Built upon a fascinating temporal/cognitive dissonance that works well, but the narrative is painfully dull and the characters taciturn
Although the film ostensibly tells a story about 1940s Europe, its focus on refugees and its pseudo-modern setting mean that it also acts as something of a "state of the nation" address for Europe in 2019. In particular, it speculates as to what could happen in the not too distant future, given the rise of militant anti-immigration rhetoric and neo-fascist political ideology. The film doesn't so much suggest that history is repeating itself, as postulate that there's no historical difference between then and now. Unfortunately, aside from this daring aesthetic gambit, not much else worked for me, with the plot painfully somnolent and the characters void of virtually any relatable emotion.
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I liked the theme of the story, but the final third or quarter of this film really dragged. The story needed to hit all the points it did, but editing should have been tightened up in that slow final quarter in order to move the film along better beginning at the point when the viewer's patience with the idiot characters wears thin and one wants desperately to kill them all, or at least stop the playback. And to make the viewer's impatience with characters even worse, the bartender's narration takes on what Saint Pauly characterized (see their commentary) as pseudo-intellectual babble. It really was, and in German no less. Stick in a pin in your pretentiousness.
This was really a nice little story. I am not sure how best to describe it and I can't think of another film quite like it. In a sense it was quite surreal in that the backdrop was the middle of World War 2 yet the movie takes place in modern-day France. I thought that this was going to be distracting but it really wasn't. The acting was excellent and I believe the ending was very true to the rest of the story.
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Shout by Saint PaulyBlockedParent2018-04-26T23:07:15Z
Watching this felt like being invited to the wrong party. I'm sure other people there enjoyed themselves but I felt as though I were trapped in a room with pretentious pseudo-intellectuals who were babbling about subjects I cared little for. The wrong film to see while highly caffeinated.