Horst in Translation ([email protected])
"Die abhandene Welt" is a German drama movie from spring 2015, so this one is two years old now. With Katja Riemann, Karin Dor, Barbara Sukowa and Matthias Habich, it features a quartet of actors who can, without a doubt, be called among the most known from their age group and generation here in Germany. Dor hasn't much screen time at all and this fits with her being pretty much retired now. Sukowa and Habich have more, but the sole lead actress in here is Katja Riemann. I must say I have been pretty harsh on Riemann and Sukowa in other films and I still believe that they both are incredibly overrated, but I can say in Riemann's favor here that she had some solid moments as well (especially early on with Habich) going with the sequences of blatant overacting that she always has. Cannot say the same about Sukowa, she is as bad as usual. But she has sucked a lot in other MvT films as well, so that's not a surprise at all.The film is basically a story of a woman traveling to the United States too find her mother of whom she thought she had died a long time ago. This film has many many problems in terms of realism. There is way too much coincidence in here to make it look like a really authentic story to be honest. Add to that the weak moments of acting and the extremely pretentious execution in terms of the script, then you know what a mess you have here. von Trotta has not made a convincing film anymore since she stopped working with Schlöndorff and that was decades ago. Admittedly you need to state in her favor that several of her works sucked because of terrible Sukowa performance in the center of these. Now to be more specific about this one here: I could have done without the embarrassing wedding planner parts. Plus they should have left the music out completely. It was executed shoddily, even if Riemann is not the worst singer, not a particularly good one either though. I guess if they had completely focused on the core plot I mentioned very early in my review and kept out all the insignificant and pretentious stuff, then this could have been a pretty solid film at 70 minutes instead of 100. With "pretentious", I am also referring to the English-language talk by Sukowa's character, a recurring theme in MvT's works that always seems like a truly desperate attempt to give her movies international significance, to get them known outside of the German market too. Besides that, it's the usual. People often complain about weak depictions of female characters in film, but von Trotta's works are a perfect example of the other way around. Men exist only to be fools basically or to drool over the strong powerful female characters in these movies and this one here is no exception, even if Habich at times elevated the sub-par material. Let me end this review with an anecdote that summarizes the quality here in a solid manner. Karin Dor's last work before this film was a Rosamunde Pilcher film and this one here is pretty much on the same level as its attempts at relevance, depth and true meaning never work out. Thumbs down from me. Don't watch "The Misplaced World".
