Simple (film)

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Movie
Original title Simple
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2017
length 113 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
JMK 10
Rod
Director Markus Goller
script Dirk Ahner
production Michael Lehmann
music Andrei Melita
camera Ueli Steiger
cut Tina Friday
occupation

Simpel is a German road movie by Markus Goller from 2017. Dirk Ahner wrote the tragicomic script for the film based on the 2004 novel Simple by the French author Marie-Aude Murail and is about the brothers Barnabas and Ben, played by David Kross and Frederick Lau who, after her mother's sudden death, defied the authorities and ran away from Friesland to Hamburg to save the mentally handicapped Barnabas from moving to the home. The line-up was supplemented by Emilia Schüle , Axel Stein , Devid Striesow and Annette Frier, among others .

The film celebrated its world premiere in the competition at the Shanghai International Film Festival 2017 and was released in German cinemas on November 9, 2017. Kross and Lau were awarded the Bavarian Film Prize 2017 for their game .

action

Ben and Barnabas, who live in East Frisia, are brothers and have had a heart and soul for as long as they can remember. The 22-year-old Barnabas, called by everyone just simple, is mentally on the level of a three-year-old because he did not get enough oxygen when he was born. His best friend, next to Ben, is his cuddly rabbit , Monsieur Rabbit , which he takes with him everywhere. Simpel can be a terrible pain in the ass at times, but Ben cannot imagine a life without him. When Julia, the mother of the two, dies unexpectedly, they want to put Simpel in the home, but both Ben and Barnabas have something against it and flee. They steal the police van of village policeman Gruber and spend a night outdoors.

You go on an adventurous trip to Hamburg to become sailors there. They also have to find their father David, whom they haven't seen in 15 years. However, he now lives with his new wife Clara and doesn't really want to know anything about the disabled son. Ben and Barnabas' road trip escalates after a bad argument with their father on a Hamburg platform, and for the first time Ben loses his composure to his brother, who in turn runs away and gets on the next train.

Ben goes on a search with Aria and Enzo, whom he met with Simpel on the way to Hamburg. In the end, Simpel is discovered in a furniture store, where he made himself comfortable in a bed. The alarmed police followed Simpel, who fled, onto the roof of the furniture store. In his panic, Simpel lets Monsieur Hasehase fall from the roof with an awkward movement . Completely shocked, Simpel threatens to jump after him, only to be reunited with his friend and mother in death. However, Ben, who arrives on the roof in time, can dissuade Simpel from doing so. In the final sequence , Aria and Enzo operate the injured Monsieur Hasehase in the Haus Sonnengarten facility for the disabled , where Simpel will now live. Then Ben says goodbye to Simpel and drives off with the police.

production

Simpel is based on the young adult book Simple by the French author Marie-Aude Murail from 2004, the original of which was published by Klett in 2006 and which was adapted for French TV in 2011. For the realization of a German-language adaptation for the big screen, co-producer Benjamin Seikel succeeded in engaging Markus Goller as director. Goller, who started the project with his two other films Friendship! (2010) and 25 km / h (2018), developed the script for the film together with author Dirk Ahner , with whom he had already worked on Ms. Ella (2010). Due to the various subplots of the novel, both agreed to break away from Murail's template and to move the relationship between the two brothers into the focus of the film, whereby not Simpel's disability, but "the love for one another, being there for one another" in the Should be at the center of the script.

The Lower Saxony Wadden Sea near Jever was used in 2016, among other things, as a filming location for Simpel .

The setting of the film was moved from Paris to Northern Germany after efforts to find a French partner to finance the production were rejected and promised film subsidies from Lower Saxony and Hamburg significantly influenced the choice of locations. The shooting finally took place from February 29 to April 19, 2016 in Hamburg and the surrounding area. In the Hanseatic city, scenes were created in the Schanzenviertel , at the Hoheluftbrücke underground station in the Harvestehude district, and in Fruchtallee and Schlump underground station in Eimsbüttel . Further recordings were made in the Wadden Sea on the North Sea coast as well as in Jever in Lower Saxony and at a gas station in Egestorf .

The production of the Letterbox Filmproduktion under the direction of Michael Lehmann and Günther Russ was created in coproduction with C-Films Germany, Amalia Film and the ZDF and was supported by the Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein (FFHSH), nordmedia , the FilmFernsehFonds Bayern (FFFB), financially supported by the Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA) and the German Filmförderfonds (DFFF). Emilia Schüle was the first leading actress who could be signed for Simpel . In contrast to previous projects, Goller decided to cast two less commercial faces in the two main roles in order to be as authentic as possible. David Kross and Frederick Lau were finally able to prevail after joint auditions. In preparation, Kross spent time in a home for the disabled, where he observed people and learned how Simpel should move. Also starring were Striesow , Axel Stein , Annette Frier , Tim Wilde , Anneke Kim Sarnau , Ludger Pistor and Oscar Ortega Sánchez front of the camera.

