The Cut

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Movie
Original title The Cut
Country of production Germany , France , Poland , Turkey , Canada , Russia and Italy
original language English
Publishing year 2014
length 138 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Fatih Akin
script Fatih Akin ,
Mardik Martin
production Fatih Akin ,
Karl Baumgartner ,
Reinhard Brundig ,
Nurhan Şekerci-Porst ,
Fabienne Vonier
music Alexander Hoe
camera Rainer Klausmann
cut Andrew Bird
occupation
chronology

←  Predecessor
On the other side

The Cut is a feature film by Fatih Akin . The world premiere took place on August 31, 2014 at the 71st Venice International Film Festival , and the film has been shown in German cinemas since October 16, 2014. It is Fatih Akin's most logistically complex film to date and was supported by Mardik Martin , among others .

The film is the third and thus the last part of the trilogy Love, Death and the Devil , which began in 2004 with Gegen die Wand and was continued in 2007 with On the other side .

action

In 1915, the Armenian blacksmith Nazareth Manoogian lived in the small town of Mardin with his wife Rakel and their twin daughters Arsinée and Lucinée, as well as the extended family . After his work is done, he goes to the Christian church to make confession for his envy of rich people . After he picks up his daughters from school, they see a crane passing by. Nazareth explains to his daughters that all three of them are going on a long journey because they have seen the crane.

The disappearance of Armenian men is controversial with the whole family. One night Turkish soldiers stand at the door and force Nazareth and his brother-in-law Hrant to come along - under the pretext that all the men have been recruited as soldiers by the Sultan. The Armenian and Christian men are however forced to do hard labor in the desert to build roads there. There they experience how women and children are brought into the desert or raped or killed. The following year, a representative of the Sultan appears and announces that Armenian men who convert to Islam will be pardoned . Some men from the group step forward and are cursed as traitors to the faith by the remaining men.

The next morning there are initially no soldiers in sight, but after a brief moment of hope for the Armenians, those come back with a group of civilians and bring the forced laborers into a valley. There they have to kneel down and the civilians are forced to slit their throats . Nazaret's brother-in-law also dies. A Turk named Mehmet is supposed to kill Nazareth, but fails to do it. Instead, he sticks his knife so deep into Nazaret's throat that his vocal cords are injured and he remains lying like dead, which Mehmet realizes, who then prevents others from looting Nazaret's supposed corpse in order to protect it.

During the night Mehmet comes back, gives him water to drink, sets him free and escapes with him. In the desert, both of them encounter a group of deserters and are able to join them for a while. Nazareth learns from a healer that the cut in his vocal cords has condemned him to silence.

The deserters raid a carriage that belongs to a wealthy former customer of Nazaret. He pleads with Nazareth that the group should not take his and his family's belongings and also tells him that other refugees from Mardin are in the city of Raʾs al-ʿAin . Nazareth does not respond to the requests, but the group leaves some food for the family. Nazareth decides to leave the group and go to the city the customer told him about. The march is so strenuous for Nazareth that it falls over in the heat. In a dream his wife appears to him and orders him to wake up again. Nazareth comes across a group of Bedouins who help him out with water and food when he can show a small stone of gold that he got while building the road. A girl whom he helped to get back on her feet during the period of forced labor after a fall was apparently later sold to the desert people. She begs Nazareth to help her again and to free her from captivity. He ignores your requests.

When he reaches Raʾs al-ʿAin, Nazareth finds a refugee camp in the desert where the refugees are vegetating, hungry and thirsty - including his sister-in-law Ani. Even half dead, she reports that the entire family is dead. Then she pleads with him to redeem her from her suffering. Late that night, Nazareth brings himself to strangle his sister-in-law. Then a great anger breaks out in him - also against God.

After leaving the camp, he can jump on a train. When the wagons are later searched, Nazareth jumps out of the moving train in the desert. Omar Nasreddin finds him half hungry and thirsty. He takes Nazareth to his soap factory in Aleppo . There, Nazareth later meets Krikor, who is also an Armenian. When the war ended in November 1918 and the Turkish occupation forces had to withdraw, the residents of Aleppo threw stones at the Turks. Nazareth and Krikor also watch the Turks leave. When Nazareth wanted to throw a stone himself, he saw a little Turkish boy bleeding from a head wound and turned away in despair.

One evening Nazaret saw Charlie Chaplin's film The Kid in the cinema , which on the one hand made him laugh again - but also made him cry when he thought of his children. There he also meets his former apprentice Levon, who tells him that his daughters are still alive. Omar has now housed many refugees in his soap factory, and Nazareth learns from a newspaper reader that many refugees are still being sought. With the help of Krikor, he also puts up a wanted ad for his daughters. Another refugee later announced in the lecture room that many women and daughters had been sold to brothels. He also learns from a nun that many children are also in one of the more than one hundred orphanages that were built during and after the war. Nazareth makes a note of the addresses of all the orphanages and says goodbye to Krikor and Omar to go on a search.

Eventually, his search leads Nazareth to an orphanage in Lebanon . There he recognizes his daughters on a photo and also learns that they are no longer well there, but that Lucinée is limping on the death march after a serious accident. The twins were to be married to wealthy Armenian men in Cuba , which was arranged by the cousin of the math teacher at the orphanage.

Nazareth worked the crossing to Cuba as a sailor on a passenger steamer. Once in Cuba, Nazareth went to the barber Hagob Nakashian to find out about his daughters. His wife later tells him that one of the Armenian men had rejected the limping Lucinée as a bride and that Arsinée therefore refused to be engaged to the second husband in order to continue living with her sister. Both girls went to the USA , where they worked in a textile factory in Minnesota . However, through a telegram, Nazareth and Hagob learn that the twins are no longer there and nothing is known about their whereabouts.

During a service, Ms. Nakashian shows Nazareth the man who did not want to marry Lucinée. After the mass, Nazareth put him down in anger. Following a spontaneous inspiration, he returns to the downcast and robs him of money. Hagob makes an arrangement for Nazareth with a rum smuggler, whom Nazareth pays with the stolen money and can then take his boat to Florida.

In Florida, the smugglers' American partners drop Nazareth on a railway line and explain to him how he can get to Minnesota. He steals food on the way and continues on various trains as a stowaway . He cannot be helped at the Minnesota factory where his daughters used to work.

Nazareth takes a job as a track builder for a railway company and comes to North Dakota in 1923 . When a worker tries to rape a squaw , Nazareth is able to save the woman. The other workers hit him with shovels and left him unconscious on the tracks. On the cold night when Nazareth threatens to freeze to death, his now grown-up daughters appear to him in a vision and encourage him to get up again. As he stumbled on, he saw a lighted window in the dark. Armenian track construction workers live in the house. The Armenians cannot help him with his search, but tell him that there are other Armenians in the city of Ruso, thirty miles away.

When Nazareth reached this city, he saw a limping woman there: his daughter Lucinée. They both embrace. For the first time in years, Nazareth can speak again and ask Lucinée where Arsinée is. She died before Christmas last year due to a parasite infestation from which she fell ill while fleeing back home. Both visit Arsinee's grave in the cemetery and sadly leave it. Still, Lucinée is happy that Nazareth found her.

Cameo

Moritz Bleibtreu , who has already worked with Fatih Akin in the films In July , Solino and Soul Kitchen , has a 30-second appearance in The Cut as Peter Edelmann, a manufacturer in Minnesota. Even Adam Bousdoukos , who starred in almost all films Akins, situated in a cameo a priest in a caravan is. Similarly Patrycia Ziółkowska class First passenger to see in a short scene as a sick on the voyage to Cuba.

criticism

Susanne Oswald wrote in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung : “What Akin is trying to do is great contemporary emotional cinema in the style of Gone With the Wind , but he lacks the cinematographic format for it. Scenic sets, overly choreographed crowd scenes, wooden dialogues and music that has been frantically tuned to the mood create no emotional involvement of the audience - not to mention a mental challenge with the topic. Akin's film, which had generated such great expectations, failed. "

Isabelle Reicher wrote for the Standard : “Akin, whose last feature film Soul Kitchen was made in 2009, dared to tackle historical material for the first time. The result is wooden: The film starts with scenes from everyday life, which in their reduction to narrative functionality (quickly, quickly establish a situation) remain superficial. Unfortunately, the film retains this access. Whether it is about the description of tortures, murders, dying or the description of the long journey that Nazareth takes after he learns that his twin daughters are still alive - The Cut remains schematic and therefore arbitrary. "

Jay Weissberg wrote for Variety : “The script, co-written by vet Mardik Martin, is pedestrian, and the mise-en-scene, striving hard for a classic Hollywood look, lacks grandeur, notwithstanding impressive location work. Akin's considerable body of fans will likely scratch their heads, and marketing will be problematic. "

