The Journey (1986)

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Movie
Original title The trip
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1986
length 110 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Markus Imhoof
script Markus Imhoof,
Martin Wiebel ,
Roman:
Bernward Vesper
production Regina Ziegler ,
George Reinhart
music Franco Ambrosetti
camera Hans Liechti
cut Ursula West
occupation

Die Reise is a literary film adaptation by Markus Imhoof from 1986. It is based on the autobiographical fragment of the novel Die Reise by Bernward Vesper , who died of suicide before completion in 1971 .

content

The film tells the story of Bertram Voss from his childhood up to his arrest in nested flashbacks with an interrupting plot. To make it easier to understand, the contents are listed chronologically.

End of the Second World War : Father Jost Voss, a staunch Nazi and author of propagandistic poems and novels, had his children Bertram and Ulrike provisionally baptized before the Americans occupied his house and took him with them for questioning. Childhood and youth will be difficult for Bertram. As the son of a Nazi poet, he is mocked at school. His father's poems are torn from the exercise book during the school lesson on the instructions of the teacher and used as toilet paper. When Jost Voss finds the torn pages in his son's school supplies, he has to glue the pages back in and is beaten. The relationship between the despotic father, who wants to raise his son with drill , and the sensitive son is permanently disturbed. In revenge, Bertram licks his father's spoon before every meal - when years later he and his pregnant fiancée Dagmar Wegener visit their father and there is an argument about their father's denial of the concentration camps , he tells him this, whereupon Jost Voss leaves renounces his son. Before that, the two of them also quarreled because the father asks the German specialist Bertram to take care of a new edition of his books, but he finds the current events in Vietnam far more important. In response to Jost Voss' "I no longer have a son", Bertram Voss replies, "I never had a father."

The Heinz Rühmann film Max, the pickpocket , about which the radicalizing students play disturbing images from the Vietnam War, is shown in the cinema . The students, including Bertram Voss, are taken into custody. In prison, they are told that a police officer was stabbed to death during the protests that were taking place at the same time. After their release they go home to Dagmar, who, meanwhile, the mother of little Florian, had stayed at home. There they learn that in truth the student Benno Ohnesorg , whom they know, was shot. The group is now planning major attacks and, among other things, throwing incendiary devices into the barn buildings of the mounted police. Bertram secretly frees the horses.

Dagmar Wegener starts an affair with Rolf Schröder, who has recently joined the group, and has a criminal record. Together with him she fled from the police. In a camp in Sicily, the terrorists are planning an attack on the US embassy. Unnoticed, Bertram Voss, who is now outside the group, manages to smuggle his son Florian out of the camp. Together they drive to his sister, who refuses to let him in. The escape from Rolf and Dagmar continues. After a car accident, father and son first drive to their former friends, where they hear on television that Rolf was arrested for attacks on American facilities. Dagmar is wanted by the police. Bertram goes to her, but she rejects him. She doesn't even ask for Florian and so father and son drive to their parents' property. The parents died some time ago and the house is only provisionally furnished. The silence is disturbed by the noise of a helicopter, police officers surround the house and arrest the half-naked Bertram. When Florian is carried out of the house by a policeman, the boy bites the policeman's hand.

production

Filming for Die Reise began on July 8, 1985 and ended on September 13, 1985. The filming locations included Sicily, Rome, West Berlin, Zurich and Balje-Altenwisch. The world premiere took place in 1986 at the Venice Film Festival.

The film was based loosely on the novel fragment Die Reise von Bernward Vesper, which was named Bertram Voss in the film. "The film uses the template freely, so all names have been changed," says Markus Imhoof. Gudrun Ensslin is called Dagmar Wegener in the film and was Bernward Vesper's girlfriend. Jost Voss portrays the writer Will Vesper , Andreas Baader is called Rolf Schröder in the film. The son of Ensslin and Voss, Felix Ensslin , is named Florian in the film. The film contains the dedication “for Florian”.

The journey consists of three storylines that have been interwoven. The general plot that runs through the film like a red thread is the kidnapping of Florian by his father and the escape through Italy to Germany. In between, there are episodes from Bertram's childhood and from his time with Dagmar, which leads to the slow radicalization of the group. The individual narrative strands run chronologically, but alternate. The film is based on the style of the novel essay Die Reise by Bernward Vesper. "Vesper tells essentially on three unconnected levels, which intermittently slide into one another (the planned merging in a later work step did not come about)".

criticism

Reclam's Lexicon of German Films saw Die Reise as thematically related to Margarethe von Trotta's film Die Bleierne Zeit . While von Trotta takes the life of Gudrun Ensslin as the basis for the film, Imhoof uses “elements from the life story of Ensslin's partner Bernward Vesper to show the reasons and development of the radical protest attitude of the 1968 students. Both films complement each other to a portrait of the politically active of this generation. ”The lexicon of the international film praised Die Reise as a“ solid… and gripping… staging ”that succeeds in“ making the generation conflict plausible. ... The only vague suggestion of the political motives and theories of the student movement makes it difficult to understand the film, which is worn by excellent actors. "

Urs Jenny criticized the film in the magazine Der Spiegel as a good variant of Vesper's actual biography: “The apo screamer and literary gunman Vesper has become a personable, dreamy idler who gets into the terror scene out of love for a girl, but just in time Jumping off, left alone, when the bride turns on a sharper macho guy with a gun in the waistband. ”As a“ good, solid, reasonably sensible illustrator ”, director Markus Imhoof“ built his own story, the case of a sympathizer out of love, the unhappy life of a boy who is made nothing by his father and who later, having become a father himself, tries tenderly to make amends to his son. "The portrayal of Gudrun Esslin is" in German cinema ... the stupidest so far, a narrow, pointed tabloid heroine ... who expresses all anti-capitalist anti-imperialist hatred by wildly shaking the head and protruding lower lip; Markus Boysen, the Vesper type ..., has to remain a friendly sleeper towards her. "Jenny summarized that the film" [has] little to do with Bernward Vesper's terrible legacy. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Urs Jenny: Fathers and Sons . In: Der Spiegel, No. 37, September 8, 1986, p. 252.
  2. ↑ Quote about the film ( Memento of the original from September 29, 2007 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. on Markus Imhoof's website @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.markus-imhoof.ch
  3. ↑ Uwe Schweikert in the Frankfurter Rundschau . Quoted from: Jörg Schröder (Ed.): Bernward Vesper: Die Reise . Last hand edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1983, foreword.
  4. ↑ Thomas Kramer (Ed.): Reclam's Lexicon of German Films . Reclam, Stuttgart 1995, p. 261.
  5. ↑ Klaus Brühne (Ed.): Lexicon of International Films . Volume 6. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1990, p. 3087.
  6. ↑ Urs Jenny: Fathers and Sons . In: Der Spiegel, No. 37, September 8, 1986, p. 255.