What to Do in Case of Fire

The films that I have seen out of Germany are limited I admit, but the ones I have been seeing are just wonderful. I have added to my list of German favorites which include RUN LOLA RUN and THE HARMONISTS, the charming an edgy dramedy WHAT TO DO IN CASE OF FIRE? The characters in this film simply crackle. The plot about a reunion of 80's anarchists zooms along to its conclusion. The film is both funny and real.

My sister and I rented this movie becuase she was searching for someother movie to watch in German class besides "Europa, Europa". I didn't come into the movie with any expectations, and was really pleasantly surprised by how fun and compeling it was. I know nothing about German anarchists, maybe they were terrorits and shouldn't be sympathized with, but I was definatly rooting for them to get away. There were some less than perfect stuff (the rekindling of a romance is not well handled, nor is the love-interest interesting at all), but there were so many good things, they are easily overlooked by less nit-picking movie watchers.

The German punk soundtrack is a definate plus.

Jean

'What to do in case of fire' is an amazingly honest movie dealing with the anarchy past in Berlin pre reunification. A group of six ex-anarchists have a 'little' problem when a 12 year old bomb suddenly explodes in Berlin and they have to get a hold on a self-made movie showing evidence that they're responsible. While two of them are still active in demos and such, one is trying to hold on to her ideals while being a mother to two little children, the other three have completely turned away from their old ways and become 'respectable citizens'. This is the entertaining part, seeing these very different persons to come back together again and try to get their hide out of the situation without going to jail. But if you look deeper, this is a movie about the difference of people still living in the past and on the other hand people trying to forget their past, showing us that neither way will work.

It is simple to sympathize with the group, for their reluctance to hurt people, their very normal lives and their wish to change something in a world they don't feel they can accept.

I finally found a German film, with English subtitles at the DVD rental store. Having seen Til Schweiger in Driven recently I was excited to see him in an authentic German production. And the film starts out well as we see the 6 radical friends going from being anarchists to most of them living pretty normal live, even to the point of betraying their original believes. In some ways I think people that lived through this might have a depth of understanding which I'm lacking having been brought up in very protective environment in Iceland. Therefore for an outsider, I felt that the film should have spent a little bit more time on defining what they were objecting to, what drove them, if you like. And the film had a strange balance of reality and humor, which did work, though unusual. When the film neared to its closure I felt it lost height a bit, becoming a little bit too Americanized. Unusual and well worth seeing. 7/10

This was quite a good movie. Perhaps I'm partial for German films, but this was even better because it wasn't about typical German film themes like racial tolerance, finding a lost love from the East-West separation, etc. The film told the story of a five anarchists who set a bomb in a government building in Berlin. The bomb's timer "stopped" and when tampered with 10 or so years later, begins where it left off. Suddenly it blows up the now-abandoned building and these five anarchists who are now older and more conservative must reunite and find a way to once again "smash the system" in order not to get caught. The film concentrated more on plot and less on cinemetography. There were a few nice cinemagraphic scenes however, and at the end, proved to be a heart-warming film. However, the movie was completely unrealistic and didn't touch on the differences of political ideologies as much as the back cover said it would. I think it would have been better if the characters were struggling to identify with each others' new political ideologies while having to work together to realisitically save themselves from their younger anarchistic days.