Heroes like us (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Heroes like us |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1999 |
| length | 98 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Sebastian Peterson |
| script |
Markus Dittrich , Thomas Brussig , Sebastian Peterson |
| production |
Gerhard von Halem , Alfred Holighaus , Hanno Huth |
| music | Ingo Ludwig Frenzel |
| camera | Peter Przybylski |
| cut | Petra Jurowski |
| occupation | |
| |
Helden wie wir is a German comedy film from 1999 . It is a literary adaptation of the eponymous novel Heroes Like Us by Thomas Brussig from 1995.
action
When the Berlin Wall came down on November 9, 1989, Klaus Uhlzscht ran around naked to the west. Nobody wants to believe him that he was responsible for the fall of the wall, which is why he is now telling his story.
Klaus was born into a political world on August 20, 1968 when the tanks drove past his house to end the Prague Spring . He later lived with his parents directly across from the Stasi and was informed at school that there was a great struggle between capitalism and socialism . He is a proud Thälmann pioneer and a miserable swimmer . When the new student Yvonne Anders joins his class, he spends time with her and falls in love with her. Yvonne definitely wants to go to Holland one day , where there are fields of tulips . But after he hits her in the head while swinging, injures her and her father is angry with him, he finds out after a stay at the holiday camp that she has moved away. From an early age, Klaus has a tendency to log all kinds of things, and he is a witness to how people around him are picked up.
It is not difficult for him to start working for the Stasi after finishing school. After Lieutenant Gollasch approaches him, he completed his basic training with the NVA and shortly afterwards he discovered that his father also worked for the Stasi, Klaus was sent to the postal department, where he completed his training under the leadership of Major Wunderlich. Thanks to his talent and clever remarks - such as that “every blank page is a potential leaflet” - he successfully completed his training and from then on accompanied Wunderlich and his officers on their observation missions. It surprises him that he suddenly rediscovered Yvonne. He follows her - with a stopover at Achim Mentzel - and has to discover that she is working underground. There is a shortage of paper among the dissidents, and so he advises the opposition not only that “every blank page is a potential pamphlet”, but also that fighting is more important than signature campaigns.
Yvonne is so enthusiastic about this that she invites him to her home. But instead of having sex with her, he confesses that he works for the Stasi, whereupon the contact is broken off for the time being. A few days later, Klaus is picked up from home. He makes a blood donation for Erich Honecker so that he can survive. As a side effect, he gets blood congestion in the penis. In the hospital he confesses to his mother that he, too, is in favor of the fall of the Berlin Wall. During the subsequent observation of an individual in the Alexanderplatz subway station , the Stasi and the passers-by got into a fight when the individual cries out for help. Yvonne is among the passers-by, so Klaus attacks his own people to help her escape. Then he runs to the wall himself; however, this remains closed. With a trick - Klaus lets his pants down - the wall is opened and Klaus looks for Yvonne in West Berlin . But he only finds her in Holland , where he takes her in his arms in a tulip field and kisses her.
Reviews
"A brilliant comedy based on the bestseller of the same name by Thomas Brussig, which knows how to sensitively and entertainingly reconstruct the bizarre characteristics of the everyday East German world - and at the same time to dismantle it."
“The viewer oscillates between sentimentality and horror. […] That is very hard-working, and you can also tell where the journey should go. But the film looks like it has to be finished quickly for the ceremony. There is no plot, even 'Sonnenallee' has no plot worth mentioning. But 'Sonnenallee' is at least a cinema. A popcorn film with cool dance scenes that you can watch three or four times. You get in a good mood at 'Sonnenallee'; 'Heroes like us' doesn't swing, however, the film stops moving at some point and is boring. "
“In heroes like us, the stink isn't just weird. It tarnishes the images, makes them look sickly, ingeniously amateurish and a bit faded, as if it were a GDR television film. Black and white material, trick shots, original documents, video, hand-held camera, animation, kitsch and colportage: the film is not a linear narrative from the valley of the clueless, but a continued break in style - residual recycling for a second "
“An experienced director would probably have guessed that the adaptation of this insistent story would have its pitfalls. The Hamburg-born cutter Sebastian Peterson, who trained at the Babelsberg Film School, started fresh with his first work, cut important passages from the material, added a constructed love story and, in the unfortunately unmatched ' Forrest Gump ' manner, enriched it with documentary and animated film sequences on. At the beginning this has quite funny effects. But after Klaus Uhlzscht's entry into the Mielke Battalion at the latest , the story becomes flat, banal and boring. A group of third-rate, poorly managed actors contribute to this not insignificantly. "
background
The film opened in German cinemas on November 9, 1999, on the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The film has been available on DVD since December 18, 2000 .
Web links
- Heroes Like Us in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Heroes like us. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Alexander Osang: A pack of eastern pralines on Spiegel Online from November 8, 1999, accessed on May 1, 2012
- ↑ Christiane Peitz: Alles so schön grau here on zeit.de from November 4, 1999, accessed on May 26, 2012
- ^ Renate Holland-Moritz : The film heroes of the east . In: Eulenspiegel , 45./53. Vol., No. 12/99, ISSN 0423-5975 , p. 46 f., Here p. 47.