Masserberg (film)

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Movie
Original title Masserberg
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2010
length 88 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Martin Enlen
script Else Buschheuer ,
Jürgen Werner
production Herbert Häussler
music Dieter Schleip
camera Philipp Timme
cut Monika Abspacher
occupation

Masserberg is a German TV film directed by Martin Enlen from 2010 . It is the film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Else Buschheuer .

action

The film, set in everyday life in the GDR , is mainly about 19-year-old Melanie Tauber, or Mel for short. Because of glaucoma , she is in a Masserberg eye clinic, an external department of the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena , with many older women with eye disorders . In the apron, not shown, she and her brother forged escape plans by hot air balloon to West Germany . With eye-catching clothes and make-up, she defies the dreary everyday clinical routine. Carlo Sanchez, a married doctor from Cuba who treats her, wins her attention. An affair slowly develops between the two. His marriage is in crisis; a child is on the way. In the following, the bureaucratic arbitrariness of medicine in the GDR is presented. Melanie has compassion for her older roommates. She is deeply disappointed when a treatment alternative is not implemented despite the recommendation of the professor.

During their disappointment, Carlo and Mel also get close sexually, while at the same time his wife is tormented by labor pains alone at home. Carlos wife tells him that she cannot have any more children. On the way home, an unofficial employee (IM) of the Stasi matches him . The IM tries to persuade Carlo to spy on Mel and her friends from the opposition movement. Because of a mocking poem written by a ten-year-old patient, the “apparatus-based” chief doctor is “interrogated”, but this has no further consequences. But at the next secret meeting between Carlo and Mel, he tells her that she has syphilis and that he is also pregnant. Shortly thereafter, Mel notices that her diary is gone.

Carlo's wife has since figured out the affair. At the next meeting between the IM and Sanchez, he rubs Mel's diary under his nose. A patient of about the same age as Mel, who must have stolen Mel's diary from her bedside table and given it to the Stasi, suggests alternatives to Mel in order to free herself from the difficult situation, for example to go to the police. Mel refuses because she cannot betray her friends. Carlo comes to the hospital after a heart attack. This is where the “rivals” of different ages meet. The ophthalmologist dies despite rescue efforts. Mel tries to strangle the denunciating fellow patient. It is being held by two of her friends. The friends drag Mel into a Trabant. The three of them flee to West Germany at a border crossing point that has been weakened by construction sites.

In the short epilogue after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the blind Mel visits the Masserberg Eye Clinic with her ten-year-old son. She tells the boy that he "originated" there.

background

The film is based on the partly autobiographical novel by Else Buschheuer , who, like the main character, was a patient at the eye clinic in Masserberg in her youth . It was produced by Bavaria Fernsehproduktion . Filming began in April 2009 and took place on the original location. Around 150 extras were used to represent the clinic staff, patients and visitors.

The first broadcast of the film was on May 19, 2010 at 8.15 p.m. on ARD . With 3.48 million viewers, it achieved a market share of 11.2 percent. That evening Masserberg had the second highest quota after the ZDF program Aktenzeichen XY ... unsolved , which was watched by 6.46 million viewers.

reception

Rainer Tittelbach is positive about the film in his criticism. Masserberg takes up many different topics, but is "aesthetically highly concentrated" with just one location and a slow narrative pace. The charismatic main character of the melodrama “dances defiantly like a young Nina Hagen through an eye clinic called Masserberg, but could also be called GDR”. In addition to the main actress, Tittelbach particularly praises the fact that the film breaks new ground in that, despite criticism of the GDR past, the focus is not on politics, but on subjectively experienced everyday life. The film makes a contribution "to the normalization of German history and German stories."

Even Spiegel Online -Redakteurin Hannah Pilarczyk emphasizes positive that Masserberg show a "new narrative dealing with the GDR" and argued that this worth seeing. It is desirable that further films on German television follow this example. As a love and sick drama, however, the film is less interesting. Pilarczyk criticizes the occurrence of many characters that are only sketchily drawn and do not develop properly due to a lack of psychologization. The love story between Mel and Carlo seems like "piecemeal".

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Masserberg . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , July 2010 (PDF; test number: 123 520 V).
  2. ↑ 11/14/2015 | Masserberg | MDR.DE. (No longer available online.) In: www.mdr.de. November 4, 2015, archived from the original on April 8, 2016 ; accessed on March 26, 2016 .
  3. ↑ "Aktenzeichen" clearly before "Masserberg". In: FOCUS Online. May 20, 2010, accessed March 26, 2016 .
  4. ^ Rainer Tittelbach: Masserberg - review of the film at Tittelbach.tv. In: tittelbach.tv - the television film observer. November 14, 2015, accessed March 26, 2016 .
  5. ^ Hannah Pilarczyk: GDR drama "Masserberg": East in Translation. In: SPIEGEL ONLINE. May 19, 2010, accessed March 26, 2016 .