The Kids Aren’t Alright – Berlinale 64
In this year’s Berlin Film Festival selection, a striking number of films showed us the problems of the world through the lives of children and teenagers.Childhood
Richard Linklater undertook a huge challenge. Wanting to make a film about real childhood, he started to shoot 4,200 days ago. While preparing, he realised that portraying no one year of adolescence in itself would satisfy him, so he decided to film the whole process. Boyhood is a fictional story of a little boy becoming an adult, but Linklater – instead of trying to picture change with similar looking actors or make up – had the courage to wait until time does the alterations and filmed his actors over 12 years of real life. This way, the children really grow up in front of our eyes. Boyhood depicts a simple, everyday family’s story, from the point of view of the little boy, who grows up in the course of the film. Through the plot device of an ordinary divorce the film illustrates how the children’s lives depend on their parents’ decisions. The father (Ethan Hawke), who can only see his children on the weekends, desperately seeks to establish a normal relationship with them, and the mother (Patricia Arquette) does not anticipate that her new husband will become an aggressive drunk, from whom she has to save the children by smuggling them out of their house. The day-dreaming, laid back Mason (Ellar Coltrane) is protected by his peculiarity and having his head in the clouds, but he can’t prevent his parents’ separation and moving away. In the beginning he is influenced by the things around him, others making his decisions. The new school, new parents, and new siblings determine his life. As the year pass, he strives to create his own individuality by discovering the joy of photography. Boyhood’s bravado is that it is able to depict time in the transition of things. The story’s originality lies in its ordinariness: the fact that these children actually grow up in front of our eyes is the stunt itself that creates an interesting cinema experience.
Mother’s Son
Edward Berger’s German sociodrama (Jack) also focused on the defencelessness of children. As opposed to the majority of films about neglected children, this story is not about a broken family, living on the edge of society, where the mother is an alcoholic or a drug addict; they have a perfectly normal living environment. We see a mother who loves her children, but is simply too young to take responsibility. This way, the director emphasises emotional vulnerability towards their parents even more.
Jack might not be the selection’s strongest piece, but in its use of camera perspective, it is an interesting experiment. One day the mother disappears and her 10-year-old son sets off to find her in Berlin. The director follows Jack’s every step in long sequences, lasting 2-3 minutes, taking part in his pursuit and running from one place to the other with him. The camera’s perspective is a mid-close up from Jack’s point of view. Cinematographer Jens Harant rarely uses establishing shots, so the viewer is forced to remain very close to the little boy (thumbs up to the casting director for finding Ivo Pietzcker). The whole story follows the simple event of the boy searching for his mother, but because of this corporeal point of view it manages to sustain our interest throughout. The ending however, is a bit less heart-wrenching than expected.
God’s Son and The Girl
Parents’ influence on their children’s lives can transform into the cruellest forms of mental or physical abuse, leading to new questions about social responsibility. When the parents are members of a radical religious community and transfer pre-packed beliefs to a child, it can create a difficult situation. Religious indoctrination is controversial, even in 21st century Germany. The sexual abuse of children is a prevalent topic; however, it is rarely argued that a child can also be mentally abused by forcing an ideology. In his film, Stations of the Cross, German director Dietrich Brüggemann asks parents who force their radical religious beliefs on their children (and through them the audience) the question: how far can we go to pass our faiths and beliefs on?
Stations of the Cross, the winner of the Silver Bear for best script, is about a young girl, who finds a radical solution to reconcile the strict faith taught by her parents with her desire to live a different kind of life. The film’s episodic storytelling is special in the way that it draws a parallel between the steps of Jesus carrying the Cross to his crucifixion and the states of the self-sacrificing young girl’s suffering. What makes it visually interesting is that the director shot these in 14 uncut scenes. These long, completely static shots divert focus to the acting. The painting-like, stationary compositions give room to observe the sensitive performance by Lea van Acken, the young leading actress, highlighted by the almost caricatured, two-dimensional figures of the parents. Playing with the staging in depth, the director allows the audience to decide what they see in a given composition. In the final scene, the camera finally leaves its station and (perhaps together with the girl’s soul) it elevates; as a result of the former scenes’ stillness, this movement becomes especially powerful. Stations of the Cross is an exciting piece of work; however, because of its slightly forced message, it is not as persuasive as Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise: Faith examining a similar topic.
From Father to Son
One of the Berlinale’s most impressive films also examined how much a parent’s choices and mistakes in the past influence their children’s fates, through the story of a small community. Cracks in Concrete is about a parent and a child finding each other among the gangster drug dealers in the Viennese ghetto. The film’s tagline expresses that violence is inevitable here: “you want to leave the street, but the street just won’t let you go.” The father, just released after 10 years in prison, tries to do everything to stop his son suffering the same fate he had, but all of his efforts are doomed to fail from the start. Kurdish-Austrian director Umut Dag’s second feature film is not only the Panorama section’s most powerful piece, but for me, the whole festival’s most remarkable work. One of the film’s strongest merits is father figure Murathan Muslu’s involved, emotional, performance and enormous presence. The repressed wrath and haunted anguish reflected in his eyes makes him frightful and pitiable at the same time. Alechan Tagaev is also excellent playing his son, who stands out from his friends with ambitious aspirations: a petty drug dealer, he dreams about being a rich and famous rap star. The story, built on three main conflicts, does not surprise with its structure: all the boy’s three dreams (wealth, fame, love) are going to be shattered one by one. The focus however is on the father and son relationship’s ever-changing dynamics. Despite the straightforward dramaturgy, the amateur actors’ heightened performances and the well-paced rhythm elevate the story, creating an emotional roller coaster. When the final tragedy inevitably strikes, Dag resolves it in an amazingly intense finale and provides pure catharsis.
From Nation to Nation
A young man’s subjective point of view also makes the film ’71 special. Similar to the previous film, a generationally inherited social problem surfaces, but the environment is even more extreme, the starting point a civil war. The orphan Gary, growing up without a father or a mother, has to endure the consequences of the choices his parents’ and grandparent’s generations had made. The film introduces a real historical situation, Northern Ireland’s burden of political turmoil: the title year in Belfast, on the edge of civil war, a result of the unionist and nationalist fighting.
Yann Demange’s debut feature introduces the “Troubles” from an interesting point of view and, in unbelievably expressive pictures, thus turning the historical film into an exciting thriller, impregnated with horror elements. The young army recruit Gary is sent to Belfast with his regiment to help regulate the city, but during the mission our hero (Jack O’Connell) falls behind his unit and finds himself alone in hostile territory. Demange creates an extraordinarily sharp-edged danger situation. Gary is defenceless on multiple levels, both sides out to kill him. The film does not focus on the political events; it is a subjectively portrayed man on the run story. Through Gary’s personality, with the help of the subjective point of view and the creative application of unconventional compositions, sound and lighting (cinematographer: Tat Radcliffe), the viewer experiences the young soldier’s war shock trapped in the firing line.
originally published in print: The Kids Aren't Alright. Berlin. Filmvilág. 2014/04 pp. 38-39.