"Die Kraft, die Du mir gibst", which means "The Strength You Give Me" (as you can see on the poster here on imdb), is a German television movie from 2014, so this 1.5-hour film is over five years old now and is is one of the more recent efforts by director Zoltan Spirandelli. He is really experienced and already made films in the 1980s, which makes it even more shocking for me how this one here is such a disappointment. Spirandelli almost never writes screenplays, so the man in charge of that production area here was Martin Douven. Looking at his body of work, however, explains it a bit because there are many projects in there who are the exact opposite of high quality and with that I am not (only) referring to daily soap "Unter Uns". i mean you have to start somewhere and that is perfectly fine. However, if the outcome 20 years later is still as loq quality-wise as it was during your rookie years, then maybe the talent is simply absent and will always be. This movie here felt perhaps like a double episode of "In aller Freundschaft" and if you kno a bit about German television, then you also know that this statement is nothing that implies praise whatsoever. And as flawed as the creators may be here (yep, Spirandelli also worked on many bad series), as flawed is the cast as well: The central character is played by Tanja Wedhorn and her career-defining role is probably still playing the title character in "Bianca - Wege zum Glück", which is absolutely nothing to be proud of, even if she appeared in many other projects since back then. I think I have come across Beyer and Urlacher elsewhere, but I don't remember precisely. As for their performances in key supportung roles here, I cannot say they did a good job. Then again they also weren't horribly bad and it must be kept in mind that the script was not helping them one bit. So you have to be a bit apologetic really when mentioning each and every performance here. Not even the greatest Hollywood cast could have turned this into quality. This drama movie was doomed from the beginning and honestly here and there the cast even surprised me a bit positively. But that had also mostly to do with my really low expectactions. Just take Wedhorn: She has been in many many many bad projects and honestly I thought she would really mess up here, but here and there she even did okay. Not overall, but she was not one of the film's key problems and the writer definitely messed up more. Maybe Spirandelli should have written the story himself. Even if he does not have huge experience when it commes to penning a screenplay, there is no way it would have turned out worse than it actually turned out.
It already starts with the title really, pseudo-important in the tenth degree and at the same time it says absolutely nothing. It is probably meant as a statement by the main character about her husband, maybe even kids, but as such it does nothing adn feels completely generic. At least that is more what I think it is meant as, although it is not impossible either the husband says it about his wife. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that this is a subject that really would have deserved better because it is about an issue that many people suffered from, maybe still suffer today and such shallow execution like the one put on display here is a slap in the victims' faces. This is about patients (or one in particular) who caught an infection during an operation at a hospital and this infection can perhaps even result in a sepsis that in the worst case could become life-threatening. It already starts very weak with the reason for the actual operation, namely the male protagonist has an accident with this motorcycle and this felt extremely for the sake of pushing the story forward, never really as something that truly happened and was part of authentic storytelling. And as this accident really triggered everything that followed, it was crucial in a negative sense. There are more moments like this. Just take the night when the kids are part of a little concert at school and the parents are there and how the evening goes for the father is really cringeworthy to watch. It could have been a really good scene and touching too, but lack of talent all around turned it into a mess, especially when we look at the way the father communicated nonverbally with his kids. How they introduced that nurse who knew about other cases was just as shoddy as the superiors' attempts to pay the protagonist and also to give her a better position, so she will stop investigating about what happened exactly. But what was maybe the weakest moment was when the film tried to trick us into believing that the man's bad state (also mentally) could result in their marriage to fall apart as the woman is out for something like a date with a colleague after the husband does not want to spend the evening with her and do something. Another slap in the face of sick people with how this film implies the husband could be depressed, but never elaborates on it again. Oh yeah and just one very brief weak moment that happens before everything starts from the medical perspective is when we find out that the protagonist's former husband is also abbout to get divorced again. All these are pretty cheap moments to (not so) subtly depict the female main character as desirable and strong because of all she went through. Those people in the audience who really mistake her, or I should say mistake this movie for an example of powerful women in (German) cinema have understood nothing. It's so shallow and uninspired that you must be really stupid to fall for that idea. Nonetheless, I as ready to give this film two stars more (four in total) because it was weak, but not yet failure territory. That change towards the very end. Really changed. This final confrontation scene with who is going against who now all of a sudden, with who enters the room with specific information and with who makes a deal with whom to somewhat close the matter is a complete abomination and the moment the film hits rock bottom. I mean even if we are ready to accept that the characters here are all so kind-hearted that they will ignore a great career and lots of money because they prefer the scandal to become public, then it is ridiculous. These companies have lawyers and everything else to tackle situations like this. I don't want to go any further into detail about what happened here because I hope I can forget this nonsense as quickly as possible, but let me say: All that happens in the last ten minutes here is 100% for the sake of creating a pseudo happy ending and has zero to do with how things would have been going in reality. Shameful stuff. This, by the way, also includes the little epilogue that takes place a couple months later. Imagine those words that maybe her husband will never be 100% healthy again? Think twice. He's looking pretty good there all of a sudden climbing mountains again, but yeah well more fake happy ending. I am not shocked. By the way, the story with the old neighbor also did not add half as much as they hoped it would. This story, just like everything else makes it easy for me to say you really wanna skip this movie. The last 15 minutes make it easy for me to say it like an order. Do not watch! It's a terribly bad movie.
