Maybe in another life
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Maybe in another life |
| Country of production |
Austria , Germany , Hungary |
| original language |
German , Hungarian , Yiddish |
| Publishing year | 2010 |
| length | 96 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK not checked JMK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Elisabeth Scharang |
| script |
Silke Hassler Elisabeth Scharang Peter Turrini |
| production |
Dieter Pochlatko Nikolaus Wisiak |
| music | Thomas Jarmer |
| camera | Jean-Claude Larrieu |
| cut | Alarich Lenz |
| occupation | |
| |
Perhaps in another life , the film adaptation of the play Jedem is his own by Silke Hassler and Peter Turrini , who also worked on the script for the film together with director Elisabeth Scharang . The film is an Austrian-German-Hungarian co-production and opened in Austrian cinemas on January 21, 2011. In Austria, the film was given the title of particularly valuable .
action
The historical background of the film is formed by the last days of the Second World War in April 1945. In the course of one of the death marches of those days when the Schutzstaffel and Volkssturm drive thousands of Jews through the crumbling German Reich from the occupied territories in the east towards the concentration camps , the SS-Oberscharführer Schöndorf a group of initially 20 Jews from Hungary through eastern Austria. The destination is the Mauthausen concentration camp . Right at the beginning he shoots one of the prisoners by pointing his pistol one after the other at several of them in a kind of Russian roulette and pulling the trigger. In a small village in Lower Austria, the remaining 19 are locked in a hay barn belonging to the farmers Traudl and Stefan Fasching. Schöndorf takes up quarters at the von Hammersfelds estate to wait for further orders. The village gendarme Hochgatterer is responsible for guarding the prisoners.
Poldi, the carnival maid, is the first from the village to go to the shed. She is waiting for the return or at least a message from her fiancé, a Wehrmacht soldier, and shows a photo around in the hope that someone might have seen him. She witnesses when one of the women collapses from hunger and exhaustion. She tells the peasant woman about it and together they bring bread to the shed, where they watch in horror as the emaciated prisoners rush hungrily on it. Lou Gandolf, an opera singer who was arrested off the stage in Budapest, thanks her on behalf of the group. And he has the idea of performing an operetta, Wiener Blut , with the others as a gesture of thanks - also to get the farmer's wife to continue to provide them with something to eat. She accepts the offer. Gandolf manages to convince most of the group to rehearse with him; not all of them want to sing for the “German Nazi woman” . But when Traudl, who takes pity on them, brings them bread and potato soup, something like familiarity gradually develops between the farmer's wife and the prisoners. Her husband Stefan, on the other hand, is strictly against her helping the “ Saujuden ” , even if it is only with a soup. He came back from military service with a stiff leg and has been active in the Volkssturm ever since . Above all, however, he is deeply bitter because the son died in the war, which also weighs heavily on the farmers' marriage. His hatred of those locked up in his barn seems to have been fed less from the ideology of the National Socialists, but from bitterness about the war and what it did to his family. Slowly, accompanied again and again by arguments with Traudl and the group's fear of his anger, he too begins to perceive the prisoners as people, not as dehumanized enemies. Finally, he agrees that they can use the piano hidden under the hay for their performance and even takes out his accordion, which he had put away after his son's death because there was no more room in his house for amusements such as music.
In the meantime, the NSDAP local group leader Springenschmied, a staunch National Socialist , is trying to convince the other men that, in order to contribute to the “ final victory ”, they have to do something against the “ pests of the people ” with “courage and cartridges ” . Together they go, equipped with rifles by him, to the carnival barn and shoot at it from a distance. Traudl, who had just brought in a pot of soup, storms out and chases the men away with angry ranting. The oldest of the group, the pianist, already at the end of his tether, dies.
In these days the news of the end of the war finally reached the people in the village. They learn that a new provisional state government of Austria has met in Vienna (April 29, 1945, see History of Austria ) and the next day, just as the prisoners, accompanied by Traudl on the zither and Stefan on the accordion, are singing their Viennese blood . that Adolf Hitler is dead. The joy, for the Jews that the persecution and the imminent murder in the concentration camp is over, for the carnival, that the war is over and they may have a chance of a fresh start, only lasts for a short time. Although SS-Oberscharführer Schöndorf has meanwhile shot himself and the state killing machinery on site has collapsed, the villagers, under the direction of Springenschmied, barricade the gate of the shed, pour gasoline around the wooden building and set it on fire. None of them manage to escape the fire. The Fasching couple, who were in the barn, also perish (in this detail the film differs from the literary model, in which only the Jews are in the barn).
In the final scene of the film you can see the former maid, now old herself, living on the carnival farm; nothing in the room has changed since the death of the carnival.
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The film was shot from September to October 2009 in Passendorf, Pulkau municipality , in the Hollabrunn district of Lower Austria . For this purpose, 100 m 3 of gravel was laid out throughout the village , power lines removed, facades built or restored, and an inn and an old barn built. The film was completed in June 2010. The budget was around 1 million euros. The cast and film crew were international, made up of Austrians, Hungarians, Germans and a French cameraman, the producers came from Austria, Germany and Hungary.
Perhaps in another life was shown in the German-language feature film competition of the Zurich Film Festival 2010 before the cinema release . The official premiere of the film took place on January 13, 2011 in the Gartenbaukino in Vienna.
Reviews
“Scharang's film is a rousing film about the longing to be able to lead a good and dignified life again. It tells of the hope that is given to people through spiritual treasures such as music. In this film, however, the human carnival is contrasted with the inhumanity of an entire village, whose inhabitants no longer regard the Jews as human beings. The director, who has already dealt with the Nazi era in Austria in films and documentaries such as "Mein Mörder" (2005) and "Schweigen und Erinnern" (1998), has the courage to give her film humor again and again. Despite the terrible topic, this does not seem out of place, because the operetta also gives the prisoners their smile again, which shows itself hopefully, but only for short moments. And so it's okay for the audience to smile at the farmer's wife's dry humor when she says: "This is no treason, this is a soup". "
“Unfortunately, Ursula Strauss is incredibly clean and looks simply too good for a farmer who works for her mental and physical survival. After all, those who do hard physical work on a daily basis are not just a little dusty, but get scratches and scratches. The main actress does not do the manure shoveling particularly convincingly either. Fortunately, the movie isn't that much about that. Your play partner Johannes Krisch, however, delivers an absolutely convincing bitter war invalid. Torn between fear, indifference and a little bit of hope, his wild appearance gives the film the right flavor. "
“Elisabeth Scharang has succeeded in creating a pathos-free, calmly staged, yet intense film in which a noticeable and time-appropriate, general uncertainty resonates. At the same time, an inhuman ideology is not rolled up in theory, but - which is much harder - as it were from below in direct human interaction. And this ideology then strikes with ultimate consequence in Maybe in Another Life , when you least expect it. "
Awards
- 2011: Diagonale Acting Award for a remarkable performance by an Austrian actor ( Johannes Krisch )
- 2011: Main Prize of the Jewish Eye - World Jewish Film Festival
- 2012: Austrian Film Award for Best Female Actress ( Ursula Strauss )
Web links
- Maybe in another life in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Official website
- Press kit (PDF; 5.0 MB)
- Interview with August Schmölzer about the film
- Explanations by the production designer Alexandra Maringer ( Memento from January 28, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Age rating for Maybe in Another Life . Youth Media Commission .
- ^ Association of the Film and Music Industry : Awards 2011 , accessed on February 3, 2011 (PDF, 15 kB)
- ↑ 1st day of shooting in Passendorf. Accessed on November 2, 2009
- ↑ Perhaps in another life ( Memento of the original from September 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the Zurich Film Festival website, accessed on January 11, 2011
- ↑ Movie review: Maybe in another life - film criticism , online edition of kulturwoche.at, accessed 11 January 2011
- ↑ Film review: Lifestyle - Maybe in a different life ( 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. , Online edition from fm5.at, accessed on January 11, 2011
- ↑ Movie review: Movie - Maybe in another life , cross checkered, (online edition), accessed 2 July 2011
- ↑ Jewish Eye - World Jewish Film Festival: Winners 2011 ( Memento of the original from January 27, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
