The "Edukators" (2004, cowritten and directed by Austrian Hans Weingartner [The White Sound, Free Rainer]) begins and ends brilliantly but has too slack a middle. At least 10-15 minutes of the 130-minute running time coulda/shoulda been cut. (The editing is the weakest aspect of the film, and not just in the failure to cut more.)

I sort of like the English-language pseudo-German title. A direct translation of the German title-- "Die Fetten Jahre sind vorbei"--"The Fat [in the sense of prosperous] Years are Over" -- is klunky as a title and somewhat obscure. Moreover, the gang of Dada "terrorists" sign their work "guardians" rather than "educators."

The film is about infantile leftism in the globalized 21st-century economy. The members of the ménage-à-trois are acutely aware of the failure of the failed leftist actions of the 1960s and frightened of outgrowing their fervor. When they kidnap a rich man who returned home while they were in it, he increases their awareness of both those phenomena (and starts to enjoy his enforced vacation in a remote Alpine meadow and cooperates with his captors).

Jule (Julia Jentsch [Sophie Scholl]) is the conscience of the ad hoc Dada revolutionaries. I found her more sympathetic than her smug official boyfriend Peter (Stipe Erceg [Don't Look for Me] of the sharp cheekbones) and as sympathetic as Jan (Daniel Bruehl [who played the charming son in "Goodbye Lenin" and won German Academy Awards as best actor both for it and for "No Regrets"]).

The political conclusions to be drawn from the film are somewhere between mushy and none, but "Edukators" has considerable charm as a romantic comedy of three anticapitalists and a surprisingly wistful "class enemy" Hardenburg (Burghart Klaussner [Requiem, The Man from the Embassy] won a German Academy Award as best supporting actor for his performance).

I like the Dada installations and the beauty of the Tirolean Alps, and the use of Jeff Buckley's rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" (which stretches across several scenes and is reprised in the closing credits), and the attractive but not conventionally "movie-star beautiful" three very free-lance musketeers, and the variation on the "Stockholm syndrome" (and its aftermath). This Austrian film is an interesting combination of the fresh (the Dada terrorism), the tried-and-true (the romantic triangle), and the stale (the political discussions). If only it had been better edited! (More nudity would also have been welcome... And naming names for assigning blame as well as for giving credit, the editors were Dirk Oetelshoven and Andreas Wodraschke, both of whom had edited "White Sound" (2001) for Weingartner; the latter also edited his (2007) "Free Rainer.")

The DVD is disappointingly lacking in bonus features. I'd like to have heard from Weingartner about what he thought he was doing, even if his thoughts on globalization are probably as unprofound as what he supplied his characters. But he might have something interesting to say about PoMo leftist acting out.

There are trailers for four other MGM DVD releases. That's it.

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BTW, the 2004 German nominee for a best foreign-language film Oscar was "Der Untergang" (Downfall), though "Edukators" received the best-film awards from both the German Academy and German film critics. The Spanish "Mar adentro" (The Sea Inside) won the best foreign-language film Oscar. A movie with a more unusual triad, "Million Dollar Baby" received the Oscars for best picture and direction (Clint Eastwood's).

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© 2007, Stephen O. Murray


This review is a part of CaptainD's good movie writeoff.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD