Das wilde Leben

After recent films about Sixties-pop-icons like Jim Morrisson, Brian Jones and Edie Sedgwick, now Uschi Obermaier is on.

This time there's a big difference, though: Uschi survived her wild young days and is still doing well. If I may believe the 'making of'-chapter of my German DVD: the real Uschi has been involved in the process, improving authenticity. The DVD also includes a few nice shots of young Uschi in her Sixties & Seventies-days.

I've also read Uschi Obermaier's autobiography 'High Times', and conclude that actress Natalia Avelon plays her character well - all set up with true German thoroughness.

Both real Uschi and her film-copy are about a girl who imaged out the moods of her young days very well - just that. What remains untold in film and autobiography, is the history of the vibrating Sixties-youth culture.

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Having lived through the thirties' economic depression and world war 2, Uschi's parents were strongly molded by these tragic times. Uschi and her generation, born shorty after the war, did not carry this emotional burden. They worried about a new danger their parents mostly ignored: environment pollution.

As a result, a wide generation-gap opened up. Youngsters like Uschi Obermaier felt a strong urge to liberate themselves from their parents' strong & strict moral rules. Add to that the new availability of anti-conceptive, greatly helping in experimenting with new lifestyles.

For Uschi's generation, the late Sixties and early Seventies were a time to develop a lifestyle they felt comfortable with. It is the German version of what happened in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood during the same period.

As I said earlier, we met Uschi and Dieter in Aspen, Colorado in 1982. I got a letter from her from Northern California in September of '82 prior to their trip to Mexico. I'm looking at it right now. She was excited that they were going to have a friend make a tepee for them and spend the winter living in it on the beach in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The Uschi and Dieter that we spent an evening with gave no hint of being the type of people this movie portrays. They did not seem to be the dark and tortured souls that this movie shows them to be. They were happy, outgoing, talkative, generous and excited about the future. Dieter loved to fish. They loved Colorado. They enjoyed crossing the USA and had been all around it, but the movie make no mention of that time at all. The movie also gives no mention of her artistic talents. Uschi made scrimshaw, and as an artist I can tell you it was excellently done. She was going to have an exhibition of her scrimshaw in LA but I do not know if she ever did. I can't say they were friends of mine, exactly, having only spent one evening together but they were acquaintances and I have very fond memories of them. I'd always hoped one day I'd see their bus on the highway so I could say hello again. I don't know if this movie was authorized by Uschi as an accurate portrayal of their lives, but I do know it made me sad for them. My wish is for her happiness and hope that these last 30 years or so have been as happy as they could be.

Uschi, if you ever read this, blessings and happiness to you.

So I read the reviews here and the opinions are very polarized

As often the truth is somewhere in between

Yes there is a reading here of the 60s/70s which is caricatural and aimed at younger folks who never saw those years

Bit of a joke to some

But people do not necessarily know how repressive the mentalities were in early 60s Bavaria

She Uschi Obermaier wanted to break away from the moral straightjacket and she did it elegantly and forcefully

This is shown well here. The boyfriend is depicted as a caveman which he might have been; she is depicted as Kali ; the haircutting of boyfriends' barnet is truly upsetting in a dark magic way but hey might be innocent

The actress they found for Uschi is Polish-born Natalia Avelon and the feat here is that she is even more beautiful than the one she portrays; and yes male viewers she is naked most of the time here; unashamedly. Germany is probably the country in the world which is the most at ease with nudity

We see this here. We also saw it in Carlos (2010) when the Baader Meinhoff blew into Aden

Anyway she is a picture and looks a real lot like Uschi

There is a long part in Pakistan and India very well done then we move to Mexico

They used German actors for Keith Richard and Mick J one really wonders why. No Brits available? A union issue?

Anyway overall not bad at all Kommune Eins at the start is OK altho a tad caricatured

Her fierce independence and girl power is well put in full view

Of course if you want to know more accurately about Uschi Obermaier watch Rote Sonne (1970) you will get the right idea.

I'm disappointed about the low rating that this movie has. It's one of my favorites and I've watched it several times. I've read other reviews to see why it has such a low rating, and I notice that people expect from it something that it's not. They expect it to be about the "Kommune", they expect it to be about an extraordinary girl, and they expect expensive set designs.

This movie is not about all that. The way I see it, Das Wilde Leben is about a journey, it's about a girl who is free and is not afraid to break boundaries, it's about a girl who uses her beauty to have the adventure of her life. She falls in love with powerful men, she lives wildly, she sees the world. And, above all, this movie is about a powerful woman.

Is the movie true to the historical facts? Is it true to Uschi's life? That's not what's important. It's a movie, not a documentary. Beyond the cheap sets and the historical inaccuracies (if there are any) lays a beautiful and inspiring story.

Saw this on Netflix streaming movies. Much of the movie is in German with English subtitles, but some of it is in English.

Uschi Obermaier was (is?) apparently a real person who joined in with what we would call the hippie free-love movement in 1960s Germany. But she was also a model and a very successful one. Much of her modeling was nude or semi-nude, graphically depicted in the film, and the actress certainly has a Playboy-worthy beauty.

German actress Natalia Avelon plays Uschi Obermaier . While she is the central character her life and travels take her many places and with many famous people. The beginning and the end of the film are the same, she is standing nude on the beach, watching a raft burn, symbolic of her relationships that had died and the men with them. In between is her story.

The critic Ebert has a very good and accurate review. Interesting film, but I lived through the 1960s and 1970s, I remember those days, and watching this one didn't do much for me.