The Ordinaries

A wacky idea dealing with an actual cast system - but in movieland, where your role in a film is your status in life, come be it a background extra with no dialogue (in life you don't have much to say and live in housing projects) to being an outcast living in poverty outskirts because you became an outtake (cut from the film, or as they use to say in the industry during the old days - ending up on the editing room floor), or just being that supporting character that has a mediocre life compared to the main character's luxurious lifestyle. This is a movie with a wonderful surreal story that gets a little messy, but still has plenty to say about society's structure, and who controls the narrative...

WOW!!! This surprise film (sneak preview) by Sophie LINNENBAUM is a huge announcement from German-speaking cinema. There hasn't been such an original world creation there for a long time!

A young supporting character prepares for his final exam as the main character. The world is strictly hierarchically divided into main characters, secondary characters and the cut outtakes. But it gets even worse: Some figures are black and white, are already fading or are no longer good enough for digitalization. A teenager who grew up fatherless has to find his way around!

Great tricks, wonderful acting, wonderful singing! Denise MBAYE and Pasquale ALEARDI as the brightly colored musical model couple are wonderfully annoying. Jule BÖWE shines as the pale supporting character's mother who can only recite the same sentences. And we will hopefully see the young discoveries Fine SENDEL, Noah TINWA and Sira FAAL often. This collaboration between the BABELSBERG film university and the small ZDF television play (Das kleine Fernsehspiel) is definitely to be seen in the multiplexes of this republic!!!

German cinema can be so fantastic!!!

No pun intended - I reckon you can watch this ... and just have fun with it, without thinking too much about it. Or you can see all the metaphors it throws at you and try to decipher them. This is not just about your own life (we are the heroes/main characters of our own story), but about society itself. Class and who gets to do what ... and more stuff you need to suspend your disbelief for.

The world created in this ... is flawed ... but there is the suspension I talked about earlier. Get on with it - the acting is quite good. I was almost surprised - almost everyone hit the tone there were aiming for. I like what they did - and I was able to let the "mistakes" (logically speaking, in the realm of the world this has built) do their thing and not care about them ... kind of like the outtakes in the movie ... I still cherish them more than what the outtakes are being seen for ... "you people" and all that ... I don't think it is too hard to detect what the movie aims at.

Still really good job - watch it if you like these ... sorts of movies.

I am very critical of our film-making which is either outright boring and too ordinary (haha), or consists of period dramas from WW II or some other war or crisis. The Ordinaries is different, it feels fresh and new. Don't take the whole thing too seriously, see it as a surrealistic allegory, cherish it for the nice ideas it has, its humor and its seamless execution. The only flaw is that the audio sometimes feels a little off, I think there was a lot of dubbing in post-production involved. But the performances of the cast, the low key, but well executed special effects, the cinematography and the creativity involved make this a really enjoyable movie.

Although the movie feels fresh at first, the tone is very depressive, any "comedy" moments are forced, and the singing becomes too much to handle. I think the movie lacks life, and that the characters feel part a Black Mirror episode. I felt it was made for hipster-intellectuals and therefore couldn't connect with the movie. Highlights: great photography. The only character that really captivated me was Henning Peker as housemaid.

It definitely feels refreshing for a German movie, but lacks everything else. Also I'd definitely not consider it a comedy, as any attempts of humor are at most "awkward".