THE EDUKATORS (Die Fetten Jahre sind vorbei)

Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
IFC Films
Grade: A-
Directed by: Hans Weingartner
Written by: Hans Weingartner, Katharina Held
Cast: Daniel Bruhl, Julia Jentsch, Stipe Erceg, Burghart
Klaussner, Peer Martiny, Petra Zieser
Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 7/6/05

If you're a frequent moviegoer, Kim Ki-Duk's film "3-Iron" will
come to mind as you watch Hans Weingartner's "The
Edukators." In "3-Iron," young Tae-suk puts notices on doors,
returning the next day to see whether the papers have been
picked up. Whenever a paper remains in the door, he rightly
assumes that the tenants are away. He enters the empty
houses, re-arranges furniture, fixes whatever is roken, cleans
the clothes, and sacks out for the night. That's pretty wacky,
isn't it? Tae is nothing if not good-hearted.

Not so good-hearted is the group populating Hans
Weingartner's "Die Fetten Jahre sind verbei," as "The
Edukators" is known in its original German. (Loosely translated,
that means, "The years of plenty are over.") Anyone who has
enjoyed Michael Moore's output–from "Roger and Me" into
"Bowling for Columbine" and concluding with "Fahrenheit 9/11"
is going to go big for this highly political yet soundly entertaining
drama. The three good-looking, 20-something heroes–or
villains if you're political ideals are to the right of center–are
similar to Tae-suk in that they do not steal anything, but different
from Tae insofar as they wreak havoc on the homes they
invade. Like the so-called Students for a Democratic Society of
the late sixties and early seventies, they are politically radical.
Their operations, designed to epater le bourgeois, have them
breaking in, rearranging furniture (in one case dumping the
couch into the owner's pool), and leaving a note that "Your days
are numbered" or less creative, "You have too much money."
The threesome are Jan (Daniel Bruhl), Peter (Stipe Erceg) and
Jule (Julia Jentsch), the young men handsome to a fault while
the pretty young woman has the girl-next-door appeal.

These kids value their friendship above all. At first, only the
men do the breaking in, while the woman simply grooves on her
romantic tie to Peter. When Peter goes to Barcelona, Jan
persuades Jule to go with him into the lavish home of a rich 50-
year-old executive, Hardenberg (Burghart Klaussner),a man
who insists on Jule's paying off a huge debt which she incurred
by totaling the man's Mercedes. Jan and Jule find themselves
attracted to each other, later to consummate their love, but their
immediate problem is being discovered trashing the living room,
by Hardenberg–who is tied up and kidnaped. Jan and Jule,
joined by a furious Peter, entertain a dialogue with the rich man,
the kids in effect telling him that he ought to give most of his
money to the poor. For his part, he shows increasing sympathy
for his captors' radical notions, allowing us to see the Stockholm
Syndrome at work. The Stockholm Syndrome holds that given
sufficient time, a kidnap victim (think Patti Hearst) will display
increasing sympathy for his captors' ideology. When
Hardenberg tells the 3-some that in his early twenties he was a
hippie living in a commune–even asking for a toke of their
weed–the young people get to trust the older man enough to
consider freeing him, particularly when he tells them not to
worry about the cops. Should we believe Hardenberg, or do you
think that some people never really change?

Director and co-writer Hans Weingartner, who knows whereof
he speaks in that he was once an "angry young man who liked
to scream, ‘Revolution! Change the World!'" and appears to
look back wistfully to those salad days, trots out the old saying:
"When you're under the age of thirty and you're NOT a liberal,
you have no heart; when you're over thirty and you REMAIN a
liberal, you have no brains." (The director majored in
neuroscience and should know from brains.) "The Edukators,"
filmed completely with handheld cameras which at several
points focus on some beautiful mountain scenery in Germany, is
full of laughs, populated by people we care about–never mind
that the young ones are guilty of the serious crime of kidnaping.
The dialogue, which probably includes some improvisation,
sounds astonishingly real, the emotions of kidnapers and
captive appear deeply felt. Interestingly enough, Burghart
Klaussner's role in Wolfgang Becker's "Goodbye Lenin" was of
an estranged father who fled Communist Berlin for Western
comfort, while Daniel Bruhl, in the same picture, played the son
who tries to recreate Communist Berlin for his near-comatose
and unreconstructed socialist mother. "The Edukators" is
gripping, funny, witty–a solid entertainment all around.

Rated R. 126 minutes © 2005 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com