Le libre arbitre

Just saw this at the Tribeca Film Festival and it's one of the most intelligent, raw, intense and thought provoking films I've ever seen. It's unfortunate that some audience members and critics will focus on the graphic scenes of rape, tender lovemaking, masturbation and emotional trauma.

The movie ultimately is about the extreme strength and fragility of personal will. We're shown how one person's surfacing unconditional love strengthens that person's will enough to accept and (heart wrenchingly) and not stop the complete relinquishing of another's personal will. Heady stuff, but very cleanly done.

The two lead performers, Jürgen Vogel & Sabine Timoteo, fully inhabit and bring to surface the deeply-buried emotional chaos and trajectories of their characters. (The brilliance of their work would be lost on audience members who aren't used to understanding different cultures, i.e.: Germans cool, thoughtful communication style.) Their performances are nothing short of phenomenal.

If you love great film making, see this. But brace yourself for a very compelling and intense 2.75 albeit efficient hours. You will be blown away. I found it very insightful and moving.

One of the worst movies I have ever seen. Inconsistent story line, way too long, camera shots that last forever, mute characters, scenes that have nothing to do with the story, etc. E.g. why do we have to watch the protagonist practicing his martial arts moves? Especially when it's a bad move like when he teaches his girlfriend to defend herself from being choked. I hope no female viewer will memorize that move, because it will not work at all but even put her in greater danger.

A typical poor German movie, I have seen many of this kind. Heavy stuff, always trying to explain the world to us, and/or trying to educate the audience when it is not called for.

The story could have been told in 90 minutes (max). But it drags on and on and on.

But the worst is the sound, there is a constant background noise. The sound editor should be put in jail for this masterpiece, at least he should not edit another movie.

What a waste of time and money.

Dr. Marre (ph.d.guy)

I, too, saw this film at the Berlinale, and though the matter of rape was treated with maturity and frankness, the film itself was constructed poorly. More than anything, it was bland - camera placement and cuts were standard fare, non-diagetic sound was near non-existent, and the dialogue was highly unrealistic, comprising of long, drawn-out pauses interspersed with briefly-spoken lines.

The upshot of this was that I felt no attachment to the characters beyond a basic sympathy for their current predicaments - dialogue was stretched out to the point of losing its emotional resonance, and many lines were delivered with little feeling from the actors. I was particularly unconvinced by Sabine Timoteo's performance, whose talent restricted her to screaming rather than actual crying. Compared to Claire Dane's stunning depiction of anguish in Romeo and Juliet, I felt wholly unsatisfied by her performance.

It was these factors that made the characters feel less than human, failing to imbue them with life. This, coupled with the utterly bland direction and editing, meant that I felt no attachment to them, and I was left gagging for each coming line of dialogue purely to provide a break from the silent, expressionless moments in between. Drawing out the narrative to over two and a half hours simply rubbed salt in the wound.

The Free Will was not in itself awful, but there were so few points of interest that I found myself becoming restless within forty minutes, and when the credits rolled in what will doubtless be considered a brilliantly emotional finale, I still felt little attachment to the characters.

I would not like to give a summary of the impulsive scenes or the techniques used in the film. I do refrain from talking about the movie as a logical construction. Anyway, that is exactly what was done at Ludwigshafen's 'Festival des Deutschen Films' - trying to pull the discussion onto a more emotional level, the director himself and the two protagonists failed. which stands for the extreme distance people (and eve the cast) seem to be able to keep having watched the movie. This lets me conclude that the movie, although displaying one part of human life/struggle, was unable to move people's substance.. This is the first movie that made me doubt, if the medium 'movie' can really reach people's core. Not even the realistic display of rape seems to be enough to touch people.

This physically and emotionally extremely violent movie is a deep meditation on an essential philosophical problem regarding mankind: man's free will, his freedom and liberty of action. It is the story of a man who tries to master his sexually sadistic drive against women. With harsh explicit shots the camera shows the uphill struggle against this obsession baked into the genes: 'It is inside me. It is inside me'. How can I get rid of it? This movie, with a sublime Jurgen Vogel in an extremely difficult role, is one of the greatest masterpieces of all time. It is a must see for all those who want to know who we really are.