Herr Lehmann

The film opens with a great and also very funny scene. The drunken and tired Herr Lehmann walks down the streets to reach his apartment. Finally he sees himself confronted with an awful dog!

He grabs into his pockets and finds some booze. In the end both are more or less drunken, Lehmann and the dog.

Two police officers drive by and wonder about this strange event...

This film has everything you can laugh, cry or cheer about and in the end the Berlin Wall is teared down, too.

Go and see it.

1. a remarkable screenplay (based on a contemporary literary classic) with several truly hilarious lines

2. fresh, charismatic characters and actors, all the more convincing for their random quirks and non-supermodel appearance

3. unconventional direction

4. one of the best soundtracks EVER!

a recommendation with five exclamation marks!!!!!

Frank is a barman in 1989 West Berlin. Everyone calls him Herr Lehmann, much to his annoyance at times- but then, he's not really all that bothered, as he lives his life day to day, beer to beer, without much of a plan or direction, happy just to hang out with his mates and do the same bar hopping routine over and over. His comfortable state of leisure is disrupted when he meets attractive but tough chef Katrin, his parents visit him unexpectedly, and his best friend Karl starts going insane. And of course, a couple doors down, on the other side of the wall, a whole new level of turmoil is starting to brew...

Well, where to start? The acting is great, with former MTV cutie Christian Ulmen giving a brilliantly lazy, laconic "am I bovveeeered?!" kind of performance. Detlev Buck steals many of Ulmen's scenes as artist stroke party animal Karl. I know Buck's a director, producer, and whatnot, but I love him as an actor. He's just able to create these hilarious, memorable characters, does deadpan like no other- and as Karl he sports the most incedible mullet (or Vokuhila, as we call it).

I'd expected more eighties nostalgia in set and costume design, and music, but the film pretty much stayed clear of that. Even the dialogue sounded like it could have come from any period. (The mullet does make up for that, though. Big time.) I did think the atmosphere of late 80s West Berlin was captured well enough though, with the countless Eckkneipen and these types that just live for the next night out and are simply to cool to be bothered about what's happening around them. I've met enough of those myself, albeit not in Berlin, and love how the film manages to thoroughly take the mickey out of them while still presenting them as likable characters.

Dialogue is witty, with some great, pointless beer conversations about basically nothing.

There are points when the film seems to drag a little, just like Herr Lehmann's life- nothing much happens.

The soundtrack is well-picked, though like with all modern German movies seems to have been put together by someone who hasn't quite realised that there have been songs written in languages other than English. That said, there is some seriously funky music in there.

All in all, I absolutely loved this and would strongly recommend it. Even just for the mullet.

9/10

BERLIN BLUES (Leander Haussmann - Germany 2003).

The film is set during the fall of 1989 in the run-down West-Berlin neighbourhood of Kreuzberg 36, an isolated corner of the city right next to the Berlin wall, mainly populated by a collection of misfits, artists, philosophers and drop-outs of all kinds. This is the world of Frank, alias Herr Lehmann (Christian Ulmen), who works as a bartender, takes live as it comes and generally lives in a pleasant bubble, unaware of the major events occurring in the outside world. His friend Karl (Detlev Buck), an artist who builds huge metal constructions, works in another bar, as does Katrin (Katja Danowski), the new chef, with whom he soon starts a turbulent relationship.

There are quite a few well-observed hilarious observations about Herr Lehmann's life in Kreuzberg, like an encounter with a whiskey-drinking dog, a confrontation with his visiting parents, a chaotic visit to East-Berlin and trouble in a gay-bar with "leather-Lily." The film's backdrop, with the fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989, Herr Lehmann's adventures seem to assume a certain importance, somewhat impaired with the occasionally flimsy and ridiculous occurrences in his life. In any other setting, the film would probably be less memorable than it is now. But that's probably the essential element what makes it work on many levels. The setting, Kreuzberg, and time in history, 1989, are the most potent ingredients for the film's relevance.

The late eighties' atmosphere is well served, with a good soundtrack by Eels, Violent Femmes, Calexico, Ween, Cake and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. Above all, I watched this with great pleasure, because I lived in this particular part of Berlin and it still is my absolute favorite part of the city. It seems very little has changed since 1989. Many of the bar scenes were shot in Café "Zum Elefanten" on Heinrichplatz, typically the kind of place where the interior and personnel hasn't changed since 1970. The kind of place where you only come to get served, get a drink and talking is restricted to a minimum.

Frank Griebe, who also lensed Tom Tykwer's LOLA RENNT (1998), did the cinematography, but here it's not nearly as flashy as in as in LOLA RENNT. Whether that's a good or thing or not, i'll leave that decision to you. And, as one other commenter from that proud Hanseatic city in Northern-Germany already noted, the film displays one of the most conspicuous product placements in recent German film.

Camera Obscura --- 7/10

feels a lot like going back deep into the late 80`s in Germany. Lot`s of beer, music and men`s talk. Great performance from Christian Ulmen aka Herr Lehmann in his first feature film.