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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

The Edukators

14:41 / 13.05.05

This is a new German film that dwells on youthful anarchy, idealism and rebellion in quite an interesting way (well, I reckoned). I got quite excited by it and was reminded of some of the feelings I’d had in the past, when watching Fight Club, for instance.
Two guys and a girl are the main characters – they break into rich people’s houses and, rather than steal anything, just re-arrange the furniture in weird ways and leave aggressive and anti-capitalist slogans. In between, they hang out and discuss their problems, do grim part-time jobs and talk about their feelings about the state of the world. The characters are very believable as well as cool, in an endearing and original way, and there’s lots of discussion about what how fucked up the world is, how to rebel, avoid having your spirit crushed by modern life etc. However, it’s more like a light-hearted comedy, with dramatic/action bits and romantic bits, rather than anything too heavy.

Anyway – just posting to recommend it and wondering what others reckon. I think it’s been criticised as being a bit of a cop-out or not as extreme as it could have been. Dunno - I found it quite energising and original.

17:05 / 13.05.05

I'll probably go watch it over the weekend.

We can compare notes.

20:02 / 13.05.05

Did you not feel that it represented a completely Guardian-friendly portrayal of revolutionary ideals?

Did it not feel at all convenient that the sell-out businessman man type "suddenly" admits to his political past, and then UTTERLY ignores the past 20 years, and scorns his current status to,like, screw the man...

Also, was it not vastly annoying that the pretty revolutionaries lived in such glamorous squalor? Politics rendered as fashion mag lifestyle choice..

I'm not a screaming lefty by any means, but I know when a relatively close-minded view is being sold to me as glamorous and uber-cool.

Yeah, I may be mildly toasted, but it all rings true.Comrade.

17:56 / 17.05.05

Interested that you think it presented a closed-minded view… I suppose I can believe it maybe didn’t go very far in presenting the intelligent ideas that are out there, from people like Chomsky and the like, about how the world could indeed be organised differently and be a bit fairer and more pleasant. It was maybe all a bit here’s-some-very-sanitised-revolutionary-ideas-that -it-would-be-quite-easy-to-pick-holes-in.

Dunno… Realise I’m a bit out-of-it with politics and radical theorising at the minute, so not quite primed for such a discussion. Oh and the Guardian thought it was lacking in genuine fire as well, and a bit pants.

I can only say it was enjoyable and interesting enough, and kept you quite gripped - the revolutionary aspect of it was just one layer in amongst a lot of other stuff, and the film director didn’t maybe have room in the dialogue to present a sizeable treatise on all this sort of shit – anyway…

Tryphena Absent

00:27 / 19.03.06

I'm a little late to this thread but since I've just watched it...

Did it not feel at all convenient that the sell-out businessman man type "suddenly" admits to his political past, and then UTTERLY ignores the past 20 years, and scorns his current status to,like, screw the man...

I'm a little confused by what you mean here considering that he shops them at the end.

Hardi admits some nostalgia for his past but his role could be read as manipulation. The audience doesn't know if he's lying or telling the truth and it doesn't matter because he's not living in the present as someone outside the system, he is a lynch pin of capitalism. The story that he tells is presented in the film because it's a common one. Most people get older and conform to society more because they don't want to live in a bubble of aggression. The suspicious moment for me comes when he says he votes conservative because I think that the majority of people who have lived the type of life that he describes don't spiral that far to the right. That line was included to make the viewer suspicious of him, to draw you to recognise the ending before it takes place.

I don't think it was particularly Guardian friendly because I don't think it was primarily meant to be a political film, it was a film about a group of intensely political people who make a mistake. The views are quite simple but they allow you to escape the negativity of left wing politics and focus on its staples. As soon as it gets complicated you enter the realm of left wing infighting, which I have experienced first hand and has spawned a huge variety of political problems with the left as a movement in the UK in particular. The film neatly avoids that by keeping the politics basic and I appreciated that because I felt that you left it with an impression of positivity that it couldn't otherwise have conveyed. The distinct lack of militarism seemed like a plus in this particular movie.

08:49 / 19.03.06

The German release apparently contains extra footage of them escaping on his yacht at the end thus implying that, while supposedly "shopping" them, he also allows the revolutionaries to escape.

So, I guess this is the viewpoint of the film: stir things up but tow the the line etc

10:51 / 19.03.06

They stole his yacht. He certainly didn´t give it to them.

Also, was it not vastly annoying that the pretty revolutionaries lived in such glamorous squalor? Politics rendered as fashion mag lifestyle choice..

What is so glamorous about their appartments? Many people in Berlin live like that. It looked pretty realistic for people their age and with their financial limitations.

13:28 / 19.03.06

They struck me as being beautiful old appartments- not like the scummy, cheaply made modern blocks they would most likely have lived in.

22:17 / 19.03.06

We have many of these old appartments. And if their appartment has oven heating [modern apps don´t have these of course]it would be dirt cheap.

14:19 / 20.03.06

The thing I disliked most about the film was the dialogue. Most of it sounded as if copied from a pamphlet you'd find on the table in your university's cafeteria, and all in all I got the impression that those were the conversations the author / director would have liked to have with someone in real life but couldn't because, well, I don't know, maybe he was too busy studying to become a director.

Stuff like this just doesn't sound authentic this side of the eighties. Nobody is that naive anymore - I don't know how the translation turned out but there was not the faintest trace of irony to be found in either the dialogue or the characters (and they must have realized that those were clichés - Andreas Baader distilled down to your nicely confused and ideologically schooled backyard revolutionary).

Besides, I thought it was quite a conservative film too. It portrayed the revolutionary youth as your usual Guardian reader would like to see it. Radical but warm-hearted. Romantic but harmless.

Sorry to be so harsh on this film but I simply couldn't find much good in it.

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:53 / 20.03.06

I've had plenty of conversations like those in the film. They never exist in a vacuum - i.e., there's always a personal/social context that colours them - but that was depicted in the film as well.

Also, much as I hesitate to engage with the strawman of the Guardian reader, I doubt that such a person would actually respond in an approving manner should they discover that their home had been broken into and all their stuff rearranged.