On the eighth day
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | On the eighth day |
| Original title | Le huitième jour |
| Country of production |
Belgium France Great Britain |
| original language |
French English |
| Publishing year | 1996 |
| length | 115 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jaco Van Dormael |
| script | Jaco Van Dormael |
| production | Philippe Godeau |
| music | Pierre Van Dormael |
| camera | Walther van den Ende |
| cut | Susana Rossberg |
| occupation | |
| |
On the eighth day (Original: Le huitième jour ) is a tragicomedy by Jaco Van Dormael from 1996. The Belgian-French-British co-production of the feature film is about the coincidental friendship of two men, one of whom has Down syndrome Has.
action
The Belgian bank manager Harry pursues his job ambitiously but exhausted, conveying the supposed secret of professional success to others in seminars that are always the same. He's good at that, but the work really keeps him trapped. His family is constantly neglected and he has moved a long way from an active, attentive role as husband and father. That is why his wife Julie left him and took their two daughters with her. Which will find him hard but he can not find a way out of the spiral of workaholism break. His life seems stuck and lonely to him, and he has thoughts of suicide .
Harry accidentally runs over a dog on a rainy night. When he stops, Georges comes up to him. The young man with Down syndrome ran away from his home for the disabled to visit his mother. She's been dead for four years, but he doesn't reveal that yet. Frightened and a little disturbed by the unexpected encounter with a visibly disabled person, Harry offers to drive Georges home. The man, completely soaked from the rain, is already sitting in Harry's Mercedes-Benz - and no longer gets out of the car. The bank manager hadn't thought it that way.
Now an exciting, partly funny, partly sad, but always intense time begins for the two very dissimilar men. For Harry it will be a journey to himself. Through the contact with the cheerful, uncomplicated Georges, he manages to feel for lost feelings, to dissolve emotional blockages and to come to the realization that money and professional success are by no means the central values should be in life. As a result of this changed basic attitude, he gradually regains contact with himself and with his family, whom he had neglected and disappointed for a long time.
Georges, in turn, realizes the sad fact that nobody seems to be able to emotionally support him after the death of his beloved mother. Nobody had ever really tried to help him come to terms with the loss of his most important person and to be there for him. So he decides to make one last wish come true - and then to follow his mother.
production
On the eighth day was the second feature film by director Jaco Van Dormael. The shooting took place in Belgium, including in Brussels and Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve . The budget was the equivalent of around 9.39 million euros. In order to prepare for his demanding role, Pascal Duquenne kept listening to tapes with the dialogues. Director Jaco Van Dormael's wife had discussed it especially for him.
The film premiered in May 1996 at the 1996 Cannes International Film Festival . It was shown in French cinemas on May 22, 1996, where it was seen by 3,602,200 visitors. It was shown in German cinemas on December 5, 1996. The film was released on video in Germany on September 25, 1997 and was released on DVD in France in 1998.
criticism
The filmdienst called on the eighth day a "partially into the fairytale exaggerated drama, based on the precise characterization of a patient suffering from Down's syndrome people formally makes brilliant use its exuberant feeling and fantasy world to the boundaries between reality and illusion cancel". The film is still more of an “entertaining cinematic picaresque novel than a convincing examination of normality and the problem of the exclusion of the 'abnormal'.” The Spiegel praised the play by Auteuil and Duquenne, who are “two touching main characters”, but wrote that the film, "with all its technical bravery, saddles you with a very artificial, dissimilar and literarily meaningful story: the dream poetry that blossoms there is at most that of the noble kitsch."
Awards
At the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, the leading actors Daniel Auteuil and Pascal Duquenne received the award in the Best Actor category . The film also ran in the competition for the Golden Palm .
In 1997, The Eighth Day was nominated for the Golden Globe Award in the category of Best Foreign Language Film . In the same year, Daniel Auteuil received a César nomination for Best Actor . On the eighth day , in 1997, the Belgian entry was for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, but it was not nominated.
Web links
- On the eighth day in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Cf. On the eighth day on allocine.fr
- ↑ On the eighth day. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ The cinema in brief: On the eighth day . In: Der Spiegel , No. 49, 1996, p. 257.