Tag: Daniel Brühl

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

War is Hell in this impressively made but strangely unoriginal film, that looks the same and carries the same message as countless others

Director: Edward Berger

Cast: Felix Kammerer (Paul Bäumer), Albrecht Schuch (Stanislas “Kat” Katczinsky), Aaron Hilmer (Albert Kropp), Moritz Klaus (Franz Müller), Adrian Grünewald (Ludwig Behm), Edin Hasanovic (Tjaden Stackfleet), Daniel Brühl (Matthias Erzberger), Thibault de Montalambert (General Ferdinand Foch), David Striesow (General Friedrichs)

Perhaps no front-line fighting in history was more hellish than the mud-splattered sludge of death that were the First World War Trenches. Millions of men were fed through an industrial mincer of death, all for remarkably little gain. It was a tragedy born of ambition and pride. It’s cost on the young was beautifully captured by Erich Maria Remarque’s novel (an adaptation of which was one of the first Oscar winners) and it is bought to the screens again in this visceral German adaptation.

Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer) and his friends are naïve young men excited to serve in Spring 1917. Little do they know the blood-soaked, brutal reality of war. It’s soon thrust upon them when their first night in the trenches coincides with a catastrophic artillery attack. Skip forward a year and its November 1918. While Germany’s lead negotiator Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Brühl) tries to end the war, Paul and his mentor “Kat” (Albrecht Schuch) just hope to survive. But is there any hope?

All Quiet on the Western Front is raw, bloody and unflinching in its glance at the horrific realities of war. Shot with a cinematic beauty by Edward Berger that turns the mist filled world of no-man’s land into a sort of dreamscape that tips into a nightmare, it leaves no doubt about the brutal cost of war. Bodies are torn apart by explosions, shredded by bullets (even dead ones). Hand-to-hand combat is ruthless and there is not a jot of quarter given on any side. Everything is coated in a sheen of mud and blood, with dying men desperately gulping filthy water or left slumped where they fall.

The after-effects of war are horrifically shown. On their first night one of Paul’s friend is literally shredded by mortar fire. Bodies left on no-man’s land are peppered with bullets. The remains of a soldier is blasted out of his uniform, left hanging several feet up a tree. Paul and Kat discover a missing regiment of young recruits dead in an old factory, having removed their gas masks too soon. Tanks emerge from the mist, setting the ground shaking, rats fleeing before them, spewing death from their machine gun turrets, crushing screaming men under their tracks.

This is actually a fairly loose adaptation of the novel. The original prided itself on its lack of specifics: it’s never quite sure when or where it happens other than in the trenches. The soldiers fight in brutal battles in unnamed locations and simply live a day-to-day existence. This version make everything very specific: November 1918. Sub-plots around the armistice negotiations and the unwillingness of a die-hard Prussian General (a vilely arrogant David Striesow) to accept defeat expand the film beyond the novel’s original scope. However, this expansion never feels fully explored and at times detracts from the film’s richer, more intimate focus on the soldiers.

Berger’s film perfectly captures the sense of these boys being fed into a huge industrial meatgrinder in a cycle of death. The opening sequence follows a young soldier. He trembles with fear before going over the top, aimlessly fires his bullets and then grabs his spade to continue the charge and bludgeon a soldier. Cut to black before we follow the progress of Heinrich’s uniform. It is removed from his dead body, carted back to Germany, washed, repaired and then handed over to Paul as he signs up. Paul questions the name-tag inside: “Must have been too small. Happens all the time” the recruiting officer says, ripping it out. It’s all a production line.

Paul soon learns the truth. Felix Kammerer is excellent as this sensitive, enthusiastic young man (forging his father’s signature so he can join up) who sheds his innocence to become a battle-hardened warrior, succumbing to a mechanical, merciless violence in combat. He kills without hesitation and when guilt arrives – such as his killing of a French soldier in a fox hole – it leaves little long-term impact, so deadened has he become. Equally good is Albrecht Schuch, humane and worldly-wise figure as Kat. The bond – part brotherly, part father-son – is the film’s most affecting personal beat, and its most effecting scene involves Paul reading the illiterate Kat his mail.

