Poll

What is your favorite?

haven't seen any
2 (14.3%)
don't like any
2 (14.3%)
other
0 (0%)
The Forest For the Trees
0 (0%)
Everyone Else
4 (28.6%)
Toni Erdmann
6 (42.9%)

Total Members Voted: 14

Author Topic: Ade, Maren  (Read 1963 times)

1SO

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Ade, Maren
« on: May 25, 2016, 12:09:38 PM »
I know what will win this poll initially, but after Cannes I think some people (like me) might be interested to discover this female director. Plus there's this photo.


1SO

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Re: Ade, Maren
« Reply #1 on: May 25, 2016, 12:12:35 PM »
Also, weird that I found a review by smirnoff.


pixote

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Re: Ade, Maren
« Reply #2 on: May 25, 2016, 12:28:52 PM »

Everyone Else - This is a much better film, though plagued with a lot of the same problems.  Director Maren Ade sets the pace and visual style of real life, and her characters' actions are somewhat plausible, but in a film that is essentially a two-handed character study, it's essential that those characters be believable, and I don't wholly believe these two.  The first third of the film is pretty great, as Chris and Gitti vacation and have good and bad times together (seems he can't get a real job because he's either too meek or too lazy, but the two share a sense of humor and genuinely like each other).  However, when they meet an obnoxious couple and Chris starts to act like  the chesseball jerk of a husband because he thinks that's what Gitti means when she exhorts him to be a productive member of society, the film lost me.  The film sets up a limited, either/or idea of male behavior that isn't the least bit insightful.  It just stacks the deck in the way a writer more interested in concepts than characters does.

oneaprilday and Verite are fans of this one. Bondo labeled it fine.

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oneaprilday

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Re: Ade, Maren
« Reply #3 on: May 25, 2016, 04:26:49 PM »
oneaprilday and Verite are fans of this one.

pixote
You remembered! :)

Can't wait to catch up with Toni Erdmann.

(Just looking at her imdb page and discovering she was also a producer on Gomes's Arabian Nights, one of my faves of last year, as well as Tabu, one of my top films of the decade. She's even cooler to me now.  8) )

pixote

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Re: Ade, Maren
« Reply #4 on: January 22, 2017, 05:25:05 PM »
Toni Erdmann  (Maren Ade, 2016)
Maybe the weirdest movie of 2016. About two hours in (the movie feels five hours long), I started laughing out loud at weird things, with the laughter partly fueled by incredulity, like, "How did we get here? How does this film even exist?" It's an admirably bizarre collection of seemingly random ideas, somewhat revolving around the generic tale of a free-spirited type and a straight-laced type trying to find common ground. Call me when Ade remakes Lethal Weapon.
Grade: B-

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pixote

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Re: Ade, Maren
« Reply #5 on: January 22, 2017, 06:31:42 PM »
Maybe the weirdest movie of 2016.
What's weird is that this is the second recent film with Sandra Hüller where a character close to her appears in a furry costume. Otherwise, I dunno. I suppose the weirdness of the other 2016 films that immediately come to my mind is maybe more expected, thus making them less weird in comparison?

Yeah, Toni Erdmann struck me as more inexplicably weird versus something like Forbidden Room, where the weirdness is more fundamental to what the film is doing (from what little I sampled of it). I think, in the original review I wrote in my head, my adjective of choice for Toni Erdmann wasn't weird but rather haphazard. The film staggers along, almost drunkenly, eventually getting home but by a most circuitous path, always interesting but not always intelligible.

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valmz

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Re: Ade, Maren
« Reply #6 on: January 22, 2017, 10:38:39 PM »
It's difficult to remember something as specific as the "film language" from a film you've seen twice in five or so years, but after my recent viewing of Toni Erdmann I felt as if the specificity and detail in Everyone Else was not present on a consistent basis. There are moments, but in such a lengthy film the consistency of the language is often one of the most effective tools for filmmakers, but there were multiple times where something was established, then lost to the aether. Of course, it isn't a necessary trait or all that unexpected for a film shot with a handheld camera for most of the film, but on first viewing I definitely feel that Everyone Else shines above Toni Erdmann, despite its strengths. This is especially the case because I loved Everyone Else on first viewing and it only improved on rewatch.

Her first film is not in contention for her best for me, but that's not much of an insult!

1SO

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Re: Ade, Maren
« Reply #7 on: April 08, 2017, 11:13:29 PM »
1. Toni Erdmann
2. Everyone Else

DarkeningHumour

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Re: Ade, Maren
« Reply #8 on: April 13, 2017, 06:41:37 PM »
I am unlikely to see the other two so I might as well post this now.

Toni Erdmann
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Jeff Schroeck

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Re: Ade, Maren
« Reply #9 on: November 18, 2018, 12:59:13 PM »
I just watched Forest For The Trees (it's streaming on Kanopy.) It took about 20 minutes to get acclimated to it, which is typical for me whenever I watch one of these close-framed, early '00s video type movies, but I wound up digging it. It's tense and cringe-inducing, with the main character unaware that her attempts to bond with people are coming across the absolute wrong way. Or, rather, her actions are precisely interpreted; it's her intentions that get lost in the process.

I saw a review that called the ending both an affirmation & a negation, which is a perfect summation. In it, the character, a teacher in a new school who lost the respect of the students as soon as she stepped in the class, never to gain it, runs out of the classroom and drives away. She turns on cruise control and gets in the backseat, with the car driving itself for a surprisingly long time. The end is not quite fantasy but has a fantastