Horst in Translation ([email protected])
"Als wir träumten" or "As We Were Dreaming" is a German movie from last year and it was written by Wolfgang Kohlhaase, a longtime screenwriter who adapted Clemens Meyer's novel for this one. And it really is not a surprise that the director here is Andreas Dresen, one of Germany's most known filmmakers for a while too and especially famous if only count these from the former GDR. This movie plays entirely in the GDR. It is about a group of youngsters who dive deeper into the culture of electronic music while trying to get along with their everyday lives. I must say, with Dresen's background, this is a film that should have worked a lot better than it actually did, but maybe the story simply wasn't interesting enough. Or the problem was my subjective (pretty much non-existent) appreciation of the music genre that this is all about. But even beyond that, it is not a great achievement as the inclusion of the political background in here basically was nothing than the protagonists (more left-wing really) clashing with a bunch of Nazis and the violent outcome is nothing than dramatic for the sake of it and nothing that hasn't been done better many times in many other films. On a final note, I also thought the casting could have been better. The young actors with the most screen time did not feel particularly convincing to me. And with the whole lot of screen time they have in this (way too long) almost 2-hour film, it hurts the film a lot. I do not recommend "Als wir träumten". As moving and well-done "Halt auf freier Strecke" was, as forgettable is this one here. Thumbs down.
Karl Self
What I first heard about this movie is that it is based on a "cult book" about a group of youths in the years before and after the German unification (1989), which was apparently deemed "impossible to turn into a movie" due to its tumescent (500+ pages) and incoherent style of narration. Well, they can't accuse the script writer and the director of not being true to the original. The narration of the movie is equally choppy and ambling. There are a few story lines, such as when the gang of friends manages to start a successful techno club, but mostly we witness a bunch of highly unlikable louts who drink excessively, smoke excessively, take drugs, have no sex whatsoever, and mostly wreck everything in sight.Sorry, let me rephrase that. We witness a bunch of ACTORS who desperately try to act reckless and unfettered. They shoplift, they joyride, they road-rage through Leipzig screaming and throwing bottles, and finally they wreck a whole street full of cars. When the obligatory skinheads (we're in post-unification East Germany, kids) arrive on the scene, I was almost rooting for them. Anything to stop those pinheads. I had zero sympathy for the protagonists.So, after seemingly endless drunken strobe-lit techno orgies, they all end up in jail, or dead, or as prostitutes or junkies? That's bleak, or histrionic, perhaps, but it's simply not interesting.If then the critics of German broadsheet FAZ call this film "world class cinema", I hope they're not talking about this planet.