It already starts with the title really, pseudo-important in the tenth degree and at the same time it says absolutely nothing. It is probably meant as a statement by the main character about her husband, maybe even kids, but as such it does nothing adn feels completely generic. At least that is more what I think it is meant as, although it is not impossible either the husband says it about his wife. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that this is a subject that really would have deserved better because it is about an issue that many people suffered from, maybe still suffer today and such shallow execution like the one put on display here is a slap in the victims' faces. This is about patients (or one in particular) who caught an infection during an operation at a hospital and this infection can perhaps even result in a sepsis that in the worst case could become life-threatening. It already starts very weak with the reason for the actual operation, namely the male protagonist has an accident with this motorcycle and this felt extremely for the sake of pushing the story forward, never really as something that truly happened and was part of authentic storytelling. And as this accident really triggered everything that followed, it was crucial in a negative sense. There are more moments like this. Just take the night when the kids are part of a little concert at school and the parents are there and how the evening goes for the father is really cringeworthy to watch. It could have been a really good scene and touching too, but lack of talent all around turned it into a mess, especially when we look at the way the father communicated nonverbally with his kids. How they introduced that nurse who knew about other cases was just as shoddy as the superiors' attempts to pay the protagonist and also to give her a better position, so she will stop investigating about what happened exactly. But what was maybe the weakest moment was when the film tried to trick us into believing that the man's bad state (also mentally) could result in their marriage to fall apart as the woman is out for something like a date with a colleague after the husband does not want to spend the evening with her and do something. Another slap in the face of sick people with how this film implies the husband could be depressed, but never elaborates on it again. Oh yeah and just one very brief weak moment that happens before everything starts from the medical perspective is when we find out that the protagonist's former husband is also abbout to get divorced again. All these are pretty cheap moments to (not so) subtly depict the female main character as desirable and strong because of all she went through. Those people in the audience who really mistake her, or I should say mistake this movie for an example of powerful women in (German) cinema have understood nothing. It's so shallow and uninspired that you must be really stupid to fall for that idea. Nonetheless, I as ready to give this film two stars more (four in total) because it was weak, but not yet failure territory. That change towards the very end. Really changed. This final confrontation scene with who is going against who now all of a sudden, with who enters the room with specific information and with who makes a deal with whom to somewhat close the matter is a complete abomination and the moment the film hits rock bottom. I mean even if we are ready to accept that the characters here are all so kind-hearted that they will ignore a great career and lots of money because they prefer the scandal to become public, then it is ridiculous. These companies have lawyers and everything else to tackle situations like this. I don't want to go any further into detail about what happened here because I hope I can forget this nonsense as quickly as possible, but let me say: All that happens in the last ten minutes here is 100% for the sake of creating a pseudo happy ending and has zero to do with how things would have been going in reality. Shameful stuff. This, by the way, also includes the little epilogue that takes place a couple months later. Imagine those words that maybe her husband will never be 100% healthy again? Think twice. He's looking pretty good there all of a sudden climbing mountains again, but yeah well more fake happy ending. I am not shocked. By the way, the story with the old neighbor also did not add half as much as they hoped it would. This story, just like everything else makes it easy for me to say you really wanna skip this movie. The last 15 minutes make it easy for me to say it like an order. Do not watch! It's a terribly bad movie.
