Der Bunker

This film is about a man, known only as the student, who has sought out a quiet place to live while he works on a scientific theory. The place he finds is a home to a family of three that just so happens to be an isolated bunker. The family is odd but seem harmless enough that he chooses to move in. Not having all the rent, he is allowed to stay with the understanding that he can help out with chores and such to cover his outstanding debt.

The family is indeed odd being as it consists of the father, who considers himself an intellectual, the mother, who has a few issues and a son, who claims to be 8 but looks more like he is in his mid to late 20's. The son is the main focus in the family. He is homeschooled by his father but the mother is not satisfied with the boy's progress and she suggests that the student start tutoring the boy. There is an understanding that by doing this the student will have covered his debt. The parents have certain aspirations for their son and take his education quite seriously but we quickly learn that the boy is emotionally, mentally and socially underdeveloped. Without giving out spoilers, this is the movie's plot.

There is more going on than what meets the eye with this film and the longer you watch, the weirder and more perverse it gets. The film isn't bad but you need to have an interest in strange movies to enjoy it. There are plenty of moments where you can find yourself looking at the screen sideways, asking WTF with this one.

The pace of this film is a bit slow but I guess it should be in order to grasp the horror of the weird moments. I felt the actors were good portraying the individual oddities of their characters thus keeping the viewer interested in trying to figure them out.

This type of film isn't really my cup of tea but there is an audience out there that appreciates this branch of horror. I would suggest that if you are interested in blood, guts and violence, you'll be disappointed. However, if you are into situational horror it might be just what you are looking for.

THE BUNKER is a weird little German film for those who enjoy offbeat or obscure cinema like TAXIDERMIA or the films of Jan Svankmajer. It doesn't really have much of a plot or narrative arc, instead it's a slice of very-weird-life set in a rather bizarre family home. The protagonist is your usual young, upstanding teacher who takes on a home schooling job for a couple's son. Most of the time he's in the cellar, teaching the kid geography and the like, but after a time he gets drawn into the family's weird ways.

I'm not really sure how to describe THE BUNKER, other than to say it's not particularly enjoyable. Some parts reminded me of the films of Werner Herzog but lacking the artistry and the subtext. Pit Bukowski is weird as the grown up kid, but weird in a good way and I did warm to him a little as the story went on. He comes across as a mix of Kaspar Hauser and Peter Bark in BURIAL GROUND! The other characters aren't as memorable, but there's a smattering of sex and violence to keep viewers engaged. As I said, it didn't work out too well for me.

I like twisted movies. I always have. Germans are front runners when it's time to make something twisted without any logic or order, just for the sake of it. This movie is like some weird critique of parental education in our society (in a slightly disturbing way).

This is not twisted enough for my taste. There's too much room in between where nothing happens. Asian directors would manage to create tension out of thin air. That's what's missing here. Also, more violence.

At times, I thought that the director was trying to copy David Lynch. If he was, he earned a hard fail in my book. Lynch (or anyone else for that matter) shouldn't be copied. One should try to create his own style.

I'm glad I caught this little feature, because it still beats most mainstream movies by far. If I had a choice between Vin Diesel's stupid face or something like this, I'd choose this every time. Some may the film a little sick (I've seen sicker), but it's definitely not filled with hidden advertising and/or propaganda. It's an honest first feature. 5.5/10

This is well worth catching; early on, it began to have a tone reminiscent of 'The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser', but that was only because I love the latter film, and one actor's role resembles that of Bruno S.

Der Bunker (caught on its UK TV showing a few days ago) is totally original; the principal performers are, as they would have to be, excellent. Odd questions briefly emerged that relate more to, perhaps, traditional 'survivalist' themed films, but they become irrelevant, as this one is out on its own.

I also will look out for the performers elsewhere, based on this. Recommended for fans of the offbeat, or those bored with Hollywood!

There are several messages one is able to take away from "The Bunker", an uproarious and quite clever black comedy from German director Nikias Chryssos: one is that education needs rigour, but that too much rigour can be dangerous; another is that families can eventually become suffocating and that progression is essential to development. Its lasting message seems to be that, ultimately, everybody moves at their own pace in life and that this isn't a bad thing, so long as you eventually get to where you want to go.