There is much to admire here. But yet, while a technical triumph and immersive experience (even its score plays out with the organ-led heaviness of an artillery attack), I was less impressed with it than I expected. Perhaps that’s because it does or says nothing new. The original film was made by many people who were actually in the trenches. This film was made by people who grew up watching movies about wars. It’s frames of reference are subtly different, although its intentions are the same. Maybe that’s why I find it less affecting and less shocking than a film made 100 years ago.

For all its technical skill, the film is a continuation of visual grammar and thematic ideas established in countless films before. The blood-spattered immediacy of Saving Private Ryan. Tracking shots that remind you of 1917 and Paths of Glory. The on-the-streets fury of Black Hawk Down. The rumbling soundtrack of Dunkirk. It tells us War is Hell: but nothing else. Maybe that message is enough and it deserves repeating. But when the film expands the original like this, you want more.

The inclusion of the armistice works against it. The time jump means we lose any sense of the slow disillusionment of these men. Several key moments from the book – most notably Paul’s brief return to a home he can no longer relate to – have been stripped out. Setting the film in the last week of the war leads to a predictable ending that feels like its straining for even more pathos – of course there will be key deaths in the final minutes of the war. A more daring film might have looked more at how a harsh armistice and dark mutterings of betrayal led so many of these young men to hurl Germany back into war only twenty years later.

All Quiet on the Western Front is powerful, but its power is one of reiterating a familiar message. Berger’s film is wonderfully made but only follows confidently in the footprints of other (better) films. It avoids developing its message or context further and it’s expansion of the book’s plotline waters down the personal stories that made it so affecting. It’s grand, cinematic and powerful – but could have been more.

The Fifth Estate (2013)

Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Bruhl struggle through this turgid retelling of hacking derring-do in The Fifth Estate

Director: Bill Condon

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch (Julian Assange), Daniel Brühl (Daniel Domscheit-Berg), Alicia Vikander (Anke Domscheit-Berg), Anthony Mackie (Sam Coulson), David Thewlis (Nick Davies), Stanley Tucci (James Boswell), Laura Linney (Sarah Shaw), Moritz Bleibtrue (Marcus), Carice van Houten (Birgitta Jónsdóttir), Peter Capaldi (Alan Rusbridger), Dan Stevens (Ian Katz), Alexander Siddig (Dr Tarek Haliseh)

In 2010 the world was thrown into turmoil when a website called Wikileaks published a host of top-secret government documents that revealed a never-ending stream of Western wrong-doing during the war on terror. The leak was co-published by WikiLeaks and the Guardian and New York Times. However Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (played here by Benedict Cumberbatch) had other ideals – namely that the files should not be redacted in any way to protect serving US officials or informants in hostile countries.

It should be a gripping story of the state failing to keep up with the speed of modern communications. But instead this is one hell of a turgid, dull info-dump of a film that turns this potentially explosive event into something about as gripping as watching a series of people type into a computer. On top of that, the film totally fails to develop any proper personality dynamics to engage your interest, and instead falls back into the usual crude filmic language of a star-struck protégé realising his mentor has feet of clay.

Bill Condon’s direction is totally incapable of making the entry of data into a computer dynamic or visual, and is completely unable to bring the world of computer hacking and data search to life. In fact, there is so much information given to the viewers (rather than drama) that the impression I was left with is that Condon doesn’t really understand what’s going on in the movie anyway. He certainly doesn’t manage to make it interesting or feel that important.

Visually, the film is flat and falls back on superimposing text on the screen when people type or creating a sort of “mind palace” office to represent the inner workings of the Wikileaks server (which is basically just a big office space). In fact, the film gets less interesting as it progresses – which is a real shame after a nifty credits sequence that chronicles in images the development of the press from cave paintings, through the Rosetta stone, printing, television and the internet.

Not to mention the lack of drama about this. Things are just happening – we never get any sense of the danger or the world-changing impact, or any reason why we should care. Poor Anthony Mackie, Laura Linney and Stanley Tucci are wheeled out as a trio of American government big wigs who talk at each other at great length about what is going on and how it will endanger government assets – but it’s all show and not tell. The plight of a Tunisian informant – played with his usual skill by Alexander Siddig – is reduced to a few scenes, a human element that gets trimmed so much it carries little impact.

