Why is director-writer-producer Hans-Christian Schmid represented twice in our series GOETHE FILMS: Young & Old? (I nearly added a third Schmid film, his 1995 IT'S A JUNGLE OUT THERE with 21-year-old debutante Franka Potente.) Apart from the fact that he is one of Germany’s best contemporary filmmakers, a thread is running through his oeuvre. One of familial relations, growing up, leaving home --its security along with its restrictions.
The DEFA (former East German film studios) Foundation, who awarded Schmid their Award, comments further on this:
"His topic is the time of becoming an adult, the marks left on children and youth between parental and societal influences, their search for their own path amid existing structures or various stages of rebellion.” Schmid is quietly pensive in his films, partly based on his own upbringing:
“My youth wasn’t crazy. It was difficult because puberty is the time in one’s life where others have direct power over you. I remember that buying a motorbike or moving into one’s own place wasn’t possible without your parents‘ consent.
I hated this dependence and never tended to romanticize that time.“ On the other hand, while being critical, he is understanding towards the parent generation, the boomers, or post-student revolution "68ers" as they are called in Germany, whose own wild (jungle) years are behind them, nicely settled as what is derisively called the "Toscana Faction" in Germany (i.e. one of comfortable Italian vacations accompanied by oysters & wine).
In all of his films, he portrays intergenerational encounters with a lot of integrity, clearly compassionate towards his multi-faceted protagonists, carving out their strengths and weaknesses as well as the motivations for their actions. The feel is always authentic --although he points out that these are not autobiographical films despite his own story becoming part of the picture. About his big hit CRAZY Schmid said: “There are parallels between (the protagonist) Benni and me when it comes to girls. I was one of the shy ones, the ones who admired boys like Janosch (in the film) who would just talk to girls." Something many audiences could relate to:
With about 1,5 million viewers, CRAZY was one of the most successful German films of 2000.
Asked by Schnitt Magazine how his training as a documentary filmmaker influences his approach to his award-winning features, he ponders:
"I do think that coming out of documentary helps. My first feature films were definitely more constructed. Bit by bit I liberated myself from that. Looking at the details, looking closely at the everyday, that is important to me. If cinema doesn’t do that, where else would it happen?" Much of this research, precision and "real" aesthetic was evident in his film STORM (our contribution to the European Union Film Festival Toronto 2010), which scrutinized the aftermath of the Balkan Wars and the International Criminal Tribunal. The flipside of this documentary approach is that Schmid sometimes gets criticized for being a bit intellectual or (too) minimalist or clinical. Others appreciate this signature style for its understatement and subliminal drama that gets the point (or rather emotion) across without any grand gesturing.
Fast forward a decade and Schmid synthesizes many of his previous preoccupations in the masterpiece that is HOME FOR THE WEEKEND, which premiered at last year’s Berlinale and which we are happy to present to Toronto audiences for the first time.
The film paints the picture of a generation of 30-somethings who are no longer automatically better off than their parents. Schmid's long time co-writer Bernd Lange stressed the focus on the characters, how the plot develops out of the characters and how they react to each other.
"Schmid and Lange's mastery is again evident in the extremely confident production with its razor-sharp dialogues that mercilessly lay bare the family's dysfunction. An obliging resolution is countered by a delightfully uncomfortable third act. The exorcism is happening on a different plane, but the hypocrisy of the idyllic bourgeois façade is vehemently and emphatically cast out," judged Carsten Happe in Schnitt.
For me, our entire Young & Old program comes together in one person, one character: that played by the stellar theatre star Lars Eidinger –Die Zeit, not prone to hyperbole, called him “breathtaking”-- in HOME FOR THE WEEKEND (May 12, 6.30pm at the TIFF Bell Lightbox). Both the unsure, overwhelmed father of a young son in a difficult shared custody arrangement as well as the grown but not quite accomplished son of a post-liberal patriach, he is touching in his attempts at asserting some sort of sanity in a crumbling family universe. He is the in-between, the moderator, the sandwich generation.
P.S. In CRAZY (2000), look out for young Tom Schilling -- who in 2012 reprised the role of the still-not-grown-up drifter in the surprise smash hit OH BOY (see previous entry) and is well on his way to be the next big German star actor.
by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto
