c_matschke

This film left me in a disturbed state of mind. At its core is a simple enough story which offers no simple answers. What you see, or think you see, is two worlds colliding. The have's, and the have-not's. Rich boy befriends poor boy and invites him to his stately family castle. It doesn't end well. The extremely beautiful camerawork, and the sometimes abrupt plot twists which seem to have no real psychological explanation, give this film an air of a poem - a strange poem that does not give a realistic picture of the "real" world but follows its own inner logic. At the end, we think we understand what happened and why. But I think, we don't - not until we appreciate the new meaning that the director has given to the term "working class" (which may be one of the reasons that American viewers seem to rate this film so low).

I watched the first season of the UK version of The Traitors: It was absolutely friggin brilliant. I didn't expect it to be. But the game made me witness social dynamics in a way I have never seen on TV before. Gripping stuff. I also watched the first season of the US version - which was great as well, but suffered considerably from the producers' decision to staff contestants with a handful of known names bringing on camera experience. Luckily, they weren't the majority. But it gave a somewhat false air to the proceedings. And now along comes German TV station RTL and, we should have known, it does what it always does: Using (or shall I say: Misusing) every show for promoting the personal brands of people they call "Promis". These people are more or less (mostly less) well known in Germany, and RTL recycles them in their shows. Thus they become ever more valuable to RTL and their next show. For the German version of The Traitors that is bad news. Because now we don't get gripping social dynamics between regular people you never had heard of before and therefore cannot quite figure out. We now get a dance routine of professional egos. Which has a devastating effect on the entertainment factor. This version of The Traitors is just plain boring. I give 3 stars because the concept as such still is somewhat undestroyable. In this case, it is the execution that makes it sub-par TV.

Each scene and every situation, the whole plot drags on and on, like a prisoner trying to escape through the swamps tugging at a 50 pound steel ball chained around his ankle. I didn't think such bad writing and directing was possible nowadays. But then again, what do I know. Too bad about the story. It does have the potential to make an exciting series. Concise writing seems to have fallen out of fashion. The fact that I am forced to add more than two hundred characters to my review although, from my point of view, I already have said everything there is to say about this ill-conceived series, may serve as proof.