Simpel celebrated its world premiere on June 19, 2017 as part of the Shanghai International Film Festival in the presence of director Markus Goller, lead actor Frederick Lau and producers Michael Lehmann and Günther Russ, where he was competing for the Golden Cup. In early October 2017 the film was shown at the Zurich Film Festival and at the Hamburg Film Festival , where it was nominated for the Art Cinema Award . On November 9, 2017, Simpel was finally released for public screening in Germany by its distributor, Universum Film .

reception

Reviews

Despite some critical reviews, the film received mostly good ratings. According to the newspaper Westfälische Nachrichten , for example, the two brothers' escape from the police in Hamburg "is the prelude to a great odyssey that oscillates between humorous and touching scenes and a beautiful story about brotherly love. Much better than the comparable half-baked and silly Schweiger film" Honey im Kopf "and one of the German films of the year." Jenny Hoch from the newspaper Die ZEIT praised the main actors Kross and Lau as well as the other cast. She praised the actors Annette Frier, Emilia Schüle and Devid Striesow . Hoch emphasized the role of the city ​​of Hamburg : "Simple is not an easy film. It captivates with its shading and even has a third leading actor who only sneaks into the picture after a good half an hour, but is then very present: the city of Hamburg Apart from a few aerial photos of the glittering metropolis at night, the big city does not serve as a dream backdrop, but as a trigger for the inner development of the characters. The restless elevated railways, the hustle and bustle on Fruchtallee, in the Schanzenviertel and on St. Pauli , everything can Scare, but also show new ways of life. The deeper the heroes penetrate the topography of the city, the wider their horizon becomes. "

David Kross received positive reviews for his portrayal of the simplicity.

Britta Schmeis from epd Film says that Markus Goller staged the youth novel of the same name by Marie-Aude Murail as a moving tragic comedy that addresses all questions of responsibility, sense of duty, family and friendship. Schmeis explains that Simpel's lovable childhood disarms and leads to hilarious and touching situations, for example when he meets a disabled girl in a playground with his soft toy rabbit in tow and makes friends with her. But Ben's loving, almost all too self-sacrificing care sometimes tears your heart apart, says Schmeis, and it is a film that speaks to many human emotions and therefore touches them. Bettina Peulecke from Norddeutscher Rundfunk saw the film in the same direction as Britta Schmeis. In her opinion, the staging of the special brotherly relationship is "a largely successful balancing act between tragedy and comedy, which one can quickly forgive for some excessive moments due to its sincerity."

Matthias Halbig speaks in the Hannoverschen Allgemeine of great, real emotional cinema: “'Simpel' is funny, sad, tender and full to the brim with adventure - a course to the heart that director Markus Goller never delivers to the viewer with kitsch. Kross is great as an enthusiastic, innocent child man, Lau is no less touching than the best friend a brother can have. Two guys who enrich the cinema with their story of inclusion through love, like Arnie ( Leonardo DiCaprio ) and Gilbert Grape ( Johnny Depp ) did, somewhere in Iowa . "

In a review of the film on Focus Online , the film is described as a warm-hearted and amusing road movie with great actors: “With two very different people in the lead roles, whose strength is always to be there for each other. The film thrives on exactly this relationship between Ben and Simpel. Frederick Lau and David Kross have no reservations whatsoever, so that one takes away from them without a doubt that they are brothers. The roles seem to have been perfectly tailored to the two actors. "

Peter Zander from the Berliner Morgenpost says about Kross that it is moving to see how he dances in the mudflats in underpants and moon boots in the freezing cold and even opens the hearts of complete strangers with his naive good-naturedness. But Lau also touches as Ben, who does everything for his brother, even if he never has time for a life of his own and is ultimately hopelessly overwhelmed with the situation.

There was mixed criticism from Marc Reichwein from the newspaper Die Welt . He said that feel-good films have too often been those that want a lot and can do little. The film creates touching scenes, shows the mutual dependency of family members, and has comical and tragicomic moments. In addition, however, a few scenes that were somehow given away, such as Simpel's intrusion into the family of his biological father, interfered. His conclusion: "You don't leave the cinema emotionally shaken, touched, purified. Because this film is somehow too tepid for that, namely the character that Lau embodies. Everything Simpel encounters fits in a little too pleasingly Socio-educationally good ones. Perhaps, one suspects, reality is a little less simple than "Simple". "

On the other hand, Martin Schwickert in the Sächsische Zeitung finds the film “seriously ill with the credibility of its one-dimensional characters” and treats the problems of living together with disabled people “completely superficially [...] in order not to endanger the fluffy feel-good character of the entertainment product”. The "clearly more complex elaborated" template will be "banalized into German mainstream format". Bianka Piringer from "kino-zeit.de - Das Portal für Film und Kino" commented critically: "The film dismisses its viewers without emotional reverberation and also with the impression that they have learned something relevant about the world and its people."

Financial success

According to press reports, the production counted around 24,844 visitors (38,675 including previews) in 170 cinemas after the end of the first screening weekend and was able to place it in eleventh place in the German cinema charts. In Germany, the film recorded a total of 126,214 visitors and was ranked 47th in the most successful German production of 2017. The box office total was 843,866 euros.