The film also seems to be an exploration of the twisted relationship between failure and success, a relationship which affects all facets of human life and a relationship we can all relate to: rewards for hard work and punishment, or repercussions, for not ascertaining a particular grade. Buried in there somewhere as well seems to be the notion that there is a particular pleasure derived from education, but an acute pain from scholarly failure.

The elusiveness of the film makes itself evident almost immediately - the rather harshly juxtaposed imagery of a well-clad man in the snowy wilderness, evidently a little lost but close to his goal, stumbling around some woodland to opening credits put to us in a wacky font and in bright primary colours. Known only as The Student (Pit Bukowski), he is a scientist looking for an isolated retreat advertised on the internet so that he may work in solitude on some important study to do with the Higgs Boson Particle. The titular bunker is this solitude, run by two people known only as 'Mother' (Oona von Maydell) and 'Father' (David Scheller) whose son, Franz (Daniel Fripan), lives with them.

But something is amiss, and it stays amiss. His room ends up being, quite literally, a bunker, which acts as an add-on to this quirky property. The advert said there would be a view of a lake, but the room doesn't even possess a window. The Student points out that no light can get in. 'Nor can it get out!' counters Father. Son Franz looks 35, but we are told he is only 8 - has he even left the house before? Researching the actor, Fripan's height is listed as 5"3, which might constitute as some form of dwarfism. Franz's mother and father behave strangely; when Student eats some dinner upon arrival, we note with unease as to how there is a revolver in the background attached to the wall which appears to be pointing at his temple; later on, Mother speaks to a voice which has appeared to manifest itself as a gash in her shin.

Taking its cues from directors such as Bobcat Goldthwait and Michael Haneke, specifically the sense of absurdist humour combined with a sense of complete unease, and from specific films such as "Dogtooth", Chryssos spins a plot to do with Student being torn away from his own work and roped into being Franz's tutor when it becomes evident Franz is failing miserably at the most elementary of things during home-schooling. The home itself does nothing to ease our sense of unease - it is littered with props which, at once, look as if they belong where they are and yet simultaneously appear totally unnatural to their surroundings: the model hand grenade on the mantelpiece; the way the wool bulges out of a sideboard drawer; the lamp stem which doubles up as a pole around which a topless woman appears to dance. In Franz's bedroom, plush toys hang, as if from nooses, above his bed, but they're just mobiles, right?

Chryssos evidently has an eye for both tone and aesthetic. We accept the film is unfolding in some kind of alternate universe, one whereby people do not immediately leave upon encountering a troupe of oddballs. The whole film is peppered with this nightmarish quality, emphasised in how ceilings in some rooms are too low for the characters; in how Chryssos seems to shoot certain scenes with a deliberately large amount of dead space in the corners of living and bedrooms, and in how he seems to position the camera much further away from a subject than it needs to be in order to encompass it.

In looking for parallels or commentary in the film, I did not find very many, although may have missed something entirely. As a piece of mise-en-scene, a bunker is, of course, a refuge from the outside world; a means of saving yourself and your (nuclear) family from an unwanted attack. Is there supposed to be something in German society taking aim at such a thing? Regardless, he seems to want to emphasise the bourgeois nature of Mother; Father and Franz in his peppering of the soundtrack with classical music and the educational rigour they put Franz through - Father even enjoys a politically incorrect joke or two, laughing at them in that way that suggests he's really not supposed to anymore, but I didn't see the film as an attack on the bourgeois or their system. Similarly, I'm unsure if Franz is supposed to represent a repressed demographic or class, and that everything The Student represents is their liberation.

It would be wrong to describe the film as a comedy wherein the laughs come so quickly, you're left to catch your breath, but that doesn't matter; "The Bunker" is something else, something a little more disturbing without being grotesque, although even then it may tread too far in that direction for some. For me, it found a wonderful place between certainty and ambiguity; causing offense and not; between horror and just being mischievous. It's an experience, but an experience I recommend.