Am Tag als Bobby Ewing starb

This film is the winner of the Max-Ophuls-Prize 2005. I watched this movie because of the very funny film-poster that hung at my local independent-cinema. The story: in the mid-80ies, a woman and her seventeen-years-old son move to an ecologist-hippie community in a small village in Schleswig-Holstein. The community is part of a protest movement against the nuclear power station near the village. The mother immediately likes the life in the green community. The son doesn't, but he makes friends with the village-rocker and the beautiful daughter of the mayor. So much for the plot. There isn't much plot. This film is more about characters and atmosphere. Great actors: Peter Lohmeyer with long and dirty hair as Peter the chief of the community, Nina Petri as Gesine (can still make nude scenes with 42 without being ridiculous!), Jens Munchow as the sympathetic, funny but idiotic Rakete, Gabriela Maria Schmeide as the over-motivated mother who does all the housework of the community... and of course Franz Dinda, who gives a fantastic characterization of the shy and disorientated Niels. Super atmosphere: the absolutely boring village, the chaotic living of the greens. Although the movie shows the ridiculous and bizarre sides of the hardcore-ecologists, it always has a certain tenderness for them. And now, not to forget: "Am Tag als Bobby Ewing starb" is a very funny movie: the scream-therapy-sequence, the dinner with "warm bread", the "Gandhi-has-said"-line, the gun-shooting with Rakete etc., etc.. If you have the possibility, go watch this movie. Possibly THE German movie of 2005.

This movie is a fictionalised re-narration of director and co-author Peter Jessen's experience of being dragged to a rural commune by his drop-out mother, and as such it's probably a lot more accurate than a docu-miniseries about the beginnings of the alternative/eco movement -- viz, the Mueslis, as they were so cruelly and accurately dubbed in German. Jessen achieves this by eschewing the two pitfalls of this genre, smarmy those-were-the-days nostalgia and cheap ridicule of a bunch of folks who were, at the very least, active idealists, albeit in often very smelly socks.

(Tidbit information for neophytes: Why didn't they just wash the damn socks? Well, sheep wool was considered to be so vibrantly, wholesomely natural that not only does it clean itself, but you would actually be destroy its magical self-cleaning properties by placing them in the suds. I'm not making this up -- my mother had apparently read the same book, which afforded me olfactory properties that didn't exactly enhance my social standing among my peers.)

The acting is absolutely exceptional down to the minor characters, and overall it's a wonderfully understated movie. It expects you to bring a lot of curiosity and a modicum of sympathy along, though -- if you think hippies are a bunch of commie bleeding-heart tree-huggers then you are probably better off watching something else -- Dallas, for instance.

The day when Bobby Ewing died is a film about the origins of the green movement in Germany in the mid-eighties. A countryside hippie community founded in protest against a nuclear power plant is depicted as prototypical for the era - and this is the major problem of the film: All the stereotypes, memories etc. of the years gone by are packed into this film. Whether you actually liked or loathed the greens doesn't matter, there's something for everyone. What is not in this film, is actually a visible storyline or even script. In the beginning a mother and son arrive at the hippie community, apparently due to some problems earlier. The mother likes the new life, the son does not - why does not really become clear. In the end, its all different and the community's "chieftain" changed his mind also - again it is pretty unclear why... Was it all Chernobyl? Or because Bobby was dead? No one will ever know...

The 80ies were a very calm era in Germany. Student revolution and the terror by RAF was overcome, while the economical crisis of the 90ies was still ahead. But for some reason the people had great fear, especially of an atomic 3rd world war, which was in a way irrational.

"Am Tag als Bobby Ewing starb" treats these subjects. A mother and her son move to some kind of hippie community (new forms of living together also were quite popular) near a nuclear power plant in rural northern Germany. The mother falls in love to the leader of the community. Her son, who liked more to live in the city, has problems to adopt the new lifestyle, but he soon finds some friends. He hates the hippies and is more into drinking, shooting with rifles and stuff. So the movie - which got some good renown by German critics move on.

I personally felt some disappointment after watching this. For a satirical comedy, the movie had to much depression in it, as the community slowly decays. Also I did not like that there was sometimes so much distance between the mother and her son, as if they were no relatives. I think the goal of the movie was to portray the atmosphere in the 80ies. In this, it succeeds, but the plot is a bit pointless and awkward. I think sometimes, the more artistic German movie makers have a certain fear to give direct messages, everything is subtextual, a bit "dogma"-like, which is why they have this boring touch (for examples movies like "Halbe Treppe" or "Erleuchtung garantiert).

If you'd like to see a comedy about leftist communities, I much more recommend Moodysons' "Together", which is way more funny and elaborated. The beginning of "Together" with the naked people seems to have inspired the beginning of this movie, too.