The Edukators
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Movie Reviews of The Edukators
Movie Review: Atypical Cinema
Summary: 3 Stars
If you really want something different, try The Edukators. Interesting not for the acting, directing or film editing, it is enjoyable for the uniqueness of the story...and the ending has an unexpected twist.Movie Review: The Edukators
Summary: 3 Stars
Made me think (painful), but.... In the end, I'm not sure who was "edukated."Movie Review: Technicolor Angst
Summary: 2 Stars
Well, three German punks kidnap a rich guy (it doesn't really matter why). Most of the dialogue consists of a leftist rhetoric that hasn't been heard since the 1960s. There are lots of gloomy shots of the various characters brooding with vague looks on their faces. Two of the kidnappers are male, one is female. Of course there's a love triangle. They drink quite a bit and smoke some pot. Eventually they decide to let the guy go since they aren't the killing types. There's a silly little twist at the end that is good for a laugh.
Find something else to do with your two hours, unless you want to practice listening to German.
Movie Review: Astonishingly niave
Summary: 1 Stars
I really enjoyed Goodbye Lenin, and it was mostly on the basis of seeing thatm film that I decided to watch this one. The film follows three idealistic, politically right-on young people rebelling against what they see as unthinking, selfish and uncaring Bourgeois consumer society. This rebellion takes the form of breaking into rich peoples houses, moving their furniture around, and leaving notes like 'You are too wealthy' - very situationist (never mind the fact that this point is probably largely lost on the rich people they break into).
All this is fine and well, but the problem with the film is that on the one hand it glamourises these young people, and on the other paints every single other person in the film as some rich, ignorant Bourgeois pig. In the first ten minutes or so, I thought this might be a clever bit of directing, in which we view society as seen through their eyes, rather than society in its reality. However, this wasn't to be the case. The world remained Bourgeois, the kids are alright. The older generation Bourgeoise are bare cyphers, and none (with the exception of the man they kidnap) is given anything like a personality. When a break-in goes wrong and they have to kidnap the rich man who lives there, and take him away to a shack in the hills. During this time, they decide to 'educate' him about the wrongs of the world and the rich man's part in them. The rich man barely challenges the young people at all, and accepts much of what he has done is probably wrong.
The anti-capitalist argument running through the entire film is very one-sided. I could appreciate the film a little bit more if it was balanced, but this wasn't. Furthermore, there are all the usual cliches associated with this type of work - the Edukators are young, good-looking and artistic - the subtext being that because they are arty, they can see things that others can't. At one point, one of the characters is on a bus when three men (presumably police, though its not made clear) hassle a drunk for not having a ticket. The character angrily bursts in and tells them to leave the drunk alone, gives the drunk his ticket, and gets off the bus. Do drunks even get hassled on buses by gangs of police? Can't say that's my experience - amybe they do in Germany. This is a recurring problem with the film - situations designed to show the main characters in a good light are contrived and unrealstic.
The anarchist/marxist/anti-capitalist dialouge the characters preach is so generic that it actually ends up being meaningless - by the end of the film you don't actually know what exactly they stand for, or what their solutions are to the problems of society. Basically, the one-sided political argument hamstrings the characters development. Their views are never challenged, so they don't change. It is left to the kidnapping and love triangle to create the conflict in the film. The ending is also unbeleivably cynical, and completely undoes any idealism that had been generated in the course of the film.
Generally, it feels like a script written by a 1st year politics student, being so utterly simplistic in it's 'the Rich are all bad' message. I would recommend this to anyone who is 17 years old and angry at society, but at the same time I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who wanted some insight into how we should solve the world's problems.
There has been a rash of good political films lately - Good Night and Good Luck, Syriana, The Constant Gardener. Unfortunately, and given so much potential, this film is not one of them. Shame.
Movie Review: This is a movie about nothing...
Summary: 1 Stars
and not in a good way; in the BS philosophy way. This movie tries to delve into new activism and the circle of political life, but it goes nowhere and explains nothing. One could say that perhaps the theme of the movie is futility. OK, fair enough, but maybe rearranging furniture is not the best course of action for political and social revolution. Just a thought. Stay away unless you are majoring in liberal arts.