Berlin Alexanderplatz

The story follows the rise and fall of Francis (Welket Bungué), a refugee who tries to be a good man while earning a living in a wealthy country suppressing the options to do so. He is soon approached by a drug dealer (Albrecht Schuch) offering what seems to be a way out of his misery. Thus, the tragedy unfolds. Burhan Qurbani's handwriting as a director has significantly improved over the course of his now three feature-length films. And now he has delivered a masterpiece. The film manages to combine elements of hyper-realism with poetic moments, strengthening each other's impact. The music is sometimes subtle, sometimes loud, and always on point. The actors' delivery is gripping and powerful. The story itself is an adaptation of Döblin's masterpiece novel of the same name. It is fittingly transferred into current day Berlin, and - while staying true to the novel's intent - it is told in a far more concise manner to suit its format. I actually hate movies longer than 100 minutes, but due to its separation into 5 chapters Qurbani somehow managed to not annoy or bore me for a second.

The whole thing, all three hours of it, went nowhere in particular. There are filmmakers who can put together a compelling 180 minute character study, but Qurbani doesn't appear to be one of them.

Most of what made Döblin's novel so interesting is absent here. The updated setting, with its focus on refugee identiy and experience, opens up a world of possibility that the film never really explores in great depth - though it really wants you to think it has. It's stylish, sure, but even that begins to grate fairly quickly. The whispered, whinging voice-over, reminding us every so often what we're supposed to be feeling, is overused and begins to border on the ridiculous.

All in all, 4 stars for some good camerawork and solid performances. Unfortunately, nothing else delivered.

Remember when almost nobody knew who Christoph Waltz was? And then everybody watched Inglourious Basterds and the rest is history. With Robert Schuch who plays one of the main characters it will be the same. Every actor in this movie is very good but he is acting circles around the others. You are glued to the screen every time he is on screen and he has a lot to play with since his character changes a lot during the movie. And the more we realize what he does with the character we can't help to be in awe with this troubled character.

Even though I would say watch the movie just to see Schuch's performance Berlin Alexanderplatz is a great movie. I didn't know anything about it. Just saw the trailer and my jaw dropped when I saw that is 3 hours long. But the trailer already kind of told you that this is something different. To be honest you could tell this story probably with 30 minutes less but it definitely needs to be long because you watch the journey of two men even though one is supposed to be the focus. The cast is great, the music is chosen well and it is shot beautifully. They create this world that our characters live in which by the way has nothing in common with reality but it isn't supposed to. It is full of colorful characters some of them very over the top. It is big, it is loud and you will have the full range of emotions. You will laugh, you will be scared in some scenes anticipating bad to happen, you will feel sorry for people, you will be angry at them and also love when they love.

Cinematography, art direction and costumes are setting the stage for a few great actors like Albrecht Schuch and Joachim Krol who all sadly fail to bring a flawed script to greatness in this artistic effort. One star each for the above mentioned.

It's impressive to see the development of German movies in the past years. This movie have everything in my opinion - great storytelling, very good acting / character development, brilliant writing and very good Camera performance. This kind of movies are getting really rare and I enjoyed every minute of it. Please more ....