Berlin Alexanderplatz

This movie was hard to watch but gave me something to think about. I like this kind of movies who made a deep impression on me. I could feel the pain of the main character played brilliantly by Welket Bungue.

Berlin Alexanderplatz is beautifully directed and it doesn't make you feel distracted from the story considering its 3 hour length. On the other hand this film doesn't necessarily offer anything new or surprising to the viewer so I'd suggest keeping the expectations not so high.

This film had everything to work. It's loosely based on a good novel, the initial premise sounds good, a refugee looking for redemption is corrupted by his environment in Berlin, the cinematography is amazing (not often the case in German cinema), editing is good, I loved the sets too. Regarding the acting, there were some great moments but it looked inconsistent, in the end I believe the actors did a great job with the poor screenplay provided to them. The story just doesn't work. The relationships between characters are not credibel, they are born out of nowhere, out of nothing, there is no tension there, there is no development in those relationships and it made me not understand nor care about them (all the relationships of the main character, they make no sense to me). Also that villain, it was actually a well written psycopath, but at some point I bet someone fell in love with the cool character they were writing and he started taking way too much space on the story. In the end it's almost a good movie, but it doesn't really reach that level.

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.