Paradies: Glaube

It's hard to know what to make of Ulrich Siedl's 'Paradise' trilogy, a series of films about the lives of unhappy middle-aged women. 'Faith' tells the story of someone dementedly committed to spreading the love of Jesus, in a life tragically devoid of any love from other humans. Her unexplained marriage to a paralysed, Muslim man is the source of especial unhappiness, although she seeks out misery apparently believing this is what God wants of her. It's grim, and believable, but the purpose of the first two films, with their pathetic yet unsympathetic protagonists and complete lack of redemption narrative, remains unclear. Somehow I'm not expecting a song-and-dance in film three either.

"paradise: faith" what does too much faith lead us to ?

The movie definitely has some strong imagery, just look at the first and the last scene of the movie, it clearly shows the character arc of the main character. The movie is an amazing character study. Some scenes in the movie, the way they are shot, its so raw and natural, these makes the scenes more powerful and intense. What an amazing performance by maria hofstatter and nabil saleh. After watching the two movies of the trilogy, i think ulrich seidl is a director with amazing and visually appealing story telling style. Looking forward to watcvhing more of his movies.

The second movie of the 'Paradise' trilogy which sets in the summer holiday. Like I said in my previous review all the three stories happen in the same timeline in different locations with different themes and people. This movie which unfolds the story of 'Faith' of a woman in her 50s. And her devotion and affection towards Christ. Be ready to to see drama on a serious subject within a few dark humorous.

Anna Maria is a nurse in a private hospital. In her summer vacation she begins to do a missionary work as spreading the religious awareness to the people of Austria. Some of her friends' support it by joining the prayer she orange in her home and sometime she goes door to door to every house in her neighborhood. As planned the expedition runs smoothly until her long gone husband return home which shook her. Her real faithful will be tested when he begins to interfere into her work.

It was quite a nice second movie of the trilogy. It mainly speaks about the honest dedication of a religious stuffs. Sometime clash between another religious showed in the movie was very much true. The director's approach in this second movie was very much artistic. But in scenes where he showed about sex hunger like outdoor orgy and masturbation were totally not understandable. You know, unlike the first movie 'Paradise: Love' I thought it will be exactly opposite and a pure spiritual content story. The director had a different opinion in his mind and mixed with multiple sub-contents. In the end, the ends of both the movies were not much distinct but the audience will be divided especially adult and spiritual theme fans.

7.5/10

I would have preferred a more realistic, every days live story rather than cliché bashing. The movie tries to take advantage of the tendency of western Europe to dislike religion, espacially catholicsm, even when it lost relevance in every days live for most people already. The bad traits of faith are just as much exaggerated to make a silly and funny impression but are also soften when it comes to move forward with clichés. There is no explanation on how and why this couple came together and how the persons found together. The situations create the impression as if they just met rather than they shared parts of their lives together. The vast differences between the background of the persons would suggest either a deep bound between them or a clear separation. With the lack of any explanatiom, the couple is just used as basis to move forward with clichés. Also very typical is to compare a very rare form of practicing cahtolicism, not accepted by catholics themselves, to how open and tolerate other religions and cultures are. I liked the other two movies of the trilogie but this one was much to one sided following media stereotypes and lacking objective view on this topic. I know people personally, who would provide better stories with what they experienced on their way finding faith and beyond. Stories who could possibly come true for any of us or could happen to our friends, providing a controversal view on how faith can save lives and the costs of it.

We have a loser at the focus of the story and gets humiliated in a variety of different situations. These themselves were constructed to create the classical gritty art-house feel. It feels as if made my a film school graduate who got the assignment to create a collage of gritty situations related to faith. This resulted in a storyline which had no credibility. I'm surprised that this film has received awards at festivals. It was one of the most unoriginal films I've seen. This is not only related to the story but also to lighting and general feel. On a positive note the encounters she had with "real" people was well observed but were just three excellent short films. This film reminded me in many places of films made by Peter Mullen and British Social Realism which is repeated over and over again.