Alaska.de

I've been watching German movies a lot. I like the ones made in East Germany before 1989. This German movie, alaska.de, which I watched in German without subtitles, having a good command of the language as a former guest worker, sounded warning bells in the opening few frames. The camera work was atrocious. So grainy, it looked like it was the work of amateurs. You couldn't make out the features of most of the characters it was so bad.

As for the so-called plot, it was practically non-existent. This girl goes to stay with her father and falls in with the wrong crowd of total misfits. Some other reviewer maintained that the movie "never gets bleak and depressing", but I was mighty depressed after watching it, as it was so bleak.

Lately German movies seem to come in trilogies. While three films ("Harte Jungs", "Crazy" and "Schule") dealt with school-life in a more or less authentic way last year, at the beginning of 2001 within only two weeks another trio of films ("Grüne Wüste", "alaska.de" and "Die innere Sicherheit") started here that deals with the life of teenagers outside of school. Each of these movies features a very promising and talented young actress (Tatjana Trieb, Jana Pallaske and Julia Hummer) in the leading role and each of these movies is excellent in its own way - but that's where the similarities end.

"alaska.de" is an excellent film because it perfectly combines an acute problem of Germany's society today (the increasing youth violence) with a very elaborated style (the director shot music videos before she made her feature-film debut with this movie). Most of the actors are amateurs from the very same "Plattenbau" buildings where the film takes place, which adds a lot of realism (e.g. authentic dialogue).

Although it's a tragic story, it never gets bleak and depressing thanks to Pallaske's charm and the atmosphere (mainly created by visuals and music), which ought to appeal to a young target audience.

Although a rather 'small' movie (although in cinemascope) it's indeed a really great one. The only thing I didn't like so much is that the story plays in teenager-milieu. But they are all real and authentic persons, far from those penetrant Hollywood-clowns. And it's exiting, with one person stabbed to death, a poor dog killed, and another victim at the end. And something like a romance. All very well told with beautiful ideas and free from cliches. The camerawork is excellent, too. With extraordinary perspectives. And the filtered colors create a very peculiar atmosphere, that goes perfectly well along with the story about a girl and some more or less criminal (and more or less stupid) guys in the suburbs of Berlin.

Shoddy shaky camera-work from the get go points to this being a frustrating experience throughout. The plot is wafer-thin. Girl moves to new area, falls in with the wrong crowd, happens to come across something she shouldn't, and is forced to keep quiet. The characters all come across as clichés of teenage angst. There's the bad egg, the good guy at heart who has fallen in with the wrong crowd, the big fat oaf and the girl who feels as if the whole world is crumbling in on her. The scene at the bookshop where books and reading is made out to be the antithesis of teenage cool is cringeworthy beyond belief. There's nothing to recommend this on.

I loved this film, even though the setting and characters were completely foreign to me (see location for explanation). I appreciated that it was not melodramatic, like so many Hollywood flicks, and that, even though it is a tragic tale, it is not depressing. There is an overarching mood of hopefulness, rather than the hopelessness you'd expect from a movie with a storyline like Alaska.de's. I recommend the movie for non-Germans, too. If you can handle subtitles, it's a real cultural experience. No one quite makes edgy movies like the Germans do.