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The Week in Germany: Culture February 1, 2008 Grave Decisions: A Very Bavarian Comedy Wins Over Germany
In Marcus Rosenmüller’s “Grave Decisions” (Wer Früher Stirbt ist Länger Tot), the 11-year-old Sebastian (Markus Krojer) has to come to grips with grown-up concepts like mortality and sin when he learns that his mother died in childbirth. His laconic father Lorenz, who runs the local inn, is barely able to penetrate his own grief to explain to the boy that he was not to blame, so Sebastian turns elsewhere in his quest for understanding. As it turns out, there is plenty of wisdom to be had on the topic from other local authorities in his alpine Bavarian idyll. From the all-permeating, almost Latinate local brand of Catholicism he gets (most of) the message about salvation and eternal life, but also the threat of purgatory. The profane but kindly troupe of local yokels at his father’s bar have some earthier wisdom on the role of the birds and the bees in life’s eternal cycle, while a clownish local radio announcer implants some ideas about the salvation to be had in rock n’ roll. Folk tradition and agriculture also provide some clues about nature’s way. Filtered through the naiveté and literal-mindedness of a country rapscallion, though, all this wisdom fails to come into focus as the big picture. Instead, Sebastian cobbles together hilarious and endearing plans to become immortal so as to avoid purgatory and join his mother in heaven, and hi-jinks ensue. Guitars are smashed, and experiments to verify the putative multiple lives of cats (in Germany, they have seven) go tragically wrong. Sensing that love might be all one needs, he endeavors to find a new mate for his father, which drives the film to a climax that delivers heartbreak and love in equal measures. Written and performed entirely in a southern Bavarian dialect that is as obscure to most of Germany as it is essential to the film’s dry, earthy wit, this movie was something of a little engine that could in Germany. As Nele Joas from the production house Roxy Films explains, the film’s slow climb from regional sleeper to runaway hit took even its creators by surprise. We caught up with Joas and asked her a few questions during a recent screening at the Goethe Institut in Washington, DC. How did Roxy Films decide to make this picture? It was a very large risk. You have to consider that this was Marcus Rosenmüller’s first film after his graduation from Film School, and it was Roxy Film’s first film as a production company. We never could have raised the money for it ourselves. It was only possible through film grants, both from the federal side and from the Bavarian film promotion agency and Bavarian film and television, who really believed in us. Even within Bavaria, people speak different dialects, and the dialect spoken in the film is really only spoken in the very southern part of Bavaria, so it is even difficult for Germans to understand. Why not shoot the movie in standard German? We decided to do it in the dialect first and foremost because of the director, Marcus Rosenmüller, who is a true Bavarian. We just could not have communicated the mentality or the local color without making the film in the local dialect. There is also a dry, somewhat crude humor with a lot of puns that we just could not have translated. It was risky, we knew that from the beginning, but we tried nevertheless and had unexpected success. 1.8 million people have seen it to this point. When it started last August, the producers and the distributor thought we might have 500,000 by the end of the year, but we already had a million by October. We also won a number of prizes – not only the Bavarian film prize for best film, but also the German film prize in four categories – producer, director, script, and music. It was really incredible. Did the film also reach people outside Bavaria? It started in Bavaria and then moved to the larger cities. It did very well in bigger cities like Berlin, Hamburg and Freiburg, and it it was eventually released in most of the rest of Germany. The only area where it did not really take hold was North Rhine Westphalia, where cities like Cologne and Duesseldorf are. I think they have a slightly different sense of humor there. Do you think the movie’s depiction of life in an idyllic Bavarian village bears any comparison to the Heimatfilme of the post World War II era, which offered an escape from the horrors of war by turning away from modernity toward nature and tradition? Actually, those films presented a very naïve and kitschy world where no problems existed. Marcus Rosenmüller’s films have also been called Heimatfilme, but they are all about the people and landscapes of a particular region, so I think it has a different meaning. In the fifties, these movies created a world where there are really no problems, and in this movie, the main character Sebastian is dealing with concepts like death. In the fifties, it would have just been about love or something. What was it like shooting in the Bavarian Alps? We were able to shoot at the Bayrischer Rundfunk transmission station on the Wendelstein, an 1800 meter peak. Unfortunately, it was raining when we shot there, so the clouds you see are real. It was also very difficult to find the right place to set the tavern and farmhouse scenes. Most of the farms there have been modernized, so we were very lucky to locate the Kandlerwirt, which is still a functioning inn. How did you find Markus Krojer, who made his film debut as Sebastian? We saw over six hundred boys for that part before we finally found Markus.
It was important to find a special actor who could also speak the dialect,
so our casting agent actually suggested that we take out radio ads in
Bavaria. We also visited schools, and that is how we found Markus. We
knew that he was right for the part immediately, and he was really a natural
actor. |
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