Use in school lessons

In spring 2019, the film was presented as part of the SchulKinoWochen in Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria.

Awards

German Audio Film Award 2018

  • Nomination in the cinema category

Hamburg Film Festival 2017

  • Nomination for the Art Cinema Award

Shanghai International Film Festival 2017

  • Nomination for the Golden Goblet Award

Bavarian Film Award 2017

  • Actor Award to David Kross and Frederick Lau

Simpel was also one of eleven German submissions for the 2019 Oscars in the category of best foreign language film .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Simpel . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 165390 / K). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ Age rating for Simpel . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ a b c d e Simpel, Germany 2017. In: filmernst.de. Retrieved November 4, 2018 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Markus Goller on "Simpel". In: filmreporter.de. Retrieved November 5, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Lien Kaspari and Peter Sylent: Annette frier (t) on Fruchtallee. In: bild.de, March 14, 2016:
  6. ↑ http://www.klatsch-tratsch.de/2016/03/04/david-kross-und-frederick-lau-drehstart-fuer-roadmovie-simpel/269272
  7. ↑ http://www.emotion.de/schoenes-neues/kultur/kino-dreharbeiten-simpel
  8. ↑ Frederick Lau, David Kross and Emilia Schüle on "Simpel". In: TV feature film . Retrieved November 5, 2018 .
  9. ↑ David Kross: Quite “simple” in the new film. In: tvmovie.de, April 15, 2016.
  10. ↑ 20th Golden Goblet Awards Competition Films ( Memento from June 15, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) In: siff.com.
  11. ↑ Jochen Kürten: German Cinema in China: Shanghai Film Festival shows 49 German films In: Deutsche Welle Online, June 18, 2017.
  12. ↑ 'Simpel' in competition at the Shanghai International Film Festival. In: studio-hamburg-produktion.de, June 1, 2017.
  13. ↑ Programs 2017 In: zff.com. Retrieved September 14, 2017.
  14. ^ Films from AZ ( Memento from November 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: filmfesthamburg.de. Retrieved September 29, 2017.
  15. ↑ Simpel In: filmfesthamburg.de. Retrieved October 5, 2017.
  16. ↑ Start dates Germany In: insidekino.com. Retrieved August 11, 2017.
  17. ↑ Cinema review “Simpel”: Bruderliebe , Westfälische Nachrichten. November 10, 2017. Archived from the original on December 31, 2017. Retrieved December 31, 2017. 
  18. ↑ "Simpel": Woe and Courage , Die ZEIT. November 13, 2017. Archived from the original on December 31, 2017. Retrieved on December 31, 2017. 
  19. ↑ a b "Simpel": The sad and beautiful story of an unequal pair of brothers . November 8, 2017. Archived from the original on December 31, 2017. Retrieved December 31, 2017.
  20. ↑ Britta Schmeis: Critique of Simpel . epd film. October 20, 2017. Archived from the original on December 31, 2017. Retrieved December 31, 2017.
  21. ^ "Simpel": Brothers between comedy and tragedy , Norddeutscher Rundfunk. November 9, 2017. Archived from the original on December 31, 2017. Retrieved on December 31, 2017. 
  22. ↑ "Simpel" - Somewhere in the North , Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung. November 11, 2017. Archived from the original on December 31, 2017. Retrieved December 31, 2017. 
  23. ^ "Simpel" - A road movie straight to the heart , Berliner Morgenpost. November 9, 2017. Archived from the original on November 10, 2017. Retrieved on December 31, 2017. 
  24. ↑ Peter Zander: 'Simpel' - A road movie right into the heart In: Berliner Morgenpost, November 9, 2017.
  25. ^ Movie Simpel: Not somewhere in Iowa, but in Lower Saxony , Die Welt. November 11, 2017. Archived from the original on December 31, 2017. Retrieved December 31, 2017. 
  26. ↑ Martin Schwickert: A cheer for simplicity In: Sächsische Zeitung, November 8, 2017.
  27. ↑ Bianka Piringer: Simpel (2017) . kino-zeit.de - The portal for film and cinema. November 9, 2017. Archived from the original on December 31, 2017. Retrieved on December 31, 2017.
  28. ↑ a b weekend charts Germany. In: mediabiz.de. November 4, 2018, accessed April 1, 2016 .
  29. ↑ Film hit list: Annual list (national) 2017 . Film Funding Agency . FFA.de. Retrieved November 5, 2018.
  30. ↑ Top 100 Germany 2017 In: insidekino.com. Retrieved July 17, 2018.
  31. ↑ Film selection. In: schulkinowoche-bw.de. Retrieved January 20, 2019.
  32. ↑ Film overview. In: schulkinowochen.nrw.de. Retrieved January 20, 2019.
  33. ^ Romy or Richter: Who will represent Germany at the Oscar? . Article dated August 28, 2018, accessed September 8, 2018.