Goethe!

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Movie
Original title Goethe!
Goethe Film.JPG
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2010
length 100 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
JMK 6
Rod
Director Philipp Stölzl
script Philipp Stölzl
Christoph Müller
Alexander Dydyna
production Christoph Müller
Helge Sasse
music Ingo Frenzel
camera Kolja Brandt
cut Sven Budelmann
occupation

Goethe! is a German fiction film from the director Philipp Stölzl from 2010 . The production is based on a joint script by Stölzl and the authors Alexander Dydyna and Christoph Müller and reports on the summer of 1772, in which the then young Johann Wolfgang Goethe fell in love with Charlotte Buff - an episode of his life that he then wrote about his epistolary novel Die Leiden of the young Werther processed. Alexander Fehling took over the title role . Lotte Buff was cast with Miriam Stein and Kestner with Moritz Bleibtreu .

The love drama was produced by Senator Film and Deutschfilm and filmed between August and October 2009 mainly in East Germany and the Czech Republic . By the end of 2011, Goethe! over 740,000 moviegoers in Germany.

action

In Strasbourg , the law student Johann Goethe fails the state examination . In the snow of the campus he writes the words: Lick me! Goethe is quoted by his father in his hometown Frankfurt am Main ; There he informed him that he should continue his training as a lawyer at the Reich Chamber of Commerce in Wetzlar , also to keep his son from his poetic "nonsense".

Once in Wetzlar, Goethe devotes himself to the work on old files, which he processes for his superior, the judge Kestner (who is called "Albert" in the film). He forms a team with the lawyer Jerusalem , with whom he also befriends privately. At a dance event, Goethe met Charlotte Buff (called Lotte for short) and fell in love with her. It turns out that she is the oldest of eight children of a widower living in an electoral home and has to look after her younger siblings.

Despite some complications, Goethe's love initially seems to be fulfilled. After reading one of his poems to Lotte, the couple are surprised by a heavy rain shower and the two seek protection in a ruined castle, where they become intimate with each other. Meanwhile, Kestner woos Lotte's father for his daughter's hand. The father is happy to see Charlotte well cared for in a marriage with an aspiring lawyer, who would later support Lotte's family financially. Lotte hesitates at first, but is increasingly adopting her father's point of view, as she also wants the well-being of her family. Despite everything, it is difficult for her to part with Goethe. In the end, the latter even helps his rival by suggesting a successful procedure and the appropriate words for his marriage proposal, without, of course, having a clue of who the courted is. The truth only emerges at Albert and Lotte's engagement party. All those affected are stunned.

Goethe is so desperate that after his friend Jerusalem shot himself, disappointed by the hopelessness of his love for a married woman, he also thinks of suicide. However, he does not carry out his plan. Insulting his superior leads to a duel with Albert, in which Goethe is entitled to the first shot; however, it fails. Kestner deliberately missed his shot and had Goethe arrested for unauthorized dueling. During his imprisonment, Goethe wrote his epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther and sent the manuscript to Lotte in order to demonstrate to her that he could not live without her. Lotte appeals to his poetic self-confidence and sends the manuscript to a publisher without Goethe's knowledge. After his release from prison, Goethe travels back to Frankfurt with his father, who came specially to Wetzlar. The novel has now become a bestseller there . The author is recognized by the book buyers on the street and can be celebrated as a “star” - and Goethe's father proudly accepts his son's literary ambitions.

background

Producer Christoph Müller expressly points out that the film Goethe! based on the films Amadeus and Shakespeare in Love . In all three films, world-famous artists are portrayed in their “Sturm und Drang” phase.

production

The film was shot from the end of August to the end of October 2009 in Görlitz , Merseburg , Rossbach , Creuzburg , Quedlinburg , Osterwieck , Dresden , Bad Muskau and Krompach . The choice of locations, primarily in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, is related to the production funding of 750,000 euros from the Central German Media Fund (MDM) responsible for these countries . The Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg contributed 450,000 euros to the financing, the German Film Funding Fund over one million euros. The North Rhine-Westphalia Film Foundation provided over 370,000 euros in project funding. Also Bully Herbig participated as co-producer and financially. He justified this with the fact that “for the first time a way had been found” to “make a film about Goethe that was suitable for the mainstream .” The production cost a total of seven million euros.

Production design

In close-ups was not with scenes work. For example, the historic half-timbered houses of Quedlinburg represent the old Wetzlar. Cityscapes in the super total were largely created on the computer.

