BERLIN & BEYOND Mar. 2024

[Chris Knipp]

CHARLY HÜBNER: SOPHIA, DEATH AND ME/SOPHIA, DER TOD UND ICH (2023)


DIMITRI SCHAAD, MARC HOSEMANN, AND ANNA MARIA MüHE IN SOPHIA, DEATH AND ME[/U]

Complications when Death comes calling, and gets delayed

After a restless night, Reiner (Dimitrij Schaad), a thirty-something caregiver who lives alone, is surprised by Morten de Sarg (Marc Hosemann), his own death sent down from on high to take him away, and no stalling. But Rainer can't believe it, the three-minute time limit passes, and Morten lingers on for the moment useless, awaiting further orders one supposes, with Rainer still alive. Soon after, Sophia (Anna Maria Mühe), Rainer's ex, comes to take him to visit his mother Lore (Johanna Gastdorf) for her birthday. From now on Morten, Rainer's death, must stay within 300 meters at all times, or Sophia will die, because they have inadvertently touched, and Morten must not let Rainer out of his sight.

Later the four of them, Rainer, Sophia, his mother, and his death, go north on a road trip to see Reiner's seven-year-old son Johnny (Mateo Kanngießer), whom he hasn't seen for a long time, though he sends him a postcard every day with a cartoon drawing and a P.s. at the end: "Johnny be good." And this becomes a road picture about family reunion and love's renewal.

Forces from above send a tougher, grimmer archangel, Mork Mortius (Carlo Ljubek) to deliver Rainer's death. But Morten won't have his power usurped, and a battle of the titans (more petty than godly) occurs - thus giving Rainer another reprieve. This debut feature by Charly Hubner, which is based on a novel by musician Thees Uhlmann, in one way makes one think of Hollywood films of the thirties and forties, and on the other hand with its deadpan humor and confidently drab surroundings - perhaps the Northern German too - seems the most German thing included in this year's San Francisco Berlin & Beyond festival. And yet the film also makes one think a little of the Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki. Anyway, the humor is presumably subtly deadpan, with a risk of things being lost in translation sometimes.

The film lacks Aki Kaurismäki's sweet sentimentality, except that when the odd foursome stop at a rural hotel whose tall, deadpan proprietor is none other than director Charly Hübner, Sophia and Rainer feel a reawakening of their former flame and take the honeymoon suite for some loving, while Rainer's still around.

The northern German dialect throughout reportedly adds dry humor to the situation comedy and wordplay, while the songs by Swiss duo Steiner & Madlaina with their harmonious voices and rich Western guitar sound round off the road movie.

A part of the humorous ultimate paraphernalia is Erzengel Michaela (Lina Beckmann) who assigns other like endowed creatures to announce their deaths to people; and, above her, a big blowsy Harold Bloom type known as G. (Josef Ostendorf). They are on earth for a while too: G. insists he could drive the car, because he can do anything, but he just doesn't want to. The memory that will linger is the brief encounter with the boy Johnny - though it is kept teasingly vague whether they do meet or Rainer just imagines over and over how they will and what he will say. The gesture of the daily postcards is especially touching in this era of snapchat and test messages.

Sophia, Death and Me/Sophia, der Tod und ich, 98 mins., debuted in Germany Aug. 31, 2023. Screened for this review as part of the 28th Berlin & Beyond Film Festival, presented by the Goethe-Institut San Francisco, will run April 18-20, 2024 at the historic Roxie Theater in San Francisco's Mission District, and April 21-22, 2024 at Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley. Showtime
Saturday,
April 20, 2024
9:00 PM
Roxie, San Francisco

[Chris Knipp]

DIEU HAO DO: HAO ARE YOU (2023)


DIEU HAO DO (CENTER) TALKING TO RELATIVES, LOOKING AT FAMILY PHOTO, ETC. IN HAO ARE YOU

Chasing a diaspora

In this documentary the filmmaker, Dieu Hao Do, who was born and makes his mome in in Germany, presents the fruits of extensive travels and researches into seven members, and hence branches, of his family, whose members fled from Vietnam where they lived as part of the Chinese minority, in 1975, when the south fell to the communists. Do's explorations take him from Germany to Hong Kong, Los Angeles, and back to Vietnam, where family members remain. They all seem to squabble and complain. Largely out of contact with each other now, relations having broken down, they remain angry, nearly a half century later.

His mother blames communism, his uncle an inheritance dispute, the others fall silent. How have traumas from persecution and violence inscribed themselves on the bodies and souls of the survivors and their children? After the Fall of Saigon on April 30 in 1975, more than 1.5 million people fled the communist regime. (Quoting from the blurb.)

Do has noted at the outset that "Germans don't like family stories." The reason: the war. His own family story may not like being told. The Germans he meets "are completely one-dimensional beings who chatter about today, about (…) having children, about designer furniture, the techno hype and the new Vietnamese restaurant around the corner. But they are obviously not interested in yesterday, they do not see themselves as a chain, they do not see themselves as torchbearers of a tradition that goes back in a fascinating way into the past." He seeks to take a different path.

One cannot but admire the alacrity and determination with which the filmmaker, who uses German, Chinese, and English to communicate with relatives, has pursued his researches over three continents with such evidently unenthusiastic interlocutors. But the interviews sometimes are fragmentary, or drastically edited, and after a while, being not very good at keeping family relationships straight at the best of times, inn this overlapping jumble of far flung and disjointed uncles and aunts and cousins, my mind began to glaze over; I lost track, and stopped caring. They became angry loners. Do needed color coding, chapters, or a number system - anything to keep people straight. A diagram would have helped.

Patrick Kittler, a German reviewer, on Kino Zeit, comments of this film: "It is permeated too much by an almost pedagogical distance, and one would have wished that the author's passionate voice could be felt more strongly here. As in the plot of the documentary itself, Do tries so hard to unite all family poles in such an unbiased way that it is not really clear what he actually wants to tell. At some point you lose track of who is at odds with whom, until the documentary becomes almost luridly private." One feels that he needed to connect more closely to any relatives who would let him in, and that he is approachig each one in the same way, like an interviewer, rather than a blood relative. Does he ever find a connection, or is he still seeking it?

The film poster, depicting the filmmaker dyed blue with family members pouring out of his head, is striking and handsome. Do exercises admirable caution in dealing with his older relatives.

Do also contributed to a humorous 2018 web comedy series about the miscellaneous English-speaking Berlin expat population, called "Just Push Abuba."