Nichts als Gespenster

The challenge of any film based on a book is, not to get entangled with the text, but to translate words into pictures. I think Martin Gypkens succeeded exceptionally well in Nichts als Gespenster. You still have plenty of words, but they tell you one thing, while the pictures tell you something else: the attempt of the protagonists to connect their lives in true love or friendship, and their incapacity to succeed. They want to be true friends and lovers, and from the start, they make allowance for pretense and cheating. They come close, they separate, they try again – will they ever unite? The last sequence of the film tells you what will most probably happen in the end: the camera lets the car with the Ellen and Felix in it, move away into the distance, catches up again with the car, to eventually let it go for good.

The challenge of the film is to intertwine five separate stories – each one in a different country: a road movie multiplied by 5! The cutting is quick. I had to see the film twice to really appreciate it. My recommendation: while watching the movie, don't focus on the stories, instead, focus on the feelings which happen inside the protagonists.

Am I the only one bothered by the fact that every single car in this movie is a Toyota? Never mind. So much is wrong with Martin Gypkens' second big-screen picture that somehow the massive product placement feels like the least of its evils. The plot, sluggishly cobbled together from a selection of Judith Hermann's most blasé short stories, is a random parade of self-absorbed thirty-somethings without a thing on their mind. But what they lack in real life, they more than make up for by their whims and vanities. Everybody's talking, everybody's smoking, nobody goes to work. It's sort of like a French movie minus the good-looking actors, with the possible exceptions of Stipe Erceg and Jessica Schwarz. Global location scouting, high-gloss cinematography and heavy-handed set design are entirely wasted on one of this season's most pointless productions. Oh, and if Chiara Schoras (in the part of stage actress Ruth), though I'm sure she thinks it's the pinnacle of seduction, keeps grinning like that, no doubt her face will pop sometime soon. Everybody, don't waste your time with this bloodless geek show.

In "Nichts Als Gespenster",we have been shown that most of the relationships fail as people have a lot of ego.As young people do not wish to remain true to themselves,it is quite possible for their relationships to fall apart.Martin Gypkens films five unsteady German couples who do not have any basis of stability in their relationships. His film has nice scenes of Grand Canyon,Venice and Iceland.This film is based on two books, Nothing But Ghosts and The Summer House written by acclaimed German writer Judith Hermann.This is one of the few German films where German attitudes,continual craze,growing fascination and everlasting desire of German people for tourism have been questioned.At times,it appears as if the entire tourism business has been ridiculed. After talking to an American man,a German couple realizes that they have made a mistake by not having children.This couple learns that tourism is nothing but a passing fad.It is by watching this film that we learn that real sorrows just do not disappear from the minds of people as they invariably travel in order to escape realities around them.

A calm and emotional insight about German people trying to face new aspects of life being on vacation. In purpose to leave their habits and customs behind for a while by traveling, they all find themselves stuck in cultural manners and the conflict between romanticized ideals and their real lives.

I don't know if you have to be German to get touched by this silent movie and it's pure and natural acting. But in any case you will get a good guess of the subtle German humor and a thorough picture of German behaviour and relations. It's often not the word that counts, as there are many ways of expression. And so this film remains a small masterpiece.