Forever and one day

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title Forever and one day
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2006
length 180 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Markus Imboden
script Christian Jeltsch
production Uli Aselmann ,
Robert Marciniak ,
Eva Wehrum
music Annette Focks
camera Jo home
cut Ueli Christians
occupation

Forever and One Day is a German television film in two parts by screenwriter Christian Jeltsch and director Markus Imboden from 2006 .

action

It is September 11, 2001 in New York . The investment banker Gregor Luckner has a business meeting on the 89th floor of the World Trade Center . The negotiations have just started when a passenger plane flies into the building. Mr. Bradshaw, Gregor's negotiating partner, rushes outside, Gregor doesn't want to come. He remains in the office alone, smashes the window with the fire extinguisher and stands on the window ledge. Does he want to jump?

Jan Ottmann, also an investment banker, had seen the pictures of the burning tower in Munich . He calls Gregor, his business partner and long-time friend. Greg had kept this appointment for Jan because his wife is heavily pregnant. While Jan keeps the phone ringing, he remembers the beginning of this friendship.

Both come from Landshut . Jan is the son of a single, unemployed woman, Gregor is the second, unloved son of the machine manufacturer Johannes Luckner. Philipp, Luckner's firstborn, drowned in the swimming pool as a small child ten months before Gregor was born. The father hadn't paid attention, had made a business call.

Despite the great social difference, the two boys become friends; Gregor, the passionate, shares with Jan, the calm and sensible one, his dream of flying. Together they build a Lindbergh aircraft. And both fall in love with Elsa Veltin, the smart head girl.

When Jan's aunt, who also lived in the apartment, dies, the mother can no longer pay for the apartment. Jan and his mother would have to move out. Without Jan's knowledge, the recalcitrant punk son Gregor signs a contract with his hated father: Gregor goes to a Swiss boarding school at his father's request , if in return the old Luckner gets Jan's mother a job at the Luckner works.

It wasn't until years later, as grown men in their early 30s, that Gregor and Jan meet again. Elsa completes the triumvirate again; she is newly divorced and is now trying to start over. A ménage à trois develops . Ultimately, Elsa decides in favor of Gregor.

Jan has worked his way up as an investment banker in Munich and is about to be seconded to the New York branch. Gregor has a probation position at Saul & Bernstein in New York through his mother's mediation, Elsa in the company's PR department.

All three are going to New York. Gregor's motive to work his way up as a banker on Wall Street is to counter his father's view of him as a good-for-nothing and day thief and ultimately to get revenge on his father. When the shares in Luckner-Werke plummeted, Gregor, now a millionaire junior partner at Bob Cunnings Investment Banking, bought the majority of shares in Luckner-Werke for the Americans through insider trading via Zurich. Johannes Luckner now has to sell his remaining shares to the Americans.

Johannes Luckner's traditional awareness of increasing and cultivating his father's work did not survive this defeat. Old Luckner collapses with a stroke after signing the handover contract.

On the flight to New York, Jan met the chaotic but lovable fashion tailor Paula. He'll be her best friend. However, Jan fell in love with Paula. He wants to marry her. Jan's unwavering patience brings the two together after years.

Their wedding takes place in the old boathouse on the lake. The wedding surprise: Paula has invited Gregor, who had to serve a prison sentence for insider trading, to the wedding. The two friends celebrate their reunion. Jan is now self-employed with his own investment consultancy. Greg becomes his partner at Luckner & Ottmann. Gregor's first customer appointment on Wall Street was on September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center.

Jan cannot and does not want to believe that Gregor is dead. He looks for him, asks Bradshaw, who was able to save himself, searches among the dead with DNA analyzes - against all odds he does not give up. Jan is “a good friend,” as Elsa says. Jan's marriage is suffering from Jan's mental stress. Paula leaves the city apartment with her newborn son.

Chance or benevolent fate is what gives Jan the decisive clue. The waitresses in the corner restaurant, in which Jan, Paula, Gregor and Elsa lived through and discussed their successes and crises over the years, knows that Gregor is alive. She also knows where Gregor is driving a taxi. After the terrorist attack in New York he gave up all ambitious plans, swapped the business suit for the striped T-shirt and now lives a different life - as a day laborer; free, as he thinks, from all foreign desires and external constraints.

Jan searches for and finds Gregor at the end of the night at the taxi stand. Trembling with anger, he yells at Gregor: "A call - a shitty call!" He hits him. But then he presses the friend to his heart. Jan, whose concern for Gregor almost cost him his family, can return to his wife and child.

dramaturgy

The dramaturgy of the narrative is worth mentioning . Recalled and present-day action are narrated on an equal footing side by side in short cross-cut sequences, whereby the interlinking of the present with the past imitates the process of human memory. A sound, a movement, a word, associatively trigger a memory. The association connects then and now at the intersection of the respective scenes.

Reviews

  • “Director Markus Imboden ( The Bodyguard , Hunger for Love , Back to Life ) staged this brilliant saga about friendship, love, guilt and atonement based on the book by Christian Jeltsch with an excellent actor ensemble. Jeltsch previously wrote the scripts for successful TV films such as the tragic comedy "Eine geht noch" (Adolf Grimme Prize and Bavarian Television Prize) and the social drama Rote Glut . In 2004 he received the Hessian Film and Cinema Prize for his screenplay for Forever and One Day . “ Prisma.de
  • “The wide-ranging history of a 30-year friendship between men as a long-term relationship with ups and downs, rifts, reconciliations and a tragic finale strives for complexity and as lifelike a framework as possible. Where the respectably played (television) film tries to give the private stories in the sense of a cinematic development novel a symptom of social processes, it does not go beyond mere timeliness. ” Lexicon of international film
  • “A little cultural story about free love, punk rock, yuppie dreams and new markets. And the three main actors Heino Ferch, Fritz Karl and Claudia Michelsen play confidently over long stretches. ” Spiegel.de

Awards

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for forever and one day . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , August 2006 (PDF; test number: 107 179 DVD).
  2. ↑ prisma.de , accessed on May 4, 2008
  3. ↑ For ever and one day in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used , accessed on May 4, 2008
  4. ↑ spiegel.de , accessed on May 4, 2008

Web links