sh_bronstein

The premise is thrilling: people trying to flee a dictatorship with a hot-air balloon they make themselves... in secret. This story is actually a true story that took place in Thuringia, a part of the German Democratic Republic (communist East Germany). The movie is, unfortunately, an ironed-out piece of story-telling with added corny clichés that made some of the people in the movie theater laugh - even though the story is dead-serious! This is bad! Yes, it is very bad. The acting is so card-board like, it is impossible to take the actors seriously. Even if the story is set in Thuringia, a region where people speak German with a very distinct accent, the actors don't even try speaking with this accent for the sake of credibility (Imagine a movie set in Alabama in the US South in which all actors speak like New Yorkers - that is how misplaced the actors' accent is!). The script writer added a laughable romantic subplot to the story that was truly unnecessary. The film's music is full of pathos and emotion, so much of it that it becomes ludicrous. It is sad to see an exciting real-life story so badly adapted to the screen.

The plot of the movie is very straightforward and it is revealed from the lips of the protagonist in the very first minutes of the movie, so don't expect any suspense here. It is about a young German woman who goes to Japan in order to escape her grief, finding some sort of solace in repairing an old woman's hut in Fukushima. Fukushima is, of course, that city that was devastated by a Tsunami and a nuclear meltdown some years back. So, there you go, once again, for the umpteenth time, the same old heart-broken-person-finds-meaning-in-restoring-some-old-garbage narrative... I am sorry for being so negative, but I really expected a little more originality from the acclaimed director Doris Dörrie. What really saves the movie is the beautiful black-and-white cinematography, which is a humble nod to Tarkovsky's "Stalker" or perhaps to some of Bela Tarr's bleak pictures of the Hungarian puszta. This film is visually a gem, but the story provides one cliché after the other. So if you are to enjoy it, I would recommend ignoring the plot, turning a blind eye on the German protagonist's terrible acting, and soaking in the evocative imagery.