Free Rainer

Hans Weingartner's third movie is a harsh but highly legitimate comment on today's television program.

Unlike in "Die Fetten Jahre sind vorbei" you could find many things to criticize here - while the comparison to that last movie can hardly be avoided. Much of "Free Rainer" has obviously been inspired by the same concepts, which could make you question how much inspiration there was behind this movie at all. You will find many points that leave a rather ambivalent impression concerning realism - the ending has to be called "fantasy like". At few points does the movie really convince with its' optimistic idea of how the characters and the whole scenario develops.

So what makes "Free Rainer" worth watching? Simple as often: It's the message behind all of this - which can only be understood as a comment on today's world of television. And as for this comment: There has since long not been said anything more important in a movie! Weingartner's portrait of a sick and sickening life standard drawn by the TV world is very close to reality. The rather negative way in which the TV executives appear might even be called too optimistic - while in the movie they seem just to be immoral and very well knowing what they do, reality might look somewhat worse: Most of the people in charge are probably acting in accordance to their very own moral principles.

One critic wrote "Weingartner's movie is a crude comment on an even cruder television". Very right!

Someone said that if you want to know them you're funny, don't tell them you're funny, tell them a joke. In this case, the last laugh is on the audience. Hans Weingartner's movie is all telling and zero demonstration. Irrespective of temperament and motivation, his characters preach to the camera on the corruptive influence of mainstream television, the liberating powers of learning and movies as a moral institution. At no point in the story do we have any idea why the characters behave the way they do. Laughable. Three reasons to see "Free Rainer" anyway: Rainer's initial display of road rage that leaves even a group of short-tempered skinheads green with fear, an amusing portrayal of a nameless millionaire's wife, and the very lovely Elsa Gambard. It's obvious she can't act, but with face and grace like that, she should have no trouble at all finding work as a model. - Guest appearance by Sarah Kuttner. God knows what's gotten into her.

This movie is what it claims to be! It does not claim to be realistic, it claims to be a funny revenge story on somewhat, what really needs to be revenged. This movie is not education, it's only a very small part and a wet revenge dream against the other part on the scale pan, we see everyday: The awful TV program, which became our religion. And on the other side, where it should be in balance, but is not - it's like that: Total Trash. Incredibly stupid game shows, which try to force people to call and to give money for nothing, like for example: "Yes now you can win even more, tell me when do you have birthday!... 21. of August?! Oh i am so sorry, you would have won if it were the 31. of June." Or somewhat - the next superstar model casting shows. - Like it's so good to get money for doing nothing. TV became our religion, so that we reconstruct our world from, what we see and believe to be real a few people tell us so (not very normal people, who have much free time to do so). And the problem is, that we partly have to believe that it is real, so i just don't get the critique of some people "Weingartner used trash to bury trash"... The problem is - our world is slowly becoming trashier everyday. So what. Hit it with it. It's just a nice and funny movie, which unfolds to show a bit how it could be and that supposed clarification is never total. This movie has the claim, what i would call, to have a nicotine patch effect on the media world. It's not as good as a cigarette (which is trash) but it tries to help against the pain. And i think this effect is the reason for bad comments. Not for me - Because of the message - i like it and give it a ten plus.

We saw this film in a screening down at the film society. Loved it. This film is an excellent comment on the sick media world. Quite dramatic and brutal in the first part, warm and funny in the second. Full of mad ideas. A prankster movie and at the same time a political statement on the brainwash. Is it comedy? Drama? I don't know. Does it matter?

Definitely worth seeing. I also really loved it, because it's so different from the standard European art-house flicks. More fun, more diverse, crazier. A raw film. Moritz Bleibtreu, the male lead, seems to be one of Germany's finest. Camera is doc style, hand-held, but never nauseating.

The film has a very simple basic premise. Television has been reduced to the lowest common denominator and people swallow it because they have gotten used to it. As such, they are reduced to an antisocial drone-like resistance that no longer resembles life as our fathers remember. Improve what's on the TV and you'll improve society.

For someone who's himself quite sick of all those reality soaps and the garbage that comes out from the Hollywood assembly line, I found this film refreshing and inspirational. Although I wasn't quite fond of the obvious ultra-left ideology you can find in between the lines, the message of this film goes beyond ideology and is a call to all of us.

"Democratic" capitalist society has become a tyrannical system run by corporations who enslave us for profit, while we, the average consumer, are barely aware of the golden cage in which we live. We've all become paranoid little f***'s who waste our time on shallow small talk and brainless entertainment rather than having real conversations on real topics and devouring real culture. This film tries to open your eyes to that reality and reach the inner child in all of us.... the inner child that makes us human.

Obviously this film doesn't have the budget of a Hollywood blockbuster and the story is most definitely naive, but the very optimism of this film and its lonely dissident cry make it far more interesting to me than anything Hollywood has produced since "V For Vendetta".

That's all I have to say......