Ruben, Ruben

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Movie
German title Ruben, Ruben (alternative: poets are not kissed)
Original title Reuben, Reuben
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1983
length 101 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Robert Ellis Miller
script Julius J. Epstein
production Dan Allingham , Walter Shenson , Julius J. Epstein
music Billy Goldenberg
camera Peter Stein
cut Skip Lusk
occupation

Ruben, Ruben is an American tragic comedy from 1983 by Robert Ellis Miller based on a novel by Peter De Vries . Tom Conti and Kelly McGillis play the leading roles . The film was shown on German television under the title Poeten does not kiss .

action

Gowan McGland is an impoverished British poet who loves to get drunk. He has not written for years, is in the middle of the midlife crisis and is on a lecture tour in New England to earn some money. His readings are mainly attended by older housewives without an understanding of art who would like to experience a real poet for once. With these ladies, Gowan is also very successful sexually. He has quartered himself in a small town and lives there as a scrounger who can be put up with by rich members of the upper middle class. For the treatment of his back ailment for the purpose of stretching, McGland regularly hangs his head and shoulders in an orthopedic collar attached to the top of a door frame.

His ex-wife Edith earns her living with an autobiography and chats openly about the terrible marriage to McGland. After being kicked out of a bar, McGland is drunk, scrapped and without a ticket on the train when he is checked. The pretty student Geneva recognizes the poet who was giving a lecture at her college and pays the ticket for him. After this extremely embarrassing situation for McGland, McGland goes to the train toilet and bursts into tears. Gowan, who befriended Geneva's grandfather, later sees Geneva again and they both fall in love. Both have a relationship that has no future. McGland is incapable of a serious relationship and tries to avoid all responsibility. After a series of misunderstandings, his relationship with Geneva, who became pregnant by him, falls apart. Geneva has the child aborted and leaves McGland. One of the cheated husbands in the village is a dentist who learns about adultery and then fraudulently pulls Gowan's “wrong” teeth during treatment, rendering the poet practically toothless.

McGland is very physically frail, in addition to his impending toothlessness and alcohol problem. Gowan falls emotionally into a deep hole: He goes to his room, where he thinks about hanging himself after the setbacks caused by the separation and the threatening toothlessness ("the greatest of all cosmic insults"). He completes a poem for the memoir that his ex-wife wrote. He climbs up on a chair and hangs his head in the stretching device, which he now puts around his neck like a noose. He tries to tip the chair over but does not have the courage to do so. He then changed his mind, regained courage and made new plans, which he spoke into a dictation machine. Meanwhile, Geneva's grandfather goes for a walk with his dog ( Reuben , the name of the dog is also the title of the film). Gowan is well known to the animal, it runs into its room and jumps at it for joy. The chair on which McGland is standing falls over.

Reviews

“With“ Ruben, Ruben ”Miller created his most beautiful and personal film in the autumn of 1982, a poetic and melancholy story about a beggar and disguised womanizer who, in a moment of the highest tragic-comic, with the help of the eponymous dog, was about to be abandoned Suicide attempt still - and quite unwillingly - completed. "

- Kay Less : The large personal lexicon of film , Volume 5, Berlin 2001

"Funny dialogues and an excellent leading actor cannot hide the fact that many possibilities of the intelligent template have been wasted." "

- Two thousand and one film dictionary.

Awards and nominations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Quotation in the two thousand and one film dictionary
  2. ↑ Quotation in the two thousand and one film dictionary
  3. ↑ Overview of the Golden Globes

Web links