According to the producer, individual pictures by the artist Bernardo Bellotto , known as Canaletto (1722–1780), were often cited for the cityscapes . The director selected individual quotes from Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) as landscape pictures, and thus especially for the path between Johann and Charlotte . Partially, the viewer thinks he remembers impressions of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (approx. 1530–1569) and Carl Spitzweg (1808–1885). The feelings were translated from the Werther text into a visual language that, like Canaletto and Friedrich, corresponds to the late 18th century. The city silhouettes of both Frankfurt and Wetzlar are fantasy products; instead of the Wetzlar Cathedral , a castle rises on the hill of the city.

Film music

On Goethe's trip to Wetzlar and back to Frankfurt am Main, Franz Schubert's song Gretchen am Spinnrade (1814) is quoted in an orchestral version based on a text from Goethe's Faust .

Faithfulness to facts

The film suggests authenticity through real old houses, props and costumes . He takes up many details from Goethe's real life: He was actually born in Frankfurt / Main, studied law in Strasbourg and then worked as a lawyer in Wetzlar. There he met Charlotte Buff and met Jerusalem again after first getting to know each other in Leipzig, who actually shot himself out of unhappy love.

However, Stölzl mixes the real Goethe with the fictional character Werther. Much in the film, such as the first name Albert or the onset of rain before Goethe's love for Charlotte flares up, is more reminiscent of Goethe's novel than his life.

Several elements of the film are fictitious: Goethe failed his doctoral examination in Strasbourg, but by drafting 56 theses - so-called "Positiones juris" - despite technical deficiencies, he achieved the degree of "Licentiate of Rights", which gave him admission to the Legal practice made possible. So he did not return to his father as a complete failure. He did not duel with Kestner either and was therefore not imprisoned. Goethe's love for Charlotte Buff remained purely platonic .

Goethe! should be a biopic about the young Goethe, who reflects his time (as in Werther ) and who is shown in his creative work (as in a reflection on the origin of Werther ). For this purpose, the dramatic plot of Werther's love story is used as a framework and supplemented by elements of the real biographical experiences of Goethe while writing this work - i.e. a literary film is mixed with its making-of as an excerpt from a life story.

The producer Christoph Müller justifies the freedom that the film takes as follows: “The film duel between Goethe and Kestner did not actually take place. However, there is evidence that Goethe wanted Kestner to die. Such a fact could of course be built into a dialogue sentence. But it is much more cinematic to implement this motif dramatically in order to express what actually moved Goethe. The duel sequence, so to speak, reveals Goethe's true feeling. ”The filmmakers justify the fact that, contrary to the social convention in force in the 18th century and contrary to the novel, Johann becomes intimate with Lotte by saying that their and“ our ”“ expectations of love ”are fulfilled in the cloudburst scene. Ultimately, according to director Stölzl, the film must be assigned to the “ romantic love film” category, which should appeal to women over 25 years of age.

The canon Bona nox! ( KV 561), which Goethe sings with them in the film to the enthusiasm of Lotte and especially her younger siblings and accompanies them on the clavichord , was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1788, 16 years after the film was opened.

Film festivals

The film was shown together with the other German productions Das Wunder von Bern , Almanya - Willkommen in Deutschland and The very big dream for the first German Film Week in North Korea, which took place from November 4 to 8, 2013 in the Taedongmun cinema in Pyongyang.

reception

publication

Goethe! started in Germany on October 14, 2010 with 250 film copies. With over 600,000 visitors by the end of 2010, it was the tenth most successful German film of the cinema year in Germany. By the end of 2011 it had over 740,000 visitors in Germany. On March 18, 2011, the film was released on DVD , Blu-ray Disc and download.

criticism

Many critics noticed that the film portrays Goethe as a pop star or a pop literary figure. People spoke of a figure like a cloak-and-sword hero or called him the "absolutely sympathetic, that is, edgeless cliché of the striker and drummer in love affairs". The Süddeutsche Zeitung asked whether a film in which no essential plot element coincides with the historical facts could still be called a film about Goethe. Let him allow himself to fool around freely; the script is “very cleverly set up in a manageable biographical spot”.

