Crime scene: Guardian of the threshold

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Episode of the series Tatort
Original title Guardian of the Threshold
Country of production Germany
original language German
length 88 minutes
classification Episode 1104 ( List )
First broadcast September 29, 2019 on Das Erste
Rod
Director Piotr J. Lewandowski
script Michael Glasauer
production Nils Reinhardt
music Lenny Mockridge
camera Jürgen Carle
cut Barbara Brückner
occupation

Guardian of the Threshold is a television film from the crime series Tatort . The by Südwestrundfunk Post produced the 1104 crime scene episode and was on 29 September 2019 First erstgesendet. The Stuttgart investigator duo Lannert and Bootz is investigating in its 24th case.

action

The student Marcel Richter is found dead on a mountain plateau at the gates of Stuttgart. The injuries on his chest and magical props on the corpse suggest a ritual murder. Thorsten Lannert and Sebastian Bootz investigate connections to occult circles accordingly.

Richter was last seen with a young woman who Lannert and Bootz can identify as Diana Jäger. Jäger is a fellow student and brings the inspectors on the trail of Emil Luxinger, who claims to have magical powers. When he was questioned, he stated that Marcel Richter stood at his door one day to ask him about the 17th century. Shortly afterwards he would have missed a book. Thereupon he would have cast a shaman's spell on the thief, but this should not have any legal consequences. When Lannert asks about the content of the book, Luxinger explains that it is encrypted in such a way that only the initiated would understand. Richter should not have known what he was holding in his hands, because the book would have chosen him .

Lannert and Bootz consider this book to be the key to solving the case. While looking for it, they find a cell phone that Richter apparently used to contact a specific person. Based on the last message: "Ask about the white light" and the fact that Richter had called a restaurant several times on his cell phone that was related to drugs, the investigators suspect that Richter worked as a drug courier. The ritual murder could thus be a false lead. Bootz therefore wants to make inquiries in the restaurant. There he disguises himself as a normal guest and boldly orders “The White Light”. Thereupon he is approached by a man who leads him into a room where the two fight against each other in a full contact duel with no rules . Since Bootz had pretended to be a friend of Richter, he learns that after such a fight he would have said that he had only been here to make sacrifices so that the voices in his head would stop.

Meanwhile, Lannert looks around Luxinger's house and finds not only esoteric books, but also objects and symbols like those found at the crime scene. In one of the books, he noticed a picture of a young man that reminded him of Marcel Richter. He talks to the local pastor about the figure depicted and learns that it would be Justin Pfaff, born in 1629, who at that time was a councilor in Esslingen and also had a church built. In 1662 he had worked as a witch hunter, which had then assumed such proportions that Pfaff himself had ended up in dungeon. Here a cell attendant stuck a dagger in his heart.

Although Luxinger claims to have only met Richter once, Lannert is not convinced. Based on the evidence collected and Luxinger's belief in rebirth, he assumes that the souls of Richter and Luxinger met in the Middle Ages, albeit in reversed roles. The victim from that time therefore still had an unresolved account with his then murderer. So it can be assumed that there could be other objects of revenge. When Lannert and Bootz investigate, they arrive just in time for a sacrificial ritual in which Luxinger Diana apparently wants to kill Jäger. Luxinger justifies himself that he only wanted to cast out a demon, but is arrested anyway. In his madness he swears that Diana Jäger could find the book before the commissioners and fears fatal consequences. In fact, she is also looking for the medieval work and therefore seeks out Richter's mother. She is not only traumatized by the death of her son, but also has an esoteric touch. Therefore she considers hunters to be the cause of all evil and knocks them down in order to then kill them. Lannert and Bootz can just prevent this and arrest Heide Richter.

Diana Jäger explains to Bootz at the end that she is a witch and that is why Richter's mother wanted to kill her. Marcel Richter had confided in her because he was plagued by visions. Images of people for whose death he was to blame appeared in his head, and these images seemed like memories. Jäger wanted to help him and referred him to Luxinger. There he discovered the book and tried to follow instructions from it to get rid of Justus Pfaff's karma. In the course of a ritual, the student then killed himself in autogenous-induced ecstasy .

