Horst in Translation ([email protected])
"Die Spätzünder", also known as "Live Is Life", is a German-Austrian co-production from 2010. It is of course in the German language and includes actors from both countries I just mentioned. There are also several names in this 1.5 hours that German film buffs will immediately recognize, like lead actor Jan Josef Liefers as well as Ursula Strauss, Blacky Fuchsberger, Bibi Zeller and Hans-Michael Rehberg, who all have appeared in prestigious projects before, but this little small screen production definitely does not need to hide behind any of these. It's the story of a man who may not necessarily have chosen always the right directions on crucial occasions in his life. He is sentenced to do social work in a retirement home and (what a coincidence!), he has to work for a neighbor he does not get along with well This coincidence as well as the romance story and some other moments, especially in dialogue writing, were when this film was perhaps at its worst and definitely could have been handled better by the two writers. By the way, the direction is by prolific Austrian filmmaker Wolfgang Murnberger. But I still believe that despite some glaring weaknesses (another would be that Strauss completely vanishes in the second half of the film as her story is basically finished around the 45-minute mark) that the positive in here is more frequent than the negative. I am not a huge Liefers fan at all, but he was okay in here like everybody else. Sure, this is not on the brilliant level of Derek for example, but it is certainly better than Haußmann's Lina Braake remake that came out around the same time. The music is pretty good, especially during the final performances and most of the characters were depicted in a convincing and authentic fashion where I never felt like I was watching actors. The film also has the perfect running time for its story. I am not surprised at all this was successful enough for Murnberger to make a sequel 3 years later (with Didi Hallervorden joining the cast) and these 2 films were the last movies for legendary German entertainer Fuchsberger. The main antagonist here is a woman working at the home and she has a bit of a Nurse Ratched vibe to her and actually the group's mentality also remembered the one from OFOTCN on several occasions, even if Liefers is of course not in for Nicholson's fate. So yes, it's not best-of-the-year material by any means, but I certainly enjoyed the watch and the heart enough to give the film a thumbs-up. I also believe the parts about the elderly were done nicely and there's a quote in here by one character that says that everybody wants to get old, but nobody wants to be old and this is one piece of evidence that the subject matter here was handled very tastefully. Had they messed up in this department, it could quickly have moved into disrespectful terrain, but luckily it did the exact opposite. Go see it.
