The wild life

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Movie
Original title The wild life
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2007
length 114 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Achim Bornhak
script Olaf Kraemer ,
Achim Bornhak,
production Dietmar Güntsche ,
Eberhard Junkersdorf
music Alexander Hoe
camera Benjamin Dernbecher
cut Peter Przygodda ,
Sebastian Schultz
occupation

The wild life is a German feature film from 2007 by director Achim Bornhak , who also worked on the script by Olaf Kraemer . The plot is freely based on the memories of Uschi Obermaier .

Film plot

The young Uschi Obermaier lived in the 1960s with her mother and stepfather in the Sendling district of Munich . She feels overwhelmed by the bourgeois, bourgeois life, wants to break out of it and experience something. She is discovered in a discotheque by a photographer from the youth magazine Twen . When her mother finds revealing pictures of her as a model, there is an argument with her parents and she runs away from home.

Through the members of the Bröselpilze band , she came to Berlin to join the politically motivated commune at Kommune 1 . There she begins a relationship with Rainer Langhans . The fact that there should be no firm ties in the commune, but rather free love , without “belonging” to another person, leads to scenes of jealousy. It is not taken seriously by the other members of the commune, since it is considered apolitical and primarily only wants to experience something instead of wanting to change the country and politics like its communards . Nevertheless, it is she who makes it onto the front pages of the media as an APO model and is therefore considered the face of the student movement. A bomb is found during a police raid and members of the commune are arrested. It later emerges that the bomb had been smuggled into the municipality by an agent provocateur from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in order to discredit it in public and to be able to take action against it.

Obermaier and Langhans were invited to London by the Rolling Stones in 1968 . Obermaier begins affairs with Keith Richards and Mick Jagger . This leads to a dispute with Rainer Langhans and the bon vivant Obermaier is increasingly annoyed by Langhans' philosophical, thoughtful way of life. She leaves the Berlin municipality 1 and moves to Munich. In 1973 Keith Richards and Mick Jagger are in Munich; both want to meet her and get into each other's enclosure. In the same year she met Dieter Bockhorn, the Prince of the Kiez , in Hamburg and began a relationship with him. After film producer Carlo Ponti saw Obermaier in the film Rote Sonne , he is enthusiastic about her. Ponti invites her to Rome, promises her a film with director Michelangelo Antonioni and offers her a 10-year contract. She rejects this, however, because her freedom is more important to her.

After Obermaier returned to Hamburg, she quarreled with Bockhorn and left him. Keith Richards brings her to the USA and takes her as a groupie on the Stones tour . But soon she gets bored of touring life and misses Bockhorn. She returns to Hamburg, makes up with him and both set off on a trip around the world in a coach that has been converted into a mobile home. On the hippie trail towards Asia they reached Pakistan in 1974, and in 1975 both took part in a symbolic wedding in India. Uschi is determined to be pregnant, but she loses her unborn child a short time later. In 1983 the two are traveling in Mexico, where they meet Keith Richards. Bockhorn is jealous; But Richards explains to Obermaier that he is here because he will get married in Mexico in the next few days. When Bockhorn collides with a truck a few days later while driving alone on a motorcycle and dies, it remains unclear whether it was suicide or an accident. The film ends with the opening scene in which Bockhorn's body drifts into the sea on a raft. Before the end credits, a text is faded in from which it can be seen that Uschi Obermaier now lives as a jewelry designer in Topanga Canyon , California .

background

  • Olaf Kraemer has the biography High Times with Uschi Obermaier . My wild life (2006) written. The wild life is also the title of her first biography from 1994.
  • The film production company is Munich- based Neue Bioskop Germany , Warner Brothers distributes and Warner Home Video distributes DVDs .
  • The shooting lasted 45 days and took place in Munich , Berlin and Hamburg as well as in various locations in India .
  • The world premiere took place on January 24, 2007 in Munich. The cinema release in Germany was on February 1, 2007.
  • In English-speaking countries, the film was released under the title Eight Miles High .
  • Director Achim Bornhak's diploma film Marianengraben was nominated for the Student Academy Awards . The wild life is his first feature film.
  • The role of Uschi's stepfather was played by the former Munich scene host Michael 'Michi' Beck, who made headlines due to a spectacular bankruptcy of his operations and the subsequent escape from German prosecution to Manila . In the credits he is called Michi 'Manila' Beck . He died by suicide in 2009.
  • Originally, Rainer Langhans also wanted to have his version of those years filmed at the production company Senator Film , but those responsible were of the opinion that the market could not tolerate two films on the same subject. Langhans sold his rights for 15,000 euros and later expressed his dissatisfaction with the film.
  • For the music for the film, leading actress Natalia Avelon sang a new version of the classic Summer Wine by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood with HIM singer Ville Valo . The title reached second place in both Germany and Switzerland, fourth place in Austria and first place in Finland (home country Valos).

