Better than nothing
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Better than nothing |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2014 |
| length | 95 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Ute Wieland |
| script |
Peer Klehmet Ute Wieland |
| production |
Alexander Thies Stefan Thies |
| music | Oliver Bieler |
| camera | Peter Przybylski |
| cut |
Tobias Haas Heike Parplies |
| occupation | |
| |
Besser als Nix is a German tragic comedy from 2014. The film is a novel adaptation of the novel Besser von Nix by Nina Pourlak , which was released in 2009.
action
17-year-old Tom Rasmus fills out a questionnaire for the employment agency at a career counseling service in his school. He falls in love with the trainee who distributes the questionnaires. During the evaluation, he then receives a job offer as an apprentice at a funeral home as a funeral specialist. He only applied there when his grandma encouraged him to do so after a visit to the nursing home. Tom tries to get a driver's license for the funeral home, which he manages with the help of his best friend Mike. After obtaining his driver's license, Tom also passes the probationary period at his company, whereas Mike, who works in a car repair shop, is fired during the probationary period and, out of desperation, crashes his car into a tree and dies. A short time later, Tom drives past the scene of the accident and collapses over his dead friend. This is already the second body he has to bury. He gives the funeral speech for his best friend. The death of Tom's mother also plays a big role in the film, because his father uses alcohol to relieve his grief and Tom feels it. In the end, however, they deal with Tom's mother's suicide together and there is also a hint of a relationship with the trainee teacher with whom Tom had slept before.
reception
criticism
Michael Meyns judged in his review for Filmstarts.de that better than nothing with François Goeske “not only has a strong leading actor, but many successful moments” and the content of the production is reminiscent of US series such as Six Feet Under . The production, however, is characterized by “strange tonal mistakes”, whereby “the many topics from death to life in rural provinces, friendship and first love rarely seem really well connected”. Andreas Kilb from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called the tragic comedy a “technically cleanly staged youth film”, which, however, “fails completely at the crucial point: in the balance between humor and tragedy that this story demands”. Better than nothing is "funny in a way that is no longer funny".
Kino.de described the feature film as a “thematically courageous, but somewhat erratic film adaptation” and wrote: “Even if this mixture of melancholy, tragic and comic does not find a harmonious balance, the best intentions of the filmmakers and actors are recognizable.” Cinema.de found that Better Than Nothing was “also and above all a film about the hopes and longings of young people”, whose “attitude to life the director captures as accurately as it is multifaceted. With great impartiality, she combines black humor and bittersweet melancholy, surreal situations and true feelings ”.
Knut Elstermann from Radio Eins found it “sad to see how director Ute Wieland sucks the strong potential of the story, the adolescent encounter with dying, into stressful bizarre, how tasteless and unkind the crumbling, unbelievable film is made like him loses himself in sensational superficiality ”. Frauke Gust from Radio Berlin 88.8 primarily praised Goeske's play and wrote: “The landscapes, bathed in late summer sun and autumn mist, give the film something sensitively melancholy that fits the theme very well. A film is better than nothing for everyone who knows: death is part of life. "
Web links
- Better than Nothing in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Official page for the film
Individual evidence
- ^ Michael Meyns: Critique of the FILMSTARTS.de editorial team . Filmstarts.de . Retrieved January 14, 2015.
- ↑ Andreas Kilb: Funny is something else . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . Retrieved January 14, 2015.
- ↑ Film review of Better Than Nothing - Everyone Has died . Kino.de . Retrieved January 14, 2015.
- ↑ Film review of Better Than Nothing . Cinema.de . Retrieved January 14, 2015.
- ↑ a b film starts - better than nothing . RBB . Retrieved on January 14, 2015. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
