Hagen - Im Tal der Nibelungen

As someone who grew up reading the source material and especially the interpretation by Hohlbein from the POV of Hagen, i have been waiting for a state of the art adaption of Song of the Nibelungs ever since I saw my first Lord of the Rings Movie. I never had high hopes it would get made because despite being one of the most influential historical epics of all time, hollywood has always been blissfully ignorant.

Now a european production has finally stepped in, and i am here for it!

The filmmaking is superb. The visuals are stunning. Everything looks realistic yet stylish, and the sword fights are down to earth yet filmed in a way that makes you feel the weight and impact of each strike.

Qualitiy of performances varies, but the main characters all deliver. Everyone has botteled up emotions to deal with, you know what they feel by looking in their eyes, everything is handled with a minimum of dialogue and a maximum of context to make you understand the driving forces behind each character. It does not feel like just another fantasy film, but more like a dark, tragic saga that hints but never 100% commits to the supernatural elements of its plot, similar to projects like "The Northman" by Robert Eggers or the "Hellblade" video game.

If you are into sagas and gritty medieval dramas, or if you are a fan of the source material like i am, this one is for you!

This movie is far better than presented in imdb (even the plot summary is plainly wrong). For centuries-literally centuries-Hagen von Tronje has been the villain of Germany's most famous saga (yes, Wagner and all that). This movie retells the saga from a different perspective-an apology for Hagen-that alters some details, omits certain parts, and adds others. What you get is still a saga (they travel to Iceland in what may be a 15th-century carrack, 400 years before the Vikings dared cross the gap between Sweden and England), but it all comes together coherently.

It's also well-crafted from a technical standpoint, with good visuals and entertaining scenes. It never felt "long." I believe it's solid if you don't know the story, but if you do, it's at least very good.

Kriemhild isn't a main character, nor is Brunhild or the women's quarrel; it might seem that both characters seem a bit one-dimensional. However, I'd call this a deliberate technique to clarify that the story isn't about them for viewers who might expect otherwise. Alberich the dwarf plays a larger role, and boy-they are properly creepy.

All in all, if you know the book (yes, the old one!), "Hagen" will create a tension between the adaptation and the original. This allows you to better observe themes like "old world heroics versus courtliness", "individual glory versus greater good", and "who's at fault versus who's at shame." These themes are already present in the 13th-century book but are now brought into the spotlight for discussion.

This film shows a modified version of the all too familiar NIBELUNGENLIED. No wonder, this time the original comes from the fantasy novel HAGEN VON TRONJE written by the German fantasy writer Wolfgang HOHLBEIN. A "German Game of Thrones" was not the result, but the directing duo, who have already made the German-Austrian quality series DER PASS with Julia JENTSCH and Nicholas OFCZAREK, are putting in a lot of effort.

The NIBELUNGENLIED was written around 1200 and is considered the high point of Medieval German literature. Unlike in the films by Fritz LANG (1924) and Harald REINL (1966), the story here is told from the perspective of Hagen von Tronje, who has previously been seen as the ruthless murderer of the shining hero Siegfried von Xanten.

In the current film, Hagen (Gijs NABER) is the benevolent protector of Kriemhild and her brothers, who are being challenged by the charismatic, radiant Siegfried (Jannis NIEWÖHNER) in a populist manner. This is an approach that tells the story of the Nibelungs in a less idealistic and more politically pragmatic way. There is intrigue and murder, almost like in Shakespeare's plays.

The German mini-major studio CONSTANTIN FILM has not been stingy and has delivered a real fantasy gem, which is unfortunately rather unusual for German-language cinema. Unfortunately, audiences in German-speaking countries have not quite gone along with it. So far (as of December 21, 2024), the film has only been able to attract 177,167 visitors to the cinemas, which corresponds to a box office of 1,912,444 EURO.

Hopefully the film will still be watched by many after its theatrical release! It's worth it!

I had low expectations to begin with, perhaps that made me a tad too grateful, but the film was a nice evening at the cinema - not something we get very often. Nice visuals, costumes and set are overall immersive, the music is good.

It has weak points and material was obviously cut down, giving us some loose ends and lacking a little substance at times.

On top of some scenes that just don't convince the viewer of characters' traits, making them feel rather shallow, there are a few awkward lines in some dialogues.

Keeping this in mind, provided you are able to separate this from the traditional story, Hagen is an interesting, even rare character - who is humble and loyal, despite being competent.

The anti-hero trope has been done to death, this isn't any such story, whatever the synopsis tries to tell you. I would have loved a longer, more in-depth character study, but Hagen himself was intriguing.

A good film, I would alter some things, but will definitely use the main character as inspiration for some project.

Germany has some pretty awesome folklore and mythology. Germans also developed and built some of the best film equipment in the world. Unfortunately, Germany doesn't seem to have any talented people to bring those two together.

HAGEN is a tremendous waste of crew talent and money, and it is even more sad when you occasionally see a glimpse of what this could have been in the hands of somewhat capable filmmakers. The script delivers a boring, incoherent story that fails to take its audience on any journey. The characters are astonishingly bland, and Hagen himself stumbles through this film in complete apathy.

It is a special gift to make the ancient German equivalent of Severus Snape be so terribly boring, but somehow the writers-directors accomplished this seemingly impossible feat. His actor is amongst the best of the entire film, but still fails to carry it, actively being stripped of any charisma and/or actual things to do in the scene. The rest of the actors are mostly embarrassing, especially Kriemhild and Siegfried. What a farce.

And so, this is another fine example of how millions of euros get burned to produce embarrassingly bad films and shows and keep a small elite of "filmmakers" on top of the game. It doesn't even matter how bad and ill-received these productions are - somehow, it's always still the same names, the same production companies, the same incompetence.