The Edukators Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei
Dir: Hans Weingartner Germany / Austria 2004 126 mins 15A
Starring:
Daniel Bruehl, Julia Jentsch, Stipe Erceg, Burghart Klaussner
Jan, Jule and
Peter are three young, would-be radicals who want to change the world. Jan and
Peter are already taking direct action. They break into the houses of wealthy
families, daub graffiti on their walls and rearrange their possessions. After
each raid, they leave behind a note from the ‘Edukators’ telling whichever
family whose privacy they have breached that “their days of plenty are
numbered”. Jule, Peter’s girlfriend, ekes out an existence as a waitress and
struggles to pay off an enormous debt incurred when she crashed her uninsured
car into a wealthy businessman’s Mercedes.
Between times, the trio take part in anti-globalisation protests and try to warn
shoppers that they are exploiting Third World labour. Jule is initially
suspicious of Jan, a moody, mercurial type, but when he helps her redecorate her
apartment (from which she is about to be evicted), the two strike up a rapport.
Jan helps her break into the house of Herr Hardenberg (Klaussner), the
businessman whose car she wrecked.
They wreak merry havoc, but when they leave, she leaves her mobile behind. This
necessitates a return visit. Unfortunately, when they break in the second time,
Hardenberg comes home. They cosh him on the head, kidnap him and with Peter in
tow head up to hide in a cabin high up in the mountains. Hardenberg may be an
overpaid capitalist with more material possessions than he knows what to do
with, but back in the heady days of 1968, he was a pot-smoking student radical
himself. He used to live in a commune and knows more about free love than they
do. Though not very happy about being kidnapped, he thoroughly approves of his
three abductors’ idealism. They, in turn, begin to see him less as an embodiment
of capitalist corruption and more as a human being with problems like their own.
Hans Weingartner’s
second feature The Edukators is a fresh and likeable tale of youthful idealism.
Boosted by a standout performance by Daniel Bruehl (one of Europe’s
fastest-rising stars), vigorously shot in a hand-held style - which might best
be described as Dogme-lite and deftly combining different genre elements, a mild
political polemic and Jules And Jim-like love-triangle drama motifs among them -
it is bound to appeal to the same audience who savoured Good Bye, Lenin!