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The Week in Germany: Culture January 26, 2007 Two New German Films: "Wholetrain", Directed by Florian Gaag
When director Florian Gaag was a teenager in the 80’s, his father, a musician, brought back photographs of graffiti covered subway trains in New York. Gaag was hooked: “At first, I just started with good old fashioned German political graffiti, scribbling things in elevators. When the movie Wildstyle appeared in 1983, it all came together.” While Gaag was busy copping New York styles in Munich, the forces of
law, order, and real estate were aligning to buff the once tarnished and
scruffy New York to its current pristine luster. While some die-hards
still complain that the city’s personality was scrubbed away in
the processes, voters, investors, and tourists seemed to agree that the
city had been saved. Today, visitors to Berlin or Warsaw are more likely to bring home photographs of illicit murals, and depending on their cultural affinities, to wax romantic about the flourishing of street art that reclaims public spaces, or, alternatively, to complain about the scourge of vandalism. Gaag, whose jittery but precise camera follows a crew of graffiti writers through the rail yards and underpasses of an unnamed German city in his debut feature, is neither sentimental nor judgmental when it comes to his former pastime. “When graffiti flourishes in a city, it means something is broken. It’s because people don’t have the resources to stop it, not because they are more tolerant.” This refusal to romanticize graffiti or lionize his protagonists is what makes Gaag’s film so engaging. You might share the writers’ thrill at photographing a piece before transit workers scour it off with a chemical buff, or feel their shame when rivals pull off a “wholecar” that outshines their own pieces, but you are unlikely to feel that that was the point of the movie. Even the virtuosic original graffiti writing featured in the film is a kind of decoration to the real action - which is a story of youthful passion and idealism gone berserk. Wholetrain hones in on a single-mindedness and ambition that is as destructive as it is fruitful. The protagonists live for graffiti, and industriously pursue its glory to the detriment of everything else in their lives. David (Mike Adler), the leader of the “Keep Steel Burning” (KSB) crew is on probation for thousands of Euros of property damage and faces jail time if he gets caught again.
As David flirts with the sensible options of laying low or going straight, a dis from the rival crew “Above the Law” (ATL) ignites his ambition, and his crew eggs him on to a monumentally quixotic undertaking for a man who is one false move away from prison – KSB conspires to paint an entire train and establish their primacy over ATL. The story of macho rivalry in an urban jungle is fairly standard, but what really grabs your attention is the way that "Wholetrain" brings the characters’ asocial obsession to life. Tino (Florian Renner), the quintessential habitual offender, embodies this spirit. Within the graffiti scene, he is sympathetic. Although his reckless inclination toward fisticuffs at the slightest hint of a dis endangers the group several times, he is loyal and fiercely enthusiastic. One cannot help but admire his dedication. Outside the graffiti scene, Tino has plainly lost control. Graffiti trumps everything else in his life, including and especially his infant son, Kenny. When his mother and sister refuse to watch Kenny one evening, he drags the unusually placid baby along while he smokes weed, rumbles with ATL, and tags the town. Gaag, who spent years trying to win over skeptical funders and met with half the transit authorities in Europe before he finally got shooting permission in Warsaw, should know a thing or two about how that kind of singular focus can produce both art and personal chaos. As a graffiti writer, he earned more street cred than he probably ever needed: “I was caught twice, and I got burned really badly; I actually went to prison for quite a while,” he says matter-of-factly. One might argue that Gaag has reconciled his creative drive with society’s expectations by turning to film, but he doesn’t seem to see film as his salvation. “I just got involved in other things,” the director in his mid-thirties says obtusely when asked why he quit writing graffiti. Luckily, it seems that Gaag still sees the world through the eyes of a graffiti writer. His film leaves it to police, property owners, and grad students to debate the merits of illegal art. Not encumbered by a desire to legitimate art-crimes, "Wholetrain" revels in the rarified creative energy of youth - which can be the source of both art and crime.
"Summer in Berlin", Directed By Andreas Dresen If, as Florian Gaag suggests, graffiti is indeed a sign that something is broken in a society, one might get the impression that Andreas Dresen's latest film takes place in a rather dysfunctional Berlin. As the characters move through the scruffy hallways and courtyards of a Berlin neighborhood, graffiti hisses in the background like static. Harder evidence of a troubled society shouts in the foreground – this is a not-so romantic comedy about alcoholism, unemployment, and loneliness.
Or is it? Much has been made of the realistic, socially conscious, and sometimes ascetic style of much contemporary German cinema, and the characters in "Summer in Berlin" are written and played very realistically – sometimes painfully so. Still, Dresen imagines the dark world of Wolfgang Kohlhaase’s script in surprisingly rosy colors. Nike (Nadja Uhl) and her friend Katrin (Inka Friedrich) live in an unrenovated tenement building and spend most summer evenings on Nike’s balcony, recovering from the days traumas over a bottle of cheap vodka. Nike, genuinely beatiful if not entirely classy, falls for Ronald, a beer swilling, womanizing lout. While Nike’s kind and un-self-conscious way with the elderly people she cares for during the day let us suspect that she has a heart of gold, her inability to connect with Ronald betrays a profound loneliness. Katrin has had a bad run in the relationship department as well, it seems, and connects with men largely through prank calls. Embittered and drunken, she calls her ex-husband to wish him “every imaginable disease” on his birthday. Oblivious to the apparently harmless interest of the kindly pharmacist across the way, she torments him with the kinds of anonymous calls not usually heard of outside of middle school. We watch these painfully human Berliners make a mess of one situation after another, and we are invited to laugh at them. Presumably, we can laugh because we have made similar mistakes. “I am interested in stories in which I can see my own life reflected.” says Dresen. Indeed, this is hardly another confection from the Hollywood dream factory. The camera does not flinch as Nike takes care of the very old, changing their diapers, feeding them, and leaving them in profound loneliness. When Katrin nearly succumbs to alcohol poisoning, we are privy to her elemental misery, as real doctors (not played by actors) measure her vital signs under chilly fluorescent lights. Despite the relentless stream of personal failures, the film is anything but desolate. The characters take refuge in a network of social contacts that seem almost utopian, and, unfortunately, a tad old fashioned. The accidental friendship between two women in an apartment building, the corner bar where everyone knows everyone else’s name, the home-care provider who treats the elderly with respect and care: these human relationships, however tenuous, allow the characters to bear a mountain of tragedy. “Ultimately, I think this is a very optimistic film,” Dresen told a Washington, DC audience.
Still, Dresen and Kohlhaase are socially concerned filmmakers, and they do not let the film end without suggesting that these saving graces of a hard and sometimes lonely urban existence are threatened. In the final scene, Nike and Katrin’s building on the corner of Helmholtzplatz, a working-class and bohemian idyll in the former Eastern district of Prenzlauer Berg, is effaced by scaffolding. As Dresen pointed out to an audience member after the screening, long-time residents of such neighborhoods are being priced out by gentrification. Should we presume that by next summer the facade will be scrubbed clean, but Nike and Katrin may no longer be neighbors? Or should we hope, despite the odds, that the view from their balcony will just be a touch nicer next summer? |
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