Incannerax What a waste of my time!!!

Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

ChampDavSlim The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "Boxhagener Platz" is a German 100-minute movie from 6 years ago that gives us an insight into the GDR back in the 1960s. The director is Matti Geschonneck, semi-famous here in Germany, and he also adapted Torsten Schulz' novel together with the author of the novel himself. The movie scored several awards nominations, including a German Film Award nomination for Meret Becker in the Supporting Actress category. Still I have to say I am a bit surprised that Gudrun Ritter and Michael Gwisdek did not get any, not because they were that brilliant, but because their characters were very baity. Anyway, they weren't bad either. Their performances and the film in general are overall okay to watch, even if there are occasional problems. For example, sometimes it did not really feel as if I was watching authentic characters, but just performances.All in all, the filmmaker's intention here was certainly to make audiences aware of how bad and manipulative the GDR system really was. Is it propaganda? I am not sure. It certainly is very over-the-top often as it feels too many people were arrested in here and it does not seem realistic. It happened, but not with that frequency. Still, in its best moments, this one here is certainly a film worth watching. The acting was solid overall and it was also fun to see Jürgen Vogel in a supporting performance for once and he still makes something good out of it. Geschonneck and Schulz could have toned it down on the degree of how much they despise the GDR as subtlety is sometimes more rewarding. Nonetheless, the overall impression was positive and I recommend "Boxhagener Platz". Lots of drama in here and comedy, if if the "Berliner Schnauze" style, especially by the two older lead actors will not appeal to everybody. Thumbs up.

didier-20 An evocative meditation on history, Boxhagener Platz moves at an effecting pace through a Brechtian degree of character study towards the resolution of the 'who-dunnit' that drives the plot forward.As a film, several elements come together to manifest the film's focus which is preoccupied with the nature of History. The high standards of recreation of 1960s inner city East Berlin with an exemplary attention to detail contrasts with the constant call and recall the characters make to the recent Nazi past and it's ghostly spirit uncannily pervades the very air these people breath. The conflict and all defining issue of Ideology which defined the fate of the German people living in those decades is brought into high profile. The mostly wordless observations of the child protagonist acts to show the confusion of messages and cognitive processes required to adapt to that time and place. The film's self absorption does indeed make this a particularly German 'Heimat' film but the film is clear in it's indication of the complex social condition which demands such attention.Despite being an adaptation of a novel, the film is very evocative of Brechtian theatre in the pacing of itself primarily through intense character study. This aspect acts as the bind which synthesises the real and ghostly echoes of the Communist and Nazi reality whose spirited co- existence defines how the film presents History as it's main subject.