The film also deals with the personality clashes Assange inspires, here interpreted as a borderline sociopathic monster, an egotist and liar interested only in his own legend. Benedict Cumberbatch gives a superbly detailed and richly observed impersonation of Assange, but the character has no depth. He’s merely a sort of phantom monster, who the film slowly reveals has no conscience. Compare it to the presentation of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (a film that is everything this clunking disaster is not). That film is also told from the prospective of a disillusioned former colleague, but there our view of the central character is shaded and given depth – and we are encouraged to recognise we are seeing one person’s perspective. Here the film swallows whole the side of the story presented by Daniel Berg.

Berg played with a disengaged flatness by Daniel Brühl, snoozing through a part shorn of any dynamism, whose views oscillate constantly until he finally settles for being a campaigner to keep sources safe. Alicia Vikander gets shockingly short shrift as a girlfriend – she even has the obligatory “stop working on the management of earth-shattering leaks and come to bed” scene. Berg allies himself with the traditional media, similarly portrayed with a clunking obviousness: David Thewlis is a standard shouty journalist, Peter Capaldi a chin-stroking concerned editor.

The Fifth Elementis flat and unable to dramatise the world of computer coding. The dialogue is turgid and obvious (there is a terribly obvious metaphor of Assange constantly lying about the reason for his white hair – he can’t be trusted you see!) and the performances are either dull, clichéd or saddled with this terrible writing. At the end, as Cumberbatch plays Assange denouncing the entire film in a reconstruction of a talking head interview, you get a sense of the more interesting, fourth-wall-leaning film this might have been. But sadly the rest of the film reminds you what a flat, tedious, stumbling, confused, inexplicable misfire this really is.

Captain America: Civil War (2016)

Captain America and Iron Man stand-off in overblown Captain America: Civil War

Director: Anthony and Joe Russo

Cast: Chris Evans (Steve Rogers), Robert Downey Jnr (Tony Stark), Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff), Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes), Anthony Mackie (Sam Wilson), Don Cheadle (James Rhodes), Jeremy Renner (Clint Barton), Chadwick Boseman (T’Challa), Paul Bettany (Vision), Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda Maximoff), Paul Rudd (Scott Lang), Emily VanCamp (Sharon Carter), Tom Holland (Peter Parker), Frank Grillo (Crossbones), William Hurt (Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross), Daniel Brühl (Helmet Zemo), Martin Freeman (Everett K Ross), Marisa Tomei (May Parker), John Kani (T’Chaka), John Slattery (Howard Stark), Hope Davis (Maria Stark), Alfre Woodward (Mariah Dillard)

Captain America: Civil War is another explosive entry in the MCU, and is even more stuffed than usual, with nearly all our Avengers thrown into the mix – with the added twist that they fight each other! Yup it’s time for another playground argument: “If X fought Y, which one would win?!” That’s the main thrust of Captain America: Civil War, but it’s actually a distraction from the real plot. The much hyped fight at the airport (and the build-up to it) is a rather dull hour in the middle that distracts from a richer, more interesting film.

There is dissent in the ranks of the Avengers. The UN wants them to sign the “Zukovian Accords” – an agreement that they will work only under the direction of the UN. For Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jnr) this legal framework for their actions is essential – but Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) argues that the Avengers need to have the freedom to go where they are needed, not only where they are told. In this tense situation, a bombing in Vienna is swiftly blamed on Roger’s old friend Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), who has become the brain-washed killer The Winter Soldier. In disagreement with Stark about the Accords and determined to protect Bucky, Steve quickly finds himself on a collision course with Tony.

The central idea here is actually fairly interesting: are superheroes people with a higher duty or just a group of vigilantes? Should they follow the direction of politicians – or be free to go where they are needed, when they are needed? How much accountability should they hold? If, in saving the world, dozens of civilians should die in the aftermath, is that acceptable or not? These are the ideas that lie under the arguments that the characters – principally Captain America and Iron Man – have.

The first 40 minutes set this up nicely: an operation goes wrong, people are killed and the Avengers are confronted with footage of the collateral destruction they have caused while saving the world. But these ideas get left behind as the film gets caught up with pushing our characters into an artificial-feeling battle so destructive that an entire airport gets trashed by the “let’s cool our actions” team while trying to stop the “we should be independent” faction.

