"Vincent Will Meer" stands for "Vincent Wants to Sea", which in my opinion, first of all, could use an action verb in the title of the movie - perhaps "go" or "see"?
Germans have been very, very good filmmakers in the past few years. Aside from the Deutschen black and white films, like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), they've been known for solid films - although, during Nazi times, the filmmakers were too occupied shooting documentaries about Hitler...
In just the last few years, German filmmakers produced some of the best works that have been internationally acknowledged and awarded, such as The White Ribbon and The Lives of The Others (the one I've seen about 3 times). So now, every time a German movie comes to big screens in USA, I make sure, I see it. This time was no different.
“Vincent Wants to Sea” - unlike many movies nowadays - shows a piece of real life. It's a film about human needs to be understood, to be accepted, to be loved and to be fulfilled - to be happy. The movie is centered around three young people, whose fates lead them to the medical institution - clinic that is treating people with OCDs and all kind of other nervosa disorders: one is anorexic, another one is obsessive-compulsive and a third one has a Tourette's condition.
 |
| Marie, Florian and Alex |
The director Ralf Huettner takes a rather problematic truth about today's society - more and more people become obsessive-compulsive nowadays - and shows that one CAN live with a syndrome, one CAN be 'normal', even though in the situation with the characters, one of them is less curable than the others - and the director locks her up in the hospital as if to show that her condition - anorexia - needs to be treated and one cannot roam free with her condition that leads to heart failure and death.
Huettner wants to show the audience happy and sad moments of simple actions: eating, sleeping, driving a car...He shows human actions by humans who are considered to be "sick" by most people in the society. Of course, in these kind of films, there should be a good and a bad person - a good doctor and a bad parent, who end up chasing "the patients" after those steal a doctor's car and go to sea.
The three young main characters — Marie the anorexic (Karoline Herfurth), germaphobe Alex (Johannes Allmayer) and the tic-plagued title character (Florian David Fitz, who also wrote the script) - define their disorders in their own ways, and it feels as if they are very WELL and FULLY aware of their own disorders. Moreover, they are aware that their disorders are not NORMAL. They also make it OK to laugh at them and their disorders. I think that was one of the director's goals - to make us accept people with disorders and make them feel part of the today's society.
These characters are cute and cuddly, and only a little bit wacky. And what makes the movie even more sensitive and touching is the fact that these characters are being ironic about themselves and their disorders. For example, when the "gang" learns they have little money for their sea trip, Alex jokes about Marie's condition by saying "Well, on this money Marie can live for a year", implying that since she does not eat at all, she wouldn't use money on food and - that would be economical.
There is also a very good, solid scene of father-son reconciliation - of acceptance of a son and his disorder and the choices he wants to make in life. There are also very natural scenes of a slowly developing friendship between two straight males. All in all, the film is filled with true-to-life, very adorable scenes of humor and sadness and - everything in between.
It's a truly sensitive and smart film, which is neither heavy, nor light on an audience, but the characters and their emotions and actions do make one forget that he/she is reading subtitles.
One more time I'm not disappointed in a German movie.
Comments
Post a Comment