Am Tag als Bobby Ewing starb (2005)

User Rating:

5.9/10   

Director:

Lars Jessen

Writers:

Ingo Haeb (writer)
Kai Hensel (writer)

Release Date:

2 June 2005 (Germany)

Genre:

Comedy | Romance

Plot:

Germany, 1986: Niels, 17, and his mother Hanne leave Bremen to live in a rural hippie community after her divorce...

Plot Keywords:

Nuclear Power | Cannabis | Nuclear Accident | Chernobyl Ukraine | Environmental Protest

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Gabriela Maria Schmeide	...	Hanne
Franz Dinda	...	Niels
Peter Lohmeyer	...	Peter
Luise Helm	...	Martina
Richy Müller	...	Eckardt
Nina Petri	...	Gesine
Eva Kryll	...	Elli
Falk Rockstroh	...	Walther
Bernhard Petersen	...	Hein
Peter Heinrich Brix	...	Prestin
Jens Münchow	...	Rakete
Marion Breckwoldt	...	Dörte
Jan Peter Heyne	...	Bauer Frahm
Lisa Potthoff	...	Dani (as Lisa Maria Potthoff)
Lars Gärtner	...	Oliver

Runtime:

Germany:92 min

Country:

Germany

Language:

German

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Germany:6

Filming Locations:

Bollen, Achim, Lower Saxony, Germany

Company:

Arte

Trivia:

The town "Wattstedt" shown in the film as home of the NPP is in fact the town Brokdorf, Germany, which in the late 70s and early 80s was a center of anti-nuclear-power demonstration in Germany.

Movie Connections:

References "Die Sendung mit der Maus" (1971)

Bye, Bye Miss German Cheesecake

This movie is a fictionalised re-narration of director and co-author Peter Jessen's experience of being dragged to a rural commune by his drop-out mother, and as such it's probably a lot more accurate than a docu-miniseries about the beginnings of the alternative/eco movement -- viz, the Mueslis, as they were so cruelly and accurately dubbed in German. Jessen achieves this by eschewing the two pitfalls of this genre, smarmy those-were-the-days nostalgia and cheap ridicule of a bunch of folks who were, at the very least, active idealists, albeit in often very smelly socks.

(Tidbit information for neophytes: Why didn't they just wash the damn socks? Well, sheep wool was considered to be so vibrantly, wholesomely natural that not only does it clean itself, but you would actually be destroy its magical self-cleaning properties by placing them in the suds. I'm not making this up -- my mother had apparently read the same book, which afforded me olfactory properties that didn't exactly enhance my social standing among my peers.)

The acting is absolutely exceptional down to the minor characters, and overall it's a wonderfully understated movie. It expects you to bring a lot of curiosity and a modicum of sympathy along, though -- if you think hippies are a bunch of commie bleeding-heart tree-huggers then you are probably better off watching something else -- Dallas, for instance.