"Our wonderful years", a post-war family panorama as an ARD three-part.
Since the word “event multipart” is unfortunately not yet prohibited, you have to dive under the ARD advertisement to get to “Our wonderful years”: a post-war and economic miracle family panorama that works with two densifications.
Everything revolves around three sisters and their family of metal manufacturers as well as their friends and acquaintances from Altena in the Sauerland. The small arises from the big as in life out here. Perpetrators and followers, permanent Nazis, veterans, traumatized people, future super-capitalists and young communists shaped by the war are bustling at the shooting festival. The life plans are as different as the starting situations. Diversity is the strong point of manageable human communities.
"Our Wonderful Years": infamias, jealousies and other dramas
In this case, the second condensation is more risky: You can almost see how the immense novel staff from Peter Prange's 2016 novel of the same name, a book of considerable dimensions, was not just cut down, but also compressed and combined. Figures now have to take up more than one biography, so that young pharmacist Jürgen later ad hoc switches to architecture and also has to talk to his father within two minutes about the "aryanization" of the pharmacy, which in the novel concerns a clothing store. The figure of the Jewish victim: dealt with casually, accidentally, so to speak, in analogy to the embarrassed rejection that Julius Rosen encounters in the already cheerful Altena.
This is strange: while the director Elmar Fischer, thanks to the splendid cast, manages to bring exceptional calm into some of the scenes, to savor the build-up and soon spongy mood as well as shame and disgrace, it is in the script by Robert Krause and Florian Puchert move forward quickly and comprehensively. Because everything is quickly explained and sometimes exaggerated, political attitudes and infamias, but also jealousy and other interpersonal dramas.
Plus love and sex. In addition some history lessons - including the dramatically superfluous mistake that the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is presented as an extermination camp. The SS son-in-law is accused of “mass executions and cleansing” at family lunch. How language and gestures in general (cheek kisses on the left and right? But maybe that just went out of fashion in between) are sometimes more modern than the careful decoration promises. It should be emphasized at this point that it is of course absolutely not today to give yourself cheek kisses, it is rather yesterday. In any case, the film was shot in North Rhine-Westphalia and in the Czech Republic, it crumbles violently, so that a plausible contrast to the then emerging 50s chic is created.
So while a lot is explained and squeezed in and at the same time simplified and dramatized, the actors and actresses make up for a lot. Despite excessive blue eyes and a too flawless complexion. The sisters: the extremely sympathetic Elisa Schlott as Ulla, the center of attention, Vanessa Loibl as cramped and therefore more interesting Gundel, Anna Maria Mühe as ex-and-still-tight-minded National Socialist Margot. Ulla wanted to study medicine, now her husband gives her a blender (in a veritable "Mad Men" scene). Margot has to go a long moral way in TV broadcasting. But Anna Maria Mühe as well as Hans-Jochen Wagner as a comfortable armaments manufacturer in particular ("We are no longer a people of penitents") deliver wonderfully chilled portraits. No demons, but bad characters.
"Our wonderful years" does not have to take much effort to create a "hurray we are still alive" mood
"Our wonderful years", ARD, Wednesday, March 18th, 2020, 8:15 pm. Parts 2 and 3 on March 21 and 25.03., also 8.15 p.m. Already now in the media library.
The parents are Thomas Sarbacher as a suffering manufacturer and Katja Riemann in a motherly role that is strangely reserved for them. But notice, for example, how she just doesn't eat when she eats, a fantastic miniature scene about past but not forgotten hunger. The men to the sisters are led by David Schütter as a combination of communist and James Dean. Franz Hartwig is the original Mr. Krasemann from Königsberg, an enthusiastic seller, Ludwig Trepte is the pharmacist's son. Everyone is actually so lively (and dancing so mediocre, but enthusiastic) that "Our wonderful years" does not have to take much effort to create a "Hurray we still live" mood. The rebelliousness, which will only pave the way half a generation later, is already there.
The film music hardly wants to and must pause and has to lay over everything as a really thick cover in the long run. The music that the characters can hear, on the other hand, is fun, even if their authenticity is limited. There are beautiful imitations of the music cabaret artist William Wahl, who also directs the chapel at the Schützenfest in Altena.
By Judith von Sternburg