It's taken me a while to review this...
You know, it's rare for me to watch the film (that means "movie" in German) and THEN read the book, no disrespect against intended against literature and the films thereof.
I was in what British people call "college" but was actually high school and I had a free period last thing on Friday. I would try to get all the homework and reading out of the way so I could read something and at one point I read this.
The book has kind of skewed my vision of the movie and I suppose I owe it a re-watch to that end.
First things, first: elephant in the room: there is exactly one language this movie should be in and ever should have been in and that language beings with a G and rhymes with "merman". This cannot be said enough.
But it's good though. I was bemused to find out that my dad had watched it and sort of liked it. In any case he called "disturbing" and I suppose it is in a way that doesn't really activate until you are going over it in your mind days later and I suspect, love or hate it, it will burrow into you.
The novel is sort of a parallel of a young boy's disillusionment with the woman who quote unquote "made him a man" with the struggle of the Teutonic people to come to terms with the whole Hitler thing.
The wonderful thing about a lichtspiel (that means "film" in German) is how it can seem to fill your whole world or at least your evening but is still on the whole a very efficient non-committal medium of narrative so you're getting a much less chunky experience than the book (I forget the German word for that).
But it's all there: act one is the "dear penthouse" part which in Act 2 develops into an adorable age discrepant romance that in Act 3 suddenly gets pretty grim.
I suppose it's ultimately a retrospective on how good things never really last and there's something bad within every good thing (and vice versa).
A curiously lyrically but oddly sobering experience.
At least it's still in German accents.
You know, it's rare for me to watch the film (that means "movie" in German) and THEN read the book, no disrespect against intended against literature and the films thereof.
I was in what British people call "college" but was actually high school and I had a free period last thing on Friday. I would try to get all the homework and reading out of the way so I could read something and at one point I read this.
The book has kind of skewed my vision of the movie and I suppose I owe it a re-watch to that end.
First things, first: elephant in the room: there is exactly one language this movie should be in and ever should have been in and that language beings with a G and rhymes with "merman". This cannot be said enough.
But it's good though. I was bemused to find out that my dad had watched it and sort of liked it. In any case he called "disturbing" and I suppose it is in a way that doesn't really activate until you are going over it in your mind days later and I suspect, love or hate it, it will burrow into you.
The novel is sort of a parallel of a young boy's disillusionment with the woman who quote unquote "made him a man" with the struggle of the Teutonic people to come to terms with the whole Hitler thing.
The wonderful thing about a lichtspiel (that means "film" in German) is how it can seem to fill your whole world or at least your evening but is still on the whole a very efficient non-committal medium of narrative so you're getting a much less chunky experience than the book (I forget the German word for that).
But it's all there: act one is the "dear penthouse" part which in Act 2 develops into an adorable age discrepant romance that in Act 3 suddenly gets pretty grim.
I suppose it's ultimately a retrospective on how good things never really last and there's something bad within every good thing (and vice versa).
A curiously lyrically but oddly sobering experience.
At least it's still in German accents.