What to Do in Case of Fire

I found myself really enjoying this movie, at first. In fact I was living in Germany in 87-88, exactly the period the flashback part is set in.

I found myself enjoying this movie at first, it brought back memories. The portrayal of terrorists in a kind of situation comedy light didn't strike me as strange at first.

It was when they made a bomb out of a fire extinguisher that what I was watching finally struck me. Shortly before I came to Germany, just a couple of weeks before, somebody blew up a bomb made out of a fire extinguisher at the American PX in Frankfurt. It was basically an attempt to kill people at random. I don't remember how succesful it was.

The politics of the group that did it was mostly as confused and futile as that of the characters in the movie. Ostensibly communists but far from being anything resembling real communists.

Somehow after that this movie palled for me. I just couldn't get into watching killers portrayed as lovable but basically good-hearted knuckelheads with hearts of gold.

Well acted and sharply filmed, "What to Do in Case of Fire" showcases six radical German protesters from the Eighties, four of whom have taken on Yuppie identities. Two, one whose legs were cut off by a police vehicle during a demonstration, and his buddy, an unreconstructed rebel a la Berlin variety, still hope for Der Tag (whatever that might be).

This gang formerly used film to spread their message, insidiously splicing their propaganda takes into innocuous reels. A police raid results in the seizure of many reels of film which will implicate the six for their acts many years early. So what we have (predictably: no spoilers here) is a caper film, mostly comedy but with the requisite bitter dollop of drama - lost love as well as legs) in which the reunited sextet tries to figure out a way to get or destroy the films before the police have a sachertorte und popcorn screening.

There are both funny and sad moments in this American-produced film. The acting is fresh while the underlying story is not exactly original. But...the German radicals of the Seventies and later weren't funny. They killed and destroyed. They didn't project, I'm sure, the endearing qualities of our cohort of six including a got-rich-in-the-market ad exec who boasts of a Manhattan pad and wears an "I Love Bill Gates" shirt.

So a viewer has to put aside sensibilities and fears about the terrorism that is a constant part of our lives to enjoy this film. Okay, I did laugh a bit but I was uneasy as the group sought a solution that in real life could only result in bad things happening to many people. Slaptstick humor and terrorism? Belief really needs to be suspended.

All that said, as film "What to Do in Case of Fire" hangs together and will be enjoyable for many.

6/10. Available for rental on DVD.

Once upon a time, there were six friends with a vision of a future in complete freedom, without the restrictions of a government stifling those too young and too foolish to stay within the bounds of what is 'normal'. So these friends lovingly created a homemade bomb and documented the whole process for posterity. They planted the bomb... and forgot all about it. Until twenty years later, when it finally blew up.

Twenty years later, only two of the six are still members of that "Scene" in Berlin, while the others have gone off to get married, have kids, drive Mercedes, make millions in their very own advertisement company or become district attorneys (!). Of course, their later careers will be of little interest, once the police have had a chance to look through the confiscated film material...

This is a great movie, about visions, friendship, solidarity - and anarchy. The plot is solid (in a Bond kind of way), and there is a deliciously ironic final twist.

So, what do you do, when there's a fire burning? Well, let it burn!

Naturally.

'What to do in case of fire' is an amazingly honest movie dealing with the anarchy past in Berlin pre reunification. A group of six ex-anarchists have a 'little' problem when a 12 year old bomb suddenly explodes in Berlin and they have to get a hold on a self-made movie showing evidence that they're responsible. While two of them are still active in demos and such, one is trying to hold on to her ideals while being a mother to two little children, the other three have completely turned away from their old ways and become 'respectable citizens'. This is the entertaining part, seeing these very different persons to come back together again and try to get their hide out of the situation without going to jail. But if you look deeper, this is a movie about the difference of people still living in the past and on the other hand people trying to forget their past, showing us that neither way will work.

It is simple to sympathize with the group, for their reluctance to hurt people, their very normal lives and their wish to change something in a world they don't feel they can accept.

I finally found a German film, with English subtitles at the DVD rental store. Having seen Til Schweiger in Driven recently I was excited to see him in an authentic German production. And the film starts out well as we see the 6 radical friends going from being anarchists to most of them living pretty normal live, even to the point of betraying their original believes. In some ways I think people that lived through this might have a depth of understanding which I'm lacking having been brought up in very protective environment in Iceland. Therefore for an outsider, I felt that the film should have spent a little bit more time on defining what they were objecting to, what drove them, if you like. And the film had a strange balance of reality and humor, which did work, though unusual. When the film neared to its closure I felt it lost height a bit, becoming a little bit too Americanized. Unusual and well worth seeing. 7/10