Berlinale 2014 Competition Directors Edward Berger, Dietrich Brüggemann, and Feo Aladag have mostly done interviews as a trio during the Berlinale media circuit —are we witnessing the birth of a
New Berlin School?— I will see their films in this order (Berger and Brüggemann correlate, as you will see).
"I was playing outside with my son when a boy walked past with a school bag. 'Hallo Jack!’ my son called out. And then explained that Jack was in his class and was walking from his mother’s house to the children’s home he lived in. I looked at Jack, walking down the street with purpose, not striking me as a poor, abandoned child.” This little episode gave him the idea for “Jack”, director Edward Berger told Tagesspiegel newspaper. In the film, 10-year-old Jack is the main caregiver of his 5-year-old brother Manuel (both child actors astounding in their intensity and intuitive understanding of their roles).
They roam the big city night life in search of their youngish mother, who has taken off with yet another affair (
the city is Berlin, but that doesn’t really matter). She has, in some odd way, tender, loving intent, she just isn't a good mother -- inept, dangerously neglectful, unable to cope, self-centred, hedonistic, fatuous, childish, but never a monster.
Mother and sons live parallel lives, moments of familial normalcy and togetherness are quickly extinguished by the mother running out or off.
There is no excuse for what ensues, and none is attempted. She constantly makes the wrong decisions (and knows it), while Jack makes the right decisions well beyond his years. It is a fatal role reversal: The mother of two would have to be mature beyond her age but isn’t. So Jack has to be, and is barely keeping up with his responsibilities. You can't always get what you want but you can try sometimes. And Jack does try, to the point of attempting to literally go through a closed door to be reunited with his mother.
After having been awol for three days, the mother exclaims: "Where have you been? I was so worried!" Another inadequate non-adult asks the kids “What are we going to do?”. To cry or to laugh.
This topsy-turvy world keeps disappointing Jack, who luminously emanates hope, faith and the rightful expectation to be fed, loved and cared for. Thankfully, Berger does not set the scene in a rough Western welfare high-rise or among Asian street children. His message clearly is that it is happening all around us, without us seeing it, let alone intervening.
“It’s not so bad, is it?” his mother absurdly asks when she doesn’t manage to pick up Jack, who has been put in a home. It’s as bad as it gets.
TV trained, the director affiliates himself
more with American independent cinema than German art house.
The hand camera rarely leaves Jack, stays in realtime, without cuts. Stylistically, it feels Berlin School-y, albeit with an unusually strong social openness and some graphic, shocking scenes. Berger pushes us past seeing simply a self-possessed, independent child --any 10-year-old in Germany walks to school by himself-- to seeing abuse for what it is. Only Berger gets the end wrong, leaves the realm of his character’s plausibility, perhaps due to his TV background. Beyond this, Jack is
another pensive film about an intense brother relationship (see “My Brother’s Keeper”), and not the last in the festival to take on the perspective of a child (see “Stations of the Cross” coming up next).
by Jutta Brendemuehl, Toronto
image: "Jack" photo Jens Harant
