Film: Hotel Lux
Nov. 16th, 2011 13:22Oh dear, I am running more than a bit behind on blogging... Anyway, here's to a good attempt to catch up in my free-period in school; not like I'll have time to read the heavy 26-pages article I need to have read tomorrow anyway before I'm off to class.
We went to the cinema last Friday, to watch Michael Bully Herbig's new movie, Hotel Lux. It's a dark comedy about a non-political German variety artist, who has to flee the country due to the Nazis. The latter influenced by the fact that the skit he has together with a (Jewish) partner, is poking fun at Hitler and Stalin. Due to various things, his dream of going to Hollywood fails, and instead he ends up in Moscow, at Hotel Lux, where all the up-and-coming German socialists are living in exile.
Oh, and because the fake passport he had was meant for someone else, Stalin now thinks that he's a close confidant of Hitler. It is also the period of the great anti-Trotsky "cleansing" of the Communist part.
Sooo... when it says black humor? It's what's on the tin, for sure. People are (rather graphically) murdered and shot here, and several characters see-saw wildly between being buffoonish villains in a slapstick/Disney-esque way, and being honest-to-god scary fuckers. Which, on the one hand, when compared to many of the Ostalgie-influenced German comedies I've seen, is good. You can make fun of Stalin, but forgetting that he had loads and loads of people killed or deported leaves a weird taste behind. Otoh, compared to something like Hot Fuzz, where people die right and left without the movie ever really loosing it's comedic grounding, Hotel Lux is something of a failure.
The actors were, overall, quite good (though the love-story felt extremely shoehorned) and while the plot isn't the deepest, it acts well to showcase all the personalities. The claustrophobia and tired "yeah, it's a terror regime but you can't be scared shitless ALL the time, get on with it" athmosphere of the hotel is well captured... most of the time.
An uneven movie, with a thread-thin plot, but charming/terrifying characters and a couple of really well-done jokes. And! Since I'm more used to US/British comedy tropes, it feels more unpredictable
Not Bully's best work, but worth to see. Be prepared for violence though
We went to the cinema last Friday, to watch Michael Bully Herbig's new movie, Hotel Lux. It's a dark comedy about a non-political German variety artist, who has to flee the country due to the Nazis. The latter influenced by the fact that the skit he has together with a (Jewish) partner, is poking fun at Hitler and Stalin. Due to various things, his dream of going to Hollywood fails, and instead he ends up in Moscow, at Hotel Lux, where all the up-and-coming German socialists are living in exile.
Oh, and because the fake passport he had was meant for someone else, Stalin now thinks that he's a close confidant of Hitler. It is also the period of the great anti-Trotsky "cleansing" of the Communist part.
Sooo... when it says black humor? It's what's on the tin, for sure. People are (rather graphically) murdered and shot here, and several characters see-saw wildly between being buffoonish villains in a slapstick/Disney-esque way, and being honest-to-god scary fuckers. Which, on the one hand, when compared to many of the Ostalgie-influenced German comedies I've seen, is good. You can make fun of Stalin, but forgetting that he had loads and loads of people killed or deported leaves a weird taste behind. Otoh, compared to something like Hot Fuzz, where people die right and left without the movie ever really loosing it's comedic grounding, Hotel Lux is something of a failure.
The actors were, overall, quite good (though the love-story felt extremely shoehorned) and while the plot isn't the deepest, it acts well to showcase all the personalities. The claustrophobia and tired "yeah, it's a terror regime but you can't be scared shitless ALL the time, get on with it" athmosphere of the hotel is well captured... most of the time.
An uneven movie, with a thread-thin plot, but charming/terrifying characters and a couple of really well-done jokes. And! Since I'm more used to US/British comedy tropes, it feels more unpredictable
Not Bully's best work, but worth to see. Be prepared for violence though
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