Writer/director Tom Tykwer and star Franka Potente followed up their sensational success, the 81-minute "Run, Lola, Run" (Lola rennt, 1998) with a much longer (50 minutes longer) movie that is also about Destiny forged in seeming coincidences, but by the choices the characters (especially Potente's) make. "The Princess and the Warrior," the English title of their 2000 movie switches the order of the German title "Der Krieger und die Kaiserin," and demotes the female lead from empress to princess. The "warrior," Bodo Riemer (Benno Fürmann), was in the army and is depressed to the edge of catatonia, frequently breaking into tears, held somewhat together by his brother Walter (Joachim Król). The war he is waging during the movie is with himself. It was not immediately obvious to me what was ruled by the "princess" (/Kaiserin) Simone (called "Sisi" by her friends), played by Franka Potente. It is a psychiatric ward quite unlike those in "The Snake Pit" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" in which Sisi is a nurse much beloved by the patients, but not the daughter or wife of the psychiatrist who rules the small empire...

As Lola, Potente ran through most of the movie. It is Bodo who does the running early in "Princess/Warrior." This time, Potente repeatedly gets knocked down—very hard and in one instance, nearly fatally. That is the instance where Bodo and Sisi "meet" (in about as unusual a way as any pair in any movie I can think of!).

Although there are stretches of the movie in which very little happens, at other times things happen very suddenly. What happens is often not what other movies have made us expect to happen, and I don't want to compromise the surprises by describing the plot(s). I will mention that there are two scenes too gruesome for me to watch and that the middle recalled Stanley Kubrick's "The Killing" and John Huston's "Asphalt Jungle" to me, and the last part of Fritz Lang's "You Only Live Once"; a botched crime is also part of what happened in "Run, Lola, Run." The institutional locations (asylum and bank) resonate with Kubrick's "2001" (which is to say, very 1970ish).

"Princess/Warrior" does not go back and forth like "Lola" (or Amores Perros — which it also recalls in some of its obsessiveness and the intertwining of destinies by accidents. There are flashbacks of intentional (if crazy) deaths, but mostly the movie proceeds chronologically. Who is doing what is clear, though motivations only become (somewhat!) clear gradually.

Potente has a remarkably expressive face (but not the fire-engine red hair of her Lola or her own less fiery red hair: she has long blonde hair as Sisi). She is especially haunting in the scene in which she finds Bodo again. Over the course of it, she registers a phenomenal range of emotions. (That is, there is more than "Nurse Betty" obliviousness involved.)Fürmann is playing a character out of touch with his emotions, including his all-pervasive grief. Emotionally shut down as he is, tears well up. Fürmann had to cry repeatedly while not showing any (other) facial emotion (which can't be easy to do). Some of the mental patients suffer vividly. Melchior Beslon's Otto is particularly outstanding. The patients are very individuated, and even the three bank guards come across as quite distinct from each other.

As I've already indicated, I was surprised by a number of turns in the plot(s). It took a while to be engaged by the movie and by Sisi's quest, and I think twenty or so minutes could have been lopped off the running time of 133 minutes. There is one coincidence (a locket picture) that seems particularly gratuitous.

In the tradition of the 1970s "new German cinema" (and "Lola") there are some very saturated colors. There are also noticeably many aerial shots spread throughout the movie (most of which was filmed in Wuppertal, Westphalia, but ends on the Cornwall coast, standing in—not very convincingly—for the south of France). Frank Griebe's cinematography is outstanding, if perhaps overindulged by director and editor. (He also photographed "Lola".) I think the doubling of Bodo is a little cutesy, but there is some really harrowing material in the movie and lots of very striking images.

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The DVD is loaded with extra features including a commentary track by the director (in English), another commentary track with the director, Potente, and Fürmann (also in English), an excellent 35-minute documentary (in German), a music video ("You can't find peace" performed by Pale 3 feat, in English) and three theatrical trailers (including one that would not have persuaded me to watch "Run, Lola, Run", plus one for "Go" and one for this movie). I think that the last of the deleted scenes should have remained in the film and it must have been very difficult to cut another one (atop the bank tower). The trialogue commentary track is very interesting and informative about how things were done. The "making of" documentary is not the usual kind of puff piece featurette (like, say, the one for "Rushmore") with some cute behind-the-scenes pictures and vacuous participants. It includes bits from more deleted scenes and genuinely analytical reflections about the characters and meanings of the film by Tykwer, seven of the actors, and four of the other makers of the film (producer, set designer, cinematographer, editor). I would strongly recommend watching the "making of" documentary and the music video only after having watched the movie. (Usually, it doesn't matter, but in this instance, it does.) My only complaint about the extras is that there are no chapter divisions within the documentary (so that I watched the first 25 minutes a second time at 16x).



Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age