Light Gradient

2009 "Testing the limits of love."
5.2| 1h15m| en
Details

Two young men, Johann and Robin, take a trip into the countryside. The more they walk the forests of Brandenburg, the stranger their adventure becomes. Bikes disappear, maps prove useless – and each gets to know a new side of the other.

Director

Producted By

Salzgeber & Co. Medien

AD
AD

Watch Free for 30 Days

All Prime Video Movies and TV Shows. Cancel anytime. Watch Now

Trailers & Clips

Also starring Sebastian Schlecht

Also starring Eric Golub

Reviews

GamerTab That was an excellent one.
Misteraser Critics,are you kidding us
Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
jm10701 I loved this movie! I don't care that I don't understand the end or much of anything else about it. I may figure it out someday, or I may not, but that does not in any way diminish the joy this wonderful movie gave me.I was fascinated for every one of its 75 minutes. The music alone is exhilarating, an eclectic mix including an 18th century Handel song and modern instrumentals that made me want to dance (and I am NOT a dancer). Sebastian Schlecht, who plays Johann, the darker-haired of the two lovers, is extraordinarily appealing in a quirky, understated way, and his expressions during the last ten minutes of the movie just blew me away.I never assume actors are gay, but if these two are not, then they had the best direction any two straight actors ever had, and they followed that direction with courage and dedication and talent few actors have. I believed completely in the passion and the tenderness between them, and their love scenes are some of the most erotic I have ever seen, although they are not even close to being explicit sexually.I can't get over how much better this movie is than other reviewers led me to expect.
princpauper This is a film reminiscent of "Sun Kissed" of 2006. Most seemed to hate that film too.Both are films following a schizophrenic fantasy. The action is slow because it is a dreamlike state. Johann fantasizes a hiking trip with a lover. The mother and son they meet are totally supportive of their homosexuality. It is possible that society's non-supportive attitude is what put Johann in the institution in the first place, and so he fantasizes the opposite in a dream world. Johan is both the fox and the hare, two different aspects of his personality.All the water scenes are symbolic of fantasy and are the key that we are not witnessing reality. The showering with a hose out of doors is similar to a scene in "Sun Kissed" because the plumbing did not work indoors which may symbolize the institution or society in general. The scene over the highway where Johann and Robin watch the world go by beneath them shows they are in a world of their own in which they can love each other and be free. The one contact with the real world to which Johann must succumb is the need for sustenance thus the scene with the stealing of food from the couple bicycling. I like to believe the berries eaten by Johann was actually medication administered which totally disrupted his dream lovers' outing. Thus doctors meddling with someone's subconscious are liable to get him tangled in the woods.Who can say that a schizophrenic with a complete fantasy world in his/her mind has not reached nirvana? I gave it a nine because I realized fairly early that I was following a dream that was not supposed to make sense. One just has to suspend reality and go with the sensuous flow.
Jon ****** POSSIBLE SPOILERS ********** But wait! You can't spoil a movie that has nothing to spoil!I'm a fan of indie films and foreign films, but I'll be the first to admit, I've seen a lot more bad ones than good ones. So as an expert on bad movies, let me tell you, this one is terrible. What happens in it? Maybe something, but whatever the hell it is, it happens off-screen. There's a lead-up to the point when the something may or may not have happened (i.e., the whole, drawn-out, insufferably boring movie), and an epilogue in which a character mumbles something about a fox and a hare in a hospital.But what happens? Well, there's a flash of ropes, and a struggle and darkness, and.... well that's it.I'm not exaggerating. That's the movie. the lead-up is lyrical... a prologue about a fox and a hare... then lots and lots of bicycle riding in the woods. Bicycling riding on abandoned runways. Sun shining through the trees as they ride bikes through the woods. S&M in the woods, robbing sandwiches from other bike riders in the woods. Outdoor showers with a garden hose, skinny-dipping on a pier, and then the thing that possibly happens, and then the epilogue.At least "The Singing Forest," in my mind the worst movie ever made, *tried* to tell a story. This one doesn't even try.So this is how to torture Hitler in hell. Strap der Führer into a chair, with his eyes pried open a la Alex in A Clockwork Orange, and force him to watch the "Light Gradient" over and over... But, every time it finishes, pause to beat him and shout "Achtung! Explain it to me, Herr Hitler! I know you understand what happened! Now talk!" Beat him for five more minutes, say "Vee haff vays to make you talk" and play the loop again.Hmm. Maybe even he doesn't deserve that.
David Kerlick I'm not sure it counts as a spoiler, since I couldn't figure out the ending.This film seemed to go nowhere, slowly and randomly. Two gay boyfriends (together two months) go on a biking trip together, and encounter mishaps and some friction. They take refuge in a farmhouse with a 40ish woman who seems to fixate on gay men (like her vanished husband) and her teenage son who is typically rather bored and boring, not especially interested in things gay, and not believable as a threat to the two lovers. There's a loose sense of foreboding, but since all the characters seem bored or moody, there is little in the way of clues to piece together a plot. There are a lot of indulgent scenic shots which slow down the action, rather than adding momentum towards a denouement that when arrived at, I still found confusing. The side story about a disappearance in the 18th century seems like it could be a clue to the action, but I couldn't see how it fit. Ditto the psychoactive berries, which add confusion rather than clarity and makes an attempted thriller less thrilling and more confusing in the end.