The Glass House

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Movie
German title The Glass House
Original title The Glass House
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2001
length 106 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Daniel Sackheim
script Wesley Strick
production Neal H. Moritz
music Christopher Young
camera Alar Kivilo
cut Howard E. Smith
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
The Goode's House

The Glass House is a thriller by Daniel Sackheim from 2001. It was first broadcast in Germany on November 29, 2001. The title is ambiguous because a married couple named Glass live in a house with many glass elements. Furthermore, he alludes metaphorically to the strict surveillance in the House of Glasses, which makes the protagonists' lives transparent due to the lack of privacy. The film was released in Germany under the title The Glass House - Das Glashaus .

action

16-year-old Ruby Baker enjoys life with her friends. When she comes home from a party one evening, she meets two police officers and learns that her parents died in a car accident. After the funeral service, her uncle Jack offers to help, but the asset manager Alvin Begleiter explains that, following an earlier order from her parents, Ruby and her 11-year-old brother Rhett, will be entrusted to their former neighbors to look after them. The Glass couple live in a glass house in Malibu , far from their previous home. While Rhett regards the luxuriously furnished property as an adventure, Ruby is uncomfortable and distrusts the foster parents.

She has to share a room with her brother and she goes to a new school. In addition, she is burdened with memories of her parents' accident, especially since she is now a learner driver herself. Terrence Glass gets quite close to her several times, including when he takes her out to eat alone. After this outing, she sees her adoptive mother Erin on the sofa with a syringe. So she seeks Mr. Companion in his office, but he shows little understanding for her worries. Terrence and Erin then seek a conversation with Ruby and explain the syringe with diabetes . After a driving lesson, Ruby goes to Terrence's office, where she overhears a tangible argument with two men, who later demand even more borrowed money, and finds a car that resembles that of her parents.

Now she's even more suspicious. On the Internet, she finds a report about her parents' accident, which speaks of a BMW instead of a Saab , and sends companion an email before she falls asleep in front of the laptop. When she reappears, her Hamlet essay is finished. A social worker from the youth welfare office speaks to Ruby, but during their home visit the Glasses suddenly set up separate rooms for the foster children and pretends to be an ideal world. In the trash, Ruby finds a letter from a private school that regrets Mister Glass's decision and reimburses him for school fees of around $ 30,000, as well as a postcard from Uncle Jack in Chicago . She also notices that her mail account has been deleted. During the night she overhears Terrence's phone call with his criminal creditors and saves their number.

She learns from companion that the accident BMW was registered with Terrence's company. At school, she is warned about plagiarizing the essay. In the middle of the night, she takes Terrence's car keys and drives off with Rhett. But the escape ends in the pouring rain in a police check, and the Glass couple brings the two runaways back. On the drive back, Ruby confronts Terrence with suspicion that he killed her parents and that he is now targeting the Bakers' trust assets of four million dollars because of financial worries . Terrence only references Ruby's father's alcohol consumption. In the house he overpowers Ruby, who is immobilized by Erin with a syringe.

The next day, Terrence fails when attempting to raise additional money with reference to necessary construction work because the possible financier has the letter from the private school. Erin loses her job as a doctor because she kept secretly turning off medication. After a heated argument between the married couple, she commits suicide and is found dead in Ruby's bed the next morning. After Terrence sees the body, he tracks down Ruby and Rhett and locks them in a basement room. Then he gets drunk. Ruby and Rhett break free and watch companions arrive and confront Terrence. Immediately afterwards, the two creditors arrive due to a fake phone call from Ruby. Terrence accuses companion of causing the delay, whereupon companion is stabbed to death.

The creditors tie up Terrence and want to drive away with him. Terrence asks her in vain not to take his sports car because he has manipulated its brakes in case the children try to escape again. But Ruby has now stabbed the other car's tires. On the mountain route, the car driven by one of the criminals first rams the car in front with a fatal outcome for the occupants, then it falls down a slope itself, only Terrence surviving. Terrence knocks down a police officer who has picked up Ruby and Rhett in the meantime. When he approaches a police car with the policeman's gun, Ruby accelerates and runs over him.

Some time later, Ruby and Rhett visit their parents' grave with Uncle Jack. Jack and his wife are now taking care of them.

Reviews

The Glass House received a majority negative rating from the critics. The lexicon of international films sees the film as a “bloodlessly staged thriller as a variation on the ' Hansel and Gretel ' theme, which is lost in superficial symbolism. The architectural design of the locations as a threatening labyrinth and the sparingly orchestrated music are excellent. ”The New York Times called the film“ involuntarily funny ”. The critic of Cinema is also disappointed because “'The Glass House' turned out not only conventional, but so predictable that even friends of well-groomed B-film goods turn away with a yawn.” André Grzeszyk at artechock.de comes to a more positive conclusion ; He emphasizes the importance of glass as “probably the most diffuse, weakest separation between inside and outside, which may explain the cinema’s obsession for this material” and particularly praises the actors: “What The Glass House sets apart from the flood of teenage horror -Thriller films are the good actors, especially Leelee Sobieski as Ruby. "

Production and Background

The glass house, in which most of the action takes place, is in Malibu and was designed by Hagy Belzberg and George Daniel Wittman. The original version of the film was 180 minutes long and included a love story with the protagonist Ruby. The cinema was released a few days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 .

Hamlet is a leitmotif of the film. The protagonist has towritean essay about William Shakespeare's work, and there are always quotations that fit her current situation. Her parents' death date (March 15) links them to the ides of March .

continuation

A sequel followed in 2006 with Glass House: The Good Mother . In Germany the film was released under the title The Glass House 2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Glass House. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed November 27, 2016 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. ↑ AO Scott: Film Review - It's Supposed to Be Scary, You See, Not Humorous The New York Times, September 15, 2001, accessed June 24, 2017
  3. ↑ film review on cinema.de
  4. ^ The Glass House. artechock.de, accessed on September 14, 2016 .
  5. ^ The Glass House film review. Dieter Wunderlich, accessed on September 14, 2016 .
  6. ↑ IMDB Trivia
  7. ↑ IMDb entry on The Glass House 2