone.

Luckily she came back to herself with »Bergman Island«.

Hannah Pilarczyk

»Maya«, F/D 2018. Written and directed by Mia Hansen-Løve.

Starring: Roman Kolinka, Aarshi Banerjee, Alex Descas, Pathy Aiyar.

107 minutes

Source: spiegel

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