Lannert, meanwhile, finds the book on the shelf at Heide Richter and brings it to Luxinger, whom he chalked up for not having prevented suicide, although he knew what Richter was up to.

background

The film was shot from September 4, 2018 to October 8, 2018 in Stuttgart, Baden-Baden and Rastatt. The church is the Sankt-Remigius-Kapelle ("Wurmlinger Chapel") near Wurmlingen, Tübingen district. The premiere took place on June 7, 2019 at the SWR summer festival in Stuttgart.

The plot refers to the witch hunt in Esslingen am Neckar in 1662 , which was promoted by the lawyer Daniel Hauff , who subsequently bears a different name and plays a central role.

reception

Audience ratings

The first broadcast of Guardian of the Threshold on September 29, 2019, was seen as the broadest broadcast of the day in Germany by 8.23 ​​million viewers and achieved a market share of 24.3% for Das Erste .

Reviews

Tilmann P. Gangloff from tittelbach.tv said: “The Stuttgart inspectors Lannert & Bootz [have] to jump far beyond their criminal shadow because the solution to the 24th case is hidden somewhere between heaven and earth.” “That sounds like B -Movie, but the film still tells an unusually packaged, but ultimately understandable crime story. The artistic design (Jürgen Carle) is of outstanding quality anyway. "

The editorial staff of Prisma summed up, "lazy magic instead of thrills" dominated the episode. “Unfortunately,” she notes, “almost everything revolves around magic”, because “as mysterious as the story is, it doesn't want to be believable or at least exciting”. Although "Stuttgart cases are usually a guarantee for good crime thriller entertainment", "unfortunately this time it is different". It awarded two out of three possible stars.

Lena Karber from Westfälische Nachrichten called the episode “close to the fantasy genre”. A "crazy-looking occultist" suggests a trivial resolution of the case, but this turns out to be unexpectedly "more complex" for the investigators and leads them "to the edge of their imagination". The episode comes with a "convincingly dark atmosphere" that "increases the tension".

Christian Buß from Spiegel Online assessed: “The people responsible for this 'crime scene' work their way through the entire catalog on elements of pleasure and light for an occult shock - and then try to resolve the whole thing theologically and anthropologically. So much can be revealed: They don't succeed. [...] Sweating, hitting, moaning and explaining the world a bit - despite all the sympathy for the sexual and spiritual self-exploration of the inspectors, it doesn't quite work out in the end. "

At the FAZ Heike Hupertz said: “The most strange thing [at this crime scene] is that the case, after a dramatic escalation, is decided fifteen minutes before the end, but is explained in a complicated manner afterwards. Those who value attention to detail will enjoy the lovingly furnished Knusperhaus (set designer Patricia Walczak). Otherwise you have to think about the 'mystery' atmosphere. The (secondary) figure of the pastor is weak, Bootz's ecstasy is only slightly convincing. Lannert, however, who seems to shrug off the occult monzes with a tired shrug of the shoulders, can be easily agreed. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Crime scene: Guardian of the threshold at crew united
  2. ↑ The big SWR Tatort premiere. In: SWR summer festival. Südwestrundfunk, accessed on June 8, 2019 : "At the beginning of the festival on Friday, June 7, SWR television will show the premiere of a Stuttgart crime scene in front of a unique backdrop on Stuttgart's Schlossplatz."
  3. ↑ a b c d Westfälische Nachrichten : Close to the fantasy genre - Tatort: ​​Guardians of the Threshold (ARD) , media, seen, Lena Karber, September 30, 2019
  4. ↑ Fabian Riedner: Primetime Check: Sunday, September 29, 2019.quotemeter.de , September 30, 2019, accessed on September 30, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Westfälische Nachrichten : Great interest in the "crime scene" , media, quotas, October 1, 2019
  6. ^ Tilmann P. Gangloff: Müller, Klare, Glasauer, Lewandowski. Looking for the special picture at tittelbach.tv, accessed on April 7, 2020.
  7. ↑ a b c d Prisma : Lazy magic instead of thrills , Tatort from Stuttgart, ck, TV program September 28, 2019 - October 4, 2019, No. 39/2019, p. 15
  8. ↑ Christian Buß: Occult crime thriller from Stuttgart. Evade our "crime scene", Satan! Spiegel Online, September 27, 2019, accessed on September 27, 2019 : "Rating: 5 out of 10 points"
  9. ↑ Heike Hupertz: Hands to Heaven at faz.net , accessed on April 7, 2020.
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