Reviews

Critics noted the outward resemblance of the actors to the people portrayed. Natalia Avelon can keep up with the real Obermaier and get her Munich accent well, it is "handsome" or "attractive", but unfortunately "the most pleasant event of this film", namely "the reenactment of Obermaier exhibitionism" by Avelon, is unfortunately quickly lost Effect. She embodies Obermaier rather than playing her and has "hardly any real charisma beyond her physicality". She is only a very good cast in terms of her bosom and confuses nudity with freedom. The critics also criticized the rendering of the Rolling Stones. Contrary judgments were made as to whether the Keith Richards actor Alexander Scheer was acting “hapless” or was “the biggest surprise” of the film. Special mention went to Matthias Schweighöfer, but there was also a hint that he seemed too muscular for Rainer Langhans.

The film is simple in nature. Some things about the 1960s are said too clearly and have an instructive effect, but this is necessary for a target audience that does not yet know the historical background. The story ticks off Obermaier's life stations one after the other. In the world it was said that the film met the times "with a lot of love" and with a sense for the grotesque. Other critics said, however, that he had nothing to tell, was disinterested, did not capture the time and showed no awareness of the background of politics, youth movement and counterculture. Politics play the least role and is reduced to people; the makers would not have thought deeply about the material. Obermaier's effect at that time and its position as an icon would be neglected; it "was the message, it did not convey any". It remains "just a cracked film looking for coolness".

Some critics found the film too calm and lifeless, without imagination and without language. They called it a “superficial furnishing orgy”, a mere “colorful sheet of images” with a “boring, often upright, even embarrassing tourist aesthetic”. There is a lack of dramaturgy and tension, a concentration on a topic, a determination regarding genre. Only in the second half, and thus too late, does the film find a rhythm ( FAZ ). The fact that Obermaier did not appear in the feature film Rote Sonne (1969) in Das wilde Leben aroused incomprehension , and in some cases the recommendation was made to rather watch the classic. He succeeded in what Das wilde Leben did not manage to get involved with the characters without imposing itself on them.

Positive reviews
The world of
Matthias Heine
Loving contemporary portrait with a sense of the grotesque; good Keith Richards actor
Mixed reviews
Frankfurter Allgemeine Z.
Michael Althen
Praise for actors Avelon and Scheller; Film lifeless, has nothing to say, speechless
Mostly negative reviews
epd film
Dietrich Kuhlbrodt
Optically authentically simulated, often overly clear and instructive, lame, Obermaier's aura at the time does not convey
Negative reviews
film service
Ulrich Kriest
Superficial checking of facts, no sense of the political and cultural background
Frankfurter Rundschau
Daniel Kothenschulte
Schweighöfer sensitive, film would-be-cool and exhaustive in imitation, Avelon soon becomes boring, lengths, important phase of life missing, politics only marginally
Spiegel Online
Reinhard Mohr
"Total loss", dramaturgy and time reference missing, boring, predictable, not moving, embarrassing aesthetics, flat figures (except Schweighöfer)
Süddeutsche Zeitung
Fritz Göttler
Disinterested, unfocused, helpless; mere illustration of the time
The daily mirror
Harald Martenstein
Just nudity and lots of breasts, underdeveloped script, without tension, actors not convincing

Awards

Web links

literature

  • Dietmar Güntsche: A wild life: experiences and insights of a German film producer . In: Thorsten Hennig-Thurau, Victor Henning (eds.): Guru Talk - The German film industry in the 21st century. Marburg: Schüren Verlag 2009, pp. 64–76, ISBN 978-3-89472-678-2 ( full text. PDF: 3.2 MB ).

Individual evidence

  1. Text at the beginning of the film: "The plot of this film is freely based on the memories of Uschi Obermaier".
  2. Uschi Obermaier , Olaf Kraemer : High Times. My wild life . Heyne, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-453-13010-3
  3. http://ooo-films.com/
  4. Pleitewirt Michael Beck - Big in Manila - Munich & Region - sueddeutsche.de
  5. Death in Manila - Michael Beck no longer wakes up from a coma - Munich & Region - sueddeutsche.de
  6. Chart sources: Germany ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - Austria - Switzerland - Finland @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.musicline.de
  7. a b c d e f g h Dietrich Kuhlbrodt: The wild life . In: epd Film No. 2/2007, p. 39
  8. a b c d e f g Michael Althen: Nothing against Uschi . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 3, 2007, p. 35
  9. a b c d e f Fritz Göttler: Uschi a doll's house . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , February 1, 2007, p. 14
  10. a b c d e f g h i Daniel Kothenschulte: Nix like away . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , February 1, 2007, p. 17
  11. a b c d e f g h Reinhard Mohr: Pit slut of the revolution . In: Spiegel Online , January 25, 2007
  12. a b c d e Harald Martenstein: The German blouse wonder . In: Der Tagesspiegel , February 1, 2007
  13. a b c d e f g h i j Ulrich Kriest: The wild life . In: film-dienst No. 3/2007
  14. a b c Matthias Heine: In the world of F-word-sayers . In: Die Welt , February 1, 2007, p. 29