Warning: This review contains spoilers!
It is hard to imagine an entire audience laughing at the main character in this film, but that's what they did at the Freiluftkino Hasenheide in Berlin. The papi (father) the title refers to is the director's biological beer-truck driving father. Mein Papi opened showings of Natural Born Killers in the summer of 1996. This laughing gave director Jörg Buttgereit immense pleasure due to the poor relationship he endured with his dad.
Having seen this film about 20 times, I've never found it funny. To me, it is a very disturbing look into the dysfunctional family unit. Clocking in at seven minutes, Mein Papi says more about family values than three hours of any Sally Fields' film you care to name. It is filmed entirely without father Buttgereit's knowledge - most of it with a hidden camera.
Mein Papi begins with a series of stills taken at the father's wedding. The slim Buttgereit Sr. in the photos looks very Germanic and handsome. Subsequent `hidden' camera shots (taken nearly twenty years later) show a man no longer resembling the striking young guy featured in the earlier pictures. Instead we find a scowling corpulent man in his fifties who seems to have no tolerance for his son's antics one clip captures the father busting into Jörg's room asking if he must play his music so loud.
In between filming his father eating, sleeping and watching television, subtitles inform of his father's medical history beginning with the removal of a brain tumor in 1973. We (the viewers) read as the father's health worsens and Jörg Buttgereit's mother dies of cancer in 1989. These details are presented in the film as startling cold facts with no revealed emotion.
As with all Buttgereit films, Mein Papi features a remarkable soundtrack. Max Muller & Gundula Schmitz provide the redundantly creepy composition with the words, `Mein Papi' being repeated continuously over the visuals. The father's health deteriorates and finally Jorg discovers him `dead in his armchair, in front of the television with coffee and cakes.'
Although there doesn't seem to be too much to laugh at, I believe it is a brilliant piece of filmmaking (as are all of Buttgereit's films). If you have a fairly strong character, I highly recommend you see it.
It is hard to imagine an entire audience laughing at the main character in this film, but that's what they did at the Freiluftkino Hasenheide in Berlin. The papi (father) the title refers to is the director's biological beer-truck driving father. Mein Papi opened showings of Natural Born Killers in the summer of 1996. This laughing gave director Jörg Buttgereit immense pleasure due to the poor relationship he endured with his dad.
Having seen this film about 20 times, I've never found it funny. To me, it is a very disturbing look into the dysfunctional family unit. Clocking in at seven minutes, Mein Papi says more about family values than three hours of any Sally Fields' film you care to name. It is filmed entirely without father Buttgereit's knowledge - most of it with a hidden camera.
Mein Papi begins with a series of stills taken at the father's wedding. The slim Buttgereit Sr. in the photos looks very Germanic and handsome. Subsequent `hidden' camera shots (taken nearly twenty years later) show a man no longer resembling the striking young guy featured in the earlier pictures. Instead we find a scowling corpulent man in his fifties who seems to have no tolerance for his son's antics one clip captures the father busting into Jörg's room asking if he must play his music so loud.
In between filming his father eating, sleeping and watching television, subtitles inform of his father's medical history beginning with the removal of a brain tumor in 1973. We (the viewers) read as the father's health worsens and Jörg Buttgereit's mother dies of cancer in 1989. These details are presented in the film as startling cold facts with no revealed emotion.
As with all Buttgereit films, Mein Papi features a remarkable soundtrack. Max Muller & Gundula Schmitz provide the redundantly creepy composition with the words, `Mein Papi' being repeated continuously over the visuals. The father's health deteriorates and finally Jorg discovers him `dead in his armchair, in front of the television with coffee and cakes.'
Although there doesn't seem to be too much to laugh at, I believe it is a brilliant piece of filmmaking (as are all of Buttgereit's films). If you have a fairly strong character, I highly recommend you see it.