And on the irritating topic of genocide against the Armenians , the NZZ adds: “... This film, which Akin had originally hoped would trigger a broad, long overdue discourse, is completely apolitical. ... But his expectation that stones and roses will be thrown at him, depending on which camp you belong to, will hardly be fulfilled, because the film is just as unsuccessful as a prize winner. "

In the Süddeutsche Zeitung Thomas Steinfeld asks : “Perhaps the radical depoliticization is the price for making a public film in which the subject of the mass murder of the Armenians is at all. But isn't the price a little too high? Or was it the other way around, namely that the need to make a film for the public wiped out all intellectual potential from the outset? "

Rüdiger Suchsland comments on the cast of the main role : “The Algerian- French Tahar Rahim , known as the star of the French film Un Prophète , unfortunately only has the same and somewhat too naive look. ... The fact that he experienced hell on earth does not leave any recognizable traces in his soul or in his face and the ten years of misery, poverty and danger of death do not make him a day older. You don't believe for a second that he went through all of this. "

Anke Westphal of the Berliner Zeitung considers the film to be a “tragic failure” , as Akin has too overloaded his material. taz critic Cristina Nord does not see a golden hour for the cinema as such, since Akin is only chasing after concrete images.

There were benevolent words from Wolfgang Höbel ( Spiegel Online ): “an overwhelming melodrama that is only partially instructive” and from Dietmar Dath ( FAZ ): “The possibilities of interpretation are diverse, The Cut has many interfaces with numerous readings”.

With The Cut, writes Tigran Petrosyan in the weekly newspaper Der Freitag , Fatih Akin wants to "create awareness of the crime that precedes political action."

financing

Fatih Akin needed 15 million euros for the production.

"The Cut" is a production by Bombero International (Fatih Akin's new production company for the film) in co-production with Pyramide Productions, Pandora Film, Corazón International (the former production company of Fatih Akin), NDR , ARD Degeto , France 3 Cinéma, Dorje Film, BIM Distribuzione, Mars Media Entertainment, Opus Film, Jordan Films and Anadolu Kültür.

The film was sponsored by the Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein , the German Film Funding Fund , the Filmförderungsanstalt , the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW , the Nordmedia - Film- und Mediengesellschaft Niedersachsen / Bremen, Eurimages , the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg , the commissioner the Federal Government for Culture and Media , FFA Minitraite, the MEDIA Program of the European Union - i2i Audiovisual and the French Ministry of Culture and Communication (CNC) with the support of Canal + , France Télévisions , Cine +, Government of Alberta, Alberta Multimedia Development Fund, Polish Film Institute and Malta Film Commission.

Production notes

The producer Fabienne Vonier from the French production company Pyramide Films was enthusiastic about Akin's new project from the start. On the German side, Fatih Akin was able to convince Karl Baumgartner from Pandora Film of his film idea.

Neither Vonier nor Baumgartner witnessed the film's completion. Fabienne Vonier died in July 2013, Karl Baumgartner in March 2014.

The actress and singer Hindi Zahra , who played the role of the squeegee, contributed the song Everything To Get You Back to the film , which was composed by Alexander Hacke and released on the soundtrack on October 17, 2014.

The shooting took place in Canada , Germany, Jordan as well as in Cuba and Malta .

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for The Cut . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , September 2014 (PDF; test number: 146 840 K).
  2. ↑ Venezia 71 - The Cut - Fatih Akin. In: labiennale.org. Archived from the original on August 29, 2014 ; accessed on August 31, 2014 .
  3. ↑ The Cut. In: pandorafilm.de. Retrieved August 31, 2014 .
  4. ↑ Fatih Akin's "The Cut". In: sueddeutsche.de. August 31, 2014, accessed August 31, 2014 .
  5. ^ Filmstarts.de: The Cut. Casts and crew
  6. ^ [1] Susanne Ostwald, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
  7. ↑ [2] Isabelle Reicher, derStandard.at
  8. ^ [3] Jay Weissberg / Variety
  9. ^ [4] Thomas Steinfeld / Süddeutsche Zeitung
  10. ↑ [5] Rüdiger Suchsland on swr2.de
  11. ↑ [6]  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Spiegel.de/Kultur@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.spiegel.de  
  12. ↑ spiegel.de
  13. ↑ faz.net: Fatih Akin in Venice
  14. ↑ [7] Tigran Petrosyan / Friday
  15. ^ [8] Volker Behrens, Hamburger Abendblatt
  16. ^ [9] MMC Studios Cologne