#TIFF18 includes Veena Sud’s THE LIE, a remake of Sebastian Ko's original WE MONSTERS, reviewed here:
Two German films in the running this year at TIFF reminded me of the scene in Richard Brooks' Tennessee Williams adaptation CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, where Elizabeth Taylor's character Maggie calls her family's children
"no-neck monsters". While many films use children as catalysts or foils --exemplary at TIFF15 from the unique SON OF SAUL to the outstanding DHEEPAN and Christian Zuebert's ONE BREATH--,
two German films very much focus on children and their actions.
What would you do if your child killed a child? Do you stick with the commandments and the social contract or do you follow your parental instincts to protect your child at all costs?
Sebastian Ko's WE MONSTERS comes to life and death through the astounding performance of Janina Fautz (THE WHITE RIBBON) as the rebellious and really hard to like teen Sarah
and the similarly nuanced and realistic portrayal of the (separated) parents, especially the mother (Ulrike C. Tscharre). They are far from perfect and thus could be any of us.
The cinematography, which cleverly uses mirrors and windows to reflect and deflect perspectives and feelings, fools you and pulls you in; statically framed formalist tableaus of landscapes and houses show the lack of options once the family goes ever deeper down the rabbit hole.
What sounds like a closed family psycho-drama is moving at a good pace, mostly suspenseful if not entirely surprising in its plot twists and developments. "Every thing will be fine" is what all three protagonists keep telling each other, half-heartedly, trying their hardest to reverse past events and redirect fate. In the end
you leave with nagging ethical questions on your mind and no easy answer in sight.
What would you do if you killed a child? What would you do if your child was killed? Intimate drama could also describe Wim Wenders' latest, at times competing with the emotion-enhancing 3D technology. Re-watching EVERY THING WILL BE FINE at its North American premiere here in Toronto had me concentrate on the children.
Having children (or losing children or not being able to have children) is an undercurrent for all protagonists in Wenders' Canadian-German co-production and gave me flashbacks to ALICE IN THE CITIES, one of Wenders' earliest films (which we are screening at Goethe Films in Toronto on September 28).
Here, we have a lone writer, flighty in his relationships --and
Franco playing really well with the kids in the film--, his (ex-)girlfriend who suffers under his refusal to have children with her, and the mother who loses a child. The writer accidentally kills one of her sons, the young brother survives. The accident and immediate aftermath are one of the film's best scenes, subtly written, directed and effectively shot over the snowy Quebec farmlands. When you watch it, don't follow the adults running off to the accident site, but the little boy left on the fringe of the panorama. Both boys will haunt the writer in their own way, "stirring up old emotions" years later, where we end up after several time lapses that seem developmentally rushed at the beginning but later prove their worth.
For me, the film could have ended with the now teenage boy who survived the accident, riding off on his bike after a menacing encounter and then make-up with the writer, tentatively smiling. Every thing will be fine. With some open questions.
When the child was a child,
It was the time for these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?
Is life under the sun not just a dream?
Is what I see and hear and smell
not just an illusion of a world before the world?
Given the facts of evil and people.
does evil really exist?
How can it be that I, who I am,
didn’t exist before I came to be,
and that, someday, I, who I am,
will no longer be who I am?
as
Wenders quoted his friend, playwright Peter Handke, in WINGS OF DESIRE.
by
Jutta Brendemühl
still from "Every Thing Will Be Fine" courtesy of Neue Road Movies