The film is “totally in love” with Goethe, the camera indulges when it is in the picture. “A German poet has seldom come across as casual, masculine and sexy in the cinema”. The film was called “refreshingly funny and charming”, remarked “wit, charm, speed and high visual values” as well as nimble dialogues and many “brilliantly ingenious” montages. The “picturesque sheet of images” is the real attraction of the film, the costumes are convincing, the equipment is made with a lot of love. Sometimes there was praise that the film has dirt, sometimes the style was displeased: “The dirt appears like clean designer dirt” and the film becomes a “touristic tour through the 18th century.” The critics also disagreed with regard to Stölzl's production . One verdict was that he “mastered the keyboard of emotions visibly sovereign”, and another that he had too little control over the emotions of the actors, and towards the end the drama turned into a smack. The fact that in the dialogues fragments from later works of Goethe invited the educated citizens to a recognition guessing game was not well received.

Leading actor Alexander Fehling effortlessly mastered the “balancing act between youthful exuberance and desperate longing for death” and impressed “in spurts as an impressive speaker of Goethe's verses”. Moritz Bleibtreu was sometimes praised as "convincingly unsexy", sometimes as implausible and called the "great fate" of the film. Miriam Stein plays "powerfully with lots of rough edges" or with freshness.

According to Ralf Blau from Cinema , the plot does not always correspond to the facts, but it is well invented. Stölzl takes the liberty of freeing Goethe's image from the dust of time, and the film feels “incredibly young”. The Zeit critic Inge Kutter made Goethe! Fun. “Because of the ease with which the film tells its story, it definitely comes closer to the high-spirited young poet” than would have been possible with a true-to-original narration. He dusted off the language: “You hear a very lively mixture of old phrases and modern everyday German, which makes the film sound contemporary without removing its patina.” The film “does not have the power of opulence like Milos Forman's Amadeus , pictures and figures are too little overdrawn for that. But he has enough self-irony. ”The“ student sulk ”, said Peter Zander in the world , pushed Goethe,“ the most monumental of all German monuments ”, off the pedestal. Instead of the “aged know-it-all” he offers a Goethe for a young cinema audience, and Lotte is not a passive sufferer. He could induce this young audience to read Goethe. The figure is “robbed of its political emphasis and reduced to sexual debauchery. Anyone who sees this as sacrilege will not enjoy this film. But if you can get involved, you will be excellently entertained. ” Henryk Goldberg justified the cloudburst scene of the film: The love scene was“ not the custom in the country ”,“ not for women, not in the grass ”, and Miriam Stein's Lotte shows“ a beautiful, open curls, more open than time would have allowed her back then ", this is" but open to the projections and feelings of our time ". “The question is not whether that was the case, the question is whether it's fun. And the answer is: yes, ”concludes Goldberg.

Daniel Kothenschulte from the Frankfurter Rundschau was enthusiastic about a Goethe in love in the first half, but his suffering in the second half does not shake you. The taz reviewer Dirk Knipphals found the likeable starting position of a young man, "the storm and stress in the heart, but set in a world too small for his own self-design." Knipphals was happy that "our classics are not being rediscovered as guarantors of values . “Unfortunately, the film falls into many traps: it puts on too much music; everything is explained; and there are too many prominent actors in small roles.

“It was beating my heart. Quickly on horseback: If you wanted to say something really good about this film, you could allow it to stretch this heartbeat for over an hour and a half with the deliberate restlessness of its design, ”said Gustav Seibt from the Süddeutsche Zeitung . But this film-Goethe hardly has anything in common with the real poet: “What is bad, however, is the fact that the subject is skewered in the economy of emotions: love misery makes the strolling student a successful author. [...] The pain was worth it, a star is born. The Werther , this book of an incurable disease to death, gets a happy ending. ”The film could not be intended for Goethe connoisseurs. Manfred Riepe from epd Film agreed that this was “not a film for Germanists”, rather it is aimed at cinema viewers who expect a visual spectacle and additional reading “if necessary read it at Wikipedia”. Because of the “forced entertainment”, according to Ralf Schenk from film-dienst , there is a lack of depth. Instead of the conflicts from Goethe's work, there would be “mere misunderstandings”, but hardly any historical references or premonitions of Goethe's importance. In the Tagesspiegel , Jan Schulz-Ojala recalled that, according to tradition, there was a friendship between the impetuous, naive and self-centered Goethe and the considerate and indulgent Kestner, who was patient and patient with the young rival. “But would such a collective attempt to defuse a passion, such warm hospitality with a genius, be the subject of a film? Perhaps, if one were seriously interested in the stormy youth of this poet ”. But Stölzl adapt the facts to the requirements of the genre at will. “Somebody has clearly misunderstood Goethe's concept of 'poetry and truth'. Stölzl is not concerned with the inevitably subjective color that arises even with the most scrupulous treatment of what has been handed down, but with the desire for the rough wedge and the cinema cliché. What comes out of such a fixation on the striking is ultimately not fiction and truth, but falsification ”.

Awards

From the German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) the film Goethe! classified as "particularly valuable". The website kinofenster.de, operated by the Federal Agency for Civic Education together with Vision Kino , a “network for film and media competence ”, awarded the film Goethe! as “Film of the Month” in October 2010. In 2011, there were four nominations for the German Film Award (Best Film, Best Actor - Alexander Fehling, Best Scene and Make-Up Image). The make-up artists Kitty Kratschke and Heike Merker won the award. The day before, Miriam Stein had won the New Faces Award for best young actress.

Review mirror

positive

Rather positive

Mixed

Rather negative

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Goethe! Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , October 2010 (PDF; test number: 124 626 K).
  2. ↑ Age rating for Goethe! Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ a b Film hit list: November 2011 - Filmförderungsanstalt, accessed on January 11, 2012
  4. ↑ Guidelines for Central German Media Funding , accessed on May 4, 2011
  5. ↑ a b Goethe! at Blickpunkt: Film , accessed on May 4, 2011
  6. ↑ Goethe!  ( 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. at Filmportal.de , accessed on May 4, 2011@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.filmportal.de  
  7. ↑ Andreas Kurtz: On the detour to the poet. Premiere of the movie "Goethe!" With many celebrities in the Sony Center . In: Berliner Zeitung , October 5, 2010
  8. ↑ a b c d e f Jan Schulz-Ojala: With all love: Goethe! In: Der Tagesspiegel , October 12, 2010
  9. ↑ Warner Bros .: Goethe! Material for school and extracurricular education . 2010. p. 29
  10. ↑ Goethe! Material for school and extracurricular education . ( Memento of the original from March 31, 2014 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. (PDF; 1 MB) Warner Bros., Information for Teachers , 2010, p. 23. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / wwws.warnerbros.de
  11. ↑ Warner Bros .: Goethe! . Knowledge ( Memento of the original from March 31, 2014 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / wwws.warnerbros.de
  12. ↑ Warner Bros .: Goethe! Material for school and extracurricular education . 2010. p. 31
  13. ↑ Kirsten Taylor: "The film is a fantasy about a historical figure". Philipp Stölzl on his approach to the figure of the young Goethe and his handling of historical facts . Interview. September 29, 2010. In: kinofenster.de: Edition 10/2010. P. 4f. ( Memento of the original from December 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 317 kB)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kinofenster.de
  14. ↑ Bona nox, bist arechta Ox , Der SWR2 Köchel, accessed on November 6, 2011
  15. ^ First German Film Week in North Korea. In: goethe.de. Retrieved January 4, 2016 .
  16. ↑ Film hit list: Annual list (German) 2010 - Filmförderungsanstalt, accessed on July 26, 2011
  17. ↑ Official website for the film ( Memento of the original from March 31, 2014 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. , accessed May 4, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / wwws.warnerbros.de
  18. ↑ a b c Daniel Kothenschulte: The sufferings of young G. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , October 14, 2010, p. 35
  19. ↑ a b c Peter Zander: Lick me . In: Die Welt , October 14, 2010, p. 24
  20. ↑ a b c cinema in brief . In: Der Spiegel . No. 41 , 2010, p. 140 ( online ).
  21. ↑ a b c d e f Ralf Schenk: Goethe! . In: film-dienst No. 21/2010
  22. ↑ a b c d Inge Kutter: Goethe, the popliterat . In: Die Zeit , online October 13, 2010
  23. ↑ a b c d Manfred Riepe: Goethe! . In: epd Film No. 10/2010, pp. 44–45
  24. ↑ a b c d Gustav Seibt: A star is born . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , October 15, 2010
  25. ↑ a b c d e f Dirk Knipphals: Everything, everything is explained . In: taz , October 13, 2010, p. 16
  26. ↑ a b Ralf Blau: Goethe! . In: Cinema No. 10/2010, pp. 56-57
  27. ^ Henryk Goldberg: Werthers Echte . Film mirror getidan.de. 17th October 2010
  28. ↑ Press release FBW
  29. ↑ Film of the month: Goethe! ( Memento of the original from December 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 317 kB) kinofenster.de 10/2010  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kinofenster.de