It would have been really nice to have these ideas explored in more depth, rather than a few moments here and there. Essentially, the film hires Alfre Woodard to deliver a top-notch performance as a mother whose son was Avengers collateral damage, to convince Tony things need to change, and leaves it at that. Steve’s counter-argument gets laid out swiftly – though he strangely makes no reference to the fact that the previous film saw a very similar “government organisation” revealed as the source of all evil in the Marvel world. It’s quick beats like this that set up this collision – but only Tony and Steve get any chance to express any form of developed views (in a few very well acted scenes). The motivations of the rest of the Avengers seem under-developed.

But that’s the problem with Captain America: Civil War: it’s seriously overstuffed. With some of these plots and characters removed, we could have actually had a very rich, thematic story.

The whole “Zukovia Accords” plot also has to constantly juggle for space with leftover “Winter Soldier” plotline from the previous two films. Truth be told, the latter is the more interesting, dealing with actual emotions, friendships and loyalties – chiefly the bond between Bucky and Steve (very well illustrated in a few brief, well played scenes). It’s this dilemma of whether Bucky can be held responsible for things he did under mind control that becomes the film’s key question. This plot line works far more effectively as it basically involves only three of the characters and feels like it has genuine things at stake, in a way I just can’t feel about the forced “civil war” angle.

But it’s that civil war angle that the film is being sold on – and it’s what the middle section of the film is given over to. The big, airport-wrecking battle between the two sides is well shot, has good special effects and throws in plenty of neat one-liners. But what it completely lacks is any sort of dramatic tension or any stakes. As our heroes indestructibly bounce around while swapping light banter you never feel that this battle really amounts to anything. The sides don’t seem that far apart, or really that different – in fact the whole thing feels like playground horseplay.

The big battle is even undermined by the fact that we’ve already seen our heroes fight each other at least twice already in small combinations – and in all these cases, bodies are thrown about mercilessly but no one suffers more than a few scratches. Even after a character falls hundreds of feet to the ground, he’s later shown as basically being absolutely fine. The big battle is supposed to be the exciting showpiece, but it’s basically just big filler. A load of noise, where nothing really happens and no-one really feels at any risk, with no real consequences (all the emotional consequences emerge from the smaller scale final confrontation which would be unchanged if this airport fight was removed).

The film only really recovers again once that fight is benched, and we wind up with three of our heroes squaring off over very personal issues. This also brings to the fore the Daniel Brühl’s fascinating character, a very different type of villain: someone whom the film plays a neat game of misdirection with. The film reveals one of its themes as revenge, and how much it can dominate or twist our lives. This is given voice through a wonderfully written and played scene between Brühl and Boseman (very dynamic as the future Black Panther, dealing with grief over the murder of his father).

That scene gives an insight into the film’s real strengths: the small moments. The bits where the overblown fighting can be put to one side and we can see these characters (and the very good actors who inhabit them) talk. Moments like this carry more humanity, interest and tension than a thousand sequences of a giant Ant-man. In these moments, Downey Jnr and Evans are both terrific. Evans was born to play this part, making Rogers adamantine in his decency and nobility without being wearing, and also demonstrating an increasing streak of an old-soul who is tired of listening to other people and wants to make his own choices. Downey Jnr increasingly makes Stark a man hiding resentments, fears and doubts under a veneer of cool. Several other excellent performances also burst around the margins of the film (I’d single out Mackie who is excellent as the loyal Sam).

It’s just a shame Captain America: Civil War wastes some strong material in the prolonged set-up – and then enactment – of its superhero feud. Enjoyable as it can be to see this sort of stuff from time to time, after a while it’s tedious to watch invulnerable people taking pot shots at each other with no discernible impact. A single conversation with stakes – with a doubt about whether a friendship will hold or not – has more tension and excitement than a hundred sequences of heroes hitting each other. There is a more interesting story here – but between the action and the obligatory set-ups for future Black Panther and Spiderman movies (excellent as Boseman and Holland are in these roles) it doesn’t quite reach its potential.

