Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

While the quality of the film is uneven, the overall experiment makes the film worth watching. Director Andreas Dresen (trained in the former East Germany), who often works with these actors, decided to make a film without a script (needless to say, he had some difficulty gaining funding!) A dramaturg worked to ensure narrative consistency, and the small film team met to plan the scenes for the next day. The focus becomes a focus on the characters and their experience of a place we hear little about - the town of Frankfurt on the Oder, which is located deep in the former East Germany on the Polish border. By the way - the film often is compared to Dogme95, with good reason. However, Dresen, in interviews, rejects the restrictive nature of the Dogme95 guidelines.

I heard about the movie from a friend, who had seen it at the Berlinale Film Festival in 2002, where the movie actually won the Silver Bear Award in this year. He only told me about a little, quite but funny movie which is taking place in a city in the eastern part of Germany (former GDR), but he didn't wanted to spoil it. "Halbe Treppe" literally means as much as "on/ at/ to be half stairs" or if one has climbed a few steps one finds itself at "half stairs". This idiom does not make sense in German either, so my conclusion was that this is a term only used in the former GDR i do not understand, because i grew up in the western part of Germany. There are a few expressions only used in the GDR, but now being used in all parts of Germany. My anticipation of the plot was something about living in typical socialistic suburban dwellings in the eastern part of Germany where the term "Halbe Treppe" is used for something i do not know. I forgot about the movie and finally watched it a few days ago on TV (gladly without commercial breaks) and i was absolutely surprised, when i found out that "Halbe Treppe" is the name Uwe's Grillpoint (the English title!) which is situated between 2 stairs at "Halbe Treppe"! In my eyes the story in this movie could take place anywhere in Germany, Europe, but maybe the city of Frankfurt/Oder was not coincidentally chosen by the director. Well, i have been there but many people from the old federal states (and some from the new states, too) in Germany think Frankfurt/Oder is the end of the world, the worst place to live in Germany, because the city is situated head to head to the polish city Slubice bordered by the river "Oder". For people from the U.S. maybe it is comparable to Tijuana, but without the fence!! In the meantime Poland has become a full member of the EU so far, but prejudices about Poland are though. Everything is different: People, language, currency, habits, prices (low). While Slubice is economically growing and growing, Frankfurt is struggling with unemployment and disillusioned citizens where a lot of them have already moved away from the city (for more information have a look at the English Wikipedia). It's very satirical when Chris crosses the border to rent a polish hotel room just to save the money, if he and Ellen want to meet secretly: Even cheating German couples support the polish economy due to cheaper prices! It must be great fun for the director to confuse the viewer with a story about the relationship of 2 couples if one expects a plot about the life in a struggling city, emphasized by the fact that the movie is shot in the depressive mood of winter. Although my expectation of the movie were completely wrong i was hooked up immediately and always thought the situations the characters experience must end up in a tragic and sad disaster, but the terrific comical elements (the search for the escaped budgie, the people who think Chris is a fortune teller who predicted the power failure) make this movie a brilliant piece of German cinema.

I saw this movie in a very unique fashion. The director, Andreas Dresen, was visiting my college and screening the movie. My German Studies teacher (the focus of the class is contemporary German culture, and using film as a source) had us all meet there and see it. We got to meet the director, and ask him all kinds of questions.He revealed that this movie was created in a unique fashion: almost all of the acting was improvised, and only very few scenes were scripted, and that was only done for consistency. The crew was EXTREMELY small, consisting of mainly the 4 main actors, Dresen, a cameraman, and a audio person. Everything was on the spot and improvised, giving the movie an almost documentary-like quality, and many scenes were filmed on a whim. In fact, Dresen revealed that the interviews that are interspersed throughout the movie, he did not mean to originally include. They were only meant to see if the actors were in character, and to see how they, as their character, would respond to the given questions and situations. To give the movie an authentic and natural feel, each actor in fact spent some time, I believe Dresen said a few months, actually working the job that they had in the movie. Also, Uwe is only shown smoking constantly because the actor, Axel, is a chain smoker. The musicians playing out of the toilet was originally a fleeting suggestions the group (17 Hippies) had made, and Dresen never intended to keep. The scene where Katrin walks alone in the snow was filmed basically before the movie had a plot, with hopes that it could possibly be included somewhere along the way. The dentist scene was a fleeting suggestion that Axel had made; he told Dresen that he was going to the dentist, and if maybe he wanted to come along and film something that could be used in the movie in his role as Uwe. In fact, the real dentist's nurse refused to be on camera, and Dresen had to get someone (from his small crew) to stand in for the position in the shot, but the actual operation and tooth removal is all REAL, live footage. Also,the first time Uwe tells the musician outside the stand to go away, he was never supposed to go back out and yell at him to go down to the lamppost, and in fact the musician was not supposed to obey him and move down there. Apparently the 17 Hippes, the musicians, were so convincing as street musicians that when the crew was not filming, people would actually throw them change. I apologize for these revelations not being in any particular order, but I found them fascinating, and wanted to share them.

I'm very fond of this movie. The authenticity of the actors, the very light and playful use of humor an subtle gags and the fact, that although they were doing it on a very low budget, you're not going to be sick by the way they handle the camera makes this so absolutely enjoyable. its setting in frankfurt/oder is also something very different even though films on the soil of the ex-gdr are on the increase. i haven't seen such a film since 'Männer' which is a few decades ago.this movie tells a common story like no other. watch it in german.