Au loin, les lumières

I'm not exactly sure why but this film just hit me right at the heart and hasn't left me since I left the cinema (which has been more than a year now). I completely disagree with the review that's on the title page at the moment in almost every point. He says the film was too busy... I say it was authentic and seeing the making of it makes you realize how the "busy" camera was mainly due to the fact that the actors had a lot of room for improvisation which you can tell when you see the film.

He also said that he thought that the mattress episode was pointless. I found it really really moving. And Devid Striesow just acts incredibly well (He doesn't act like an actor but like a real person which is something you have to get used to at first but then it's so rewarding to watch!)

I also think that the parallel way of storytelling worked really well and it wasn't hard to follow the plots at all. I'm actually proud that films like this one are made in Germany and this is just so much better than the average big-budget Hollywood film. The mood it creates is so tense, depressing and yet hopeful. It is definitely one of my favourite movies.

Saw it first when I was about 19 - left me in daze for several days. Rewatched with my husband 5 years later - similar effect. This movie just came into my mind today - you bet I am going to watch it for the third time, 14 years later. Curious what it will do for me this time.

Lichter is situated on both sides of the German-Polish border. It portrays several citizens of both the German and the Polish side of the border and some illegal immigrants hoping to cross the border to the Promised Land. Several story lines are set up, but only some meet. After all stories are set up, some characters act out of love for someone, even make a brave and important decision to help someone in need. All are betrayed, so this makes a pretty depressing picture with little hope and redemption. Even the building project as a sign of hope and cooperation turns out to have a negative angle.

From a cinema-point of view it would have been a better idea to connect all story lines and I found that a missed opportunity. But it succeeds in balancing the motives of all characters: Some act out of selfishness, some out of love, and others out of survival. At one moment in the movie immigrants are called fortune seekers, later they are called people in need.

Hans-Christian Schmid's direction is average. This is made for little money and it shows. It looks a bit like an upgraded TV-movie, with relative few interesting camera shots. But my guess is he wants us to focus on the theme of the movie and he succeeds in that, because after a few minutes you stop thinking about the movie's obvious technical limitations.

The tag line of the movie is Welcome to reality. But as cinema is all about manipulation this is a strange one. Every filmmaker has to start by making a choice where to place his or her movie in the movie universe, somewhere between the real world and the imagined world where a movie interacts with our imagination. So this is as manipulated as would be the reverse: Show a border town where everybody's happy. Show happy immigrants working happily on beautiful Berlin building projects. So here we still watch an imagined world being thoroughly manipulated by the director. And this certainly hasn't the realism of post-war Italian cinema.

As for the real world: With Poland now a member of the EU, the movie is already somewhat out of date and Poland will within a few years reach the wealth of say the Portuguese. Illegal immigration will always exist and has always existed: People seeking asylum, people wanting a better existence. The whole debate in Europe is about where to draw lines. This gives some reflection on that process.

In loosely interconnected episodes "Lichter" tells five stories of financial predicament, difficult relationships and dreams of a better future on both sides of the German-Polish border. A mattress salesman goes bust, an interpreter for the border police helps an illegal Ukrainian immigrant get to Berlin, a Polish taxi driver helps another couple of immigrants because he needs money for the Communion dress of his daughter, a group of juvenile cigarette smugglers go through a jealousy drama and a young German architect learns an unpleasant secret that his former Polish girlfriend has hidden from him.

Sounds depressing (and to many Americans it probably would be, as they seem to need an all-conquering hero as the protagonist - at least that's what Hollywood chucks out year after year), but we Old Europeans ;-) know better and want to see characters that we can identify with because they have the same problems we have or are even worse off. In other words we want realistic films (in addition to, not instead of(!) genre movies and escapist fairy tales), and "Lichter" is very realistic because it never betrays its characters for an unlikely plot twist or artificial humor just to please the audience. That doesn't mean there are no funny moments and I for one didn't leave the cinema depressed at all. The tagline "Willkommen in der Wirklichkeit" (Welcome to reality) really fits 100%.

All the actors are great (I liked David Striesow as pitiable entrepreneur Ingo, whom you wouldn't begrudge his "jungle bonus", and Maria Simon as sympathetic interpreter Sonya best) and their characters manage to stay likable although each episode has a moment of betrayal/lie/theft where their economic fears force them to display their most negative character traits. But this is balanced by a moment of hope in each episode where the characters behave more positive (more helpful, more unselfish, more friendly) than their situation would actually allow them to.

Finally, I have to say, that Hans-Christian Schmid is one of the best directors Germany has at the moment. Most German directors who come fresh from film school often have a very good debut-film, but can't keep up the same quality after that. Schmid however has made only good films so far ("Nach Fünf im Urwald", "23", "Crazy" and now "Lichter") and they even keep getting better IMO. As much as I love that some German films ("Run Lola run", "Nowhere in Africa" or "Good Bye Lenin") are successful abroad lately, they show Germany's past and I really hope that "Lichter" will have at least the same level of success, because it shows what life in Germany (for a particular social class at a particular place - Frankfurt an der Oder) is like TODAY, on the eve of the EU enlargement.

This movie reflects on the situation around the border between Poland and Germany. The fate of many single characters creates a picture of life in this region: Some Russians want to cross the border illegal to get into Germany, a company wants to build a new factory, a Polish taxi driver desperately needs money to buy his daughter a communion dress, and so on.

All this is very well written and directed. All the characters are true to life, and through the multiperspectivic reflection on the situation the movie works very well. Good acting performances do the rest. The one minor critical point I have is: The stories are standing on their own. I think the movie would have been better if they would have been connected in more points than just happening in one region. So the movie gets a 9 out of 10- but is still worth watching and very touchy.