Klassenfahrt (2002) Reviews

• Not just another Bully-movie

  dlombaert2002-10-12

  This is Hesser Winckler's first long movie and it immediately manages to touch a sensitive nerve. Winckler creates throughout the film a consistent gloomy mood: the main color is gray, the Polish shoreline is a wasteland of deserted swimmingpools and the youth are bored rebels without a cause. Winckler is a very poignant observer who keeps enough distance between his camera (a.k.a. the viewer) and the troubled teens. No explanations are delivered, no moral ground for the viewer to stand on: just 21st century erratic teen behavior. The characterisation of Ronny is superb: without many words Winckler shows the outsider as a plausible love interest for Isa: he has developed a personality of his own, which doesn't mean the ability to plot his own life, but does explain his separation from the rest of the group. Klassenfahrt is in many ways similar to Larry Clark's Bully, but the Berlin-teens don't plan their acts and are not even held accountable for them. All hope is not lost although: the future is a wasteland: new virgin territory.

• Still hope for German cinema

  Hacki2005-02-24

  It is a sad story with German cinema. Out of the maybe ten films, that arrive in theaters in a considerable number of copies each year, there are one or two, that are good, the rest, well, let's not talk about it. In order to see really interesting German films, and apparently they exist, you have to either go to some festival or to Paris, where three German films were shown under the title "La nouvelle vague allemande" in three theaters in the beginning of 2005. In the case of "Klassenfahrt" we can understand why these films might have a bigger success here in France than in Germany. Winckler is one of the few Germans who are able to show us pictures, which have a significance, pictures, which tell a story, pictures, which have no need of funny little accessories the likes of "Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei" seem to need. No digital camera, no funny shaky images. What a relief! Qualities you might find in the French cinema of the likes of Garrel. Winckler shows us a middle school class from the East of Germany (funny, many of the good German films of the last years have to do with the East: "Goodbye Lenin", "Halbe Treppe", "Vergiss Amerika", "Sonnenallee"...) on a trip to the Baltic Sea in Poland. The story centers around the shy and disturbed Ronny, the girl Isa, he admires, but has difficulties to communicate with and a Polish acquaintance of the two. In the difficult atmosphere of an adolescent school trip and a sad Polish sea-town, a dramatic action evolves without ever sliding into melodrama and without ever claiming a grown-up perspective of morality. He rather seems to listen to what his figures have to say, he observes them, just enough to make us understand the situations and never exposing them as stupid, underprivileged kids. Hope to see more of this. In German cinemas.