Woman in Gold (2015)

Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds stumble through bland Philomena rip-off Woman in Gold

Director: Simon Curtis

Cast: Helen Mirren (Maria Altmann), Ryan Reynolds (Randy Schoenberg), Daniel Brühl (Hubertus Czernin), Katie Holmes (Pam Schoenberg), Tatiana Maslany (Young Maria), Max Irons (Fritz Altmann), Charles Dance (Sherman), Elizabeth McGovern (Judge Cooper), Jonathan Pryce (Chief Justice Renhquist), Antje Traue (Adele Bloch-Bauer), Allan Corduner (Gustav), Henry Goodman (Ferdinand)

The Nazi regime across Europe was a criminal one in every sense of the word. Along with the hideous acts of murder and warmongering, Woman in Gold uses its story to remind us their leaders were also little better than common thieves.

Maria Altmann was a young Jewish woman from a wealthy family, living in Vienna in the 1930s. She escaped from Austria to the US in 1939 with her husband, but had to leave the rest of her family behind. Their fine possessions, including several paintings by Klimt, were stolen by the Nazis.

Decades later, Maria (Helen Mirren) recruits struggling lawyer Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) to help her reclaim the paintings, now owned by the Austrian government. The government are predictably dismissive of any claims on their heritage, and are particularly unwilling to give up Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (or Woman in Gold), a portrait of Altmann’s aunt, proudly displayed as a jewel of Austrian culture. So begins a case that will go, via the American supreme court, to the very heart of Austria’s uncomfortable relationship with its past. In parallel, Maria remembers her younger self (Tatiana Maslany) and her escape from Vienna.

I think it’s fair to say Maria is a role Helen Mirren could play standing on her head. It’s a cliché – the feisty, imperious elderly woman who cows all around her, but has a heart of (forgive me) gold. Ryan Reynolds Schoenberg is similarly predictably: a young, naïve, slightly bumbling do-gooder revealed to have hidden depths of strength, and ends up connecting with his own heritage in a “very personal” journey. In fact, every character in the “present day” plotline is a hopeless cliché. Katie Holmes has perhaps the worst role as Schoenberg’s wife – as The Wife always does in these things, she spends the first half of the film asking her husband to drop his time-consuming crusade, but come the second half she’s making the inevitable “you’ve come too far to give up now” speech.

Every bit of the modern day story is predictable, reheated slop from other, much better movies – you literally recognise every beat of every courtroom scene. Most conversations are essentially the actors spooling plot at each other, explaining everything from art history to Austrian mediation procedures. The moments where the dialogue allows the actors to focus on character land with a hamfisted heaviness, with all the subtly of Oscar “for your consideration” scenes.

Periodically the story abandons logical evolution altogether and leaps from A to B without explanation: Maria will never go back to Vienna, less than five minutes of screentime later oh no actually she will (explained by a timely, on-the-nose flashback), no she definitely won’t go back a second time, ta-da there she is. She wants to fight, then she wants to give up, then she wants to fight again. Whether these events were real or not, the film makes them feel like humdrum screenplay hokum.

You keep waiting for this to spring to life and do something fresh, but it never does. Even its odd-couple pairing is essentially Philomena reheated – but without the wit and warmth of that film’s script. It manages to turn what should have been an interesting story into something drier and duller than a documentary would have been.

The film takes wing a little more in the flashbacks to the 1930s. Again, there’s nothing new here, but the performances in are infused with a warmth, emotion and humanity missing from the other storyline – Allan Corduner is particularly good as Maria’s loving father. The sense of peril from the Nazis also gives the film a clear and unequivocal antagonist: the sequence where Maria and her husband flee Vienna is more engaging and tense than anything else in the film.

The weight of these flashbacks, however, only serves to contrast poorly with the strange, odd-couple comedy of the rest of the film. It’s literally two different films sitting uncomfortably together, neither doing either any service.

Woman in Gold is a confused film, that drags down what could have been a fascinating story into a safe, Sunday-afternoon film that never wants to say anything too controversial (even its potshots at the Austrians for overlooking their Nazi past is balanced by “good” Austrians). It reduces its characters to plot-spouting clichés, wrapped in a dry story. Although its flashback scenes carry some emotional heft, they can’t save the main plotline which spirals on and on, never engaging the viewer’s interest. It’s not gold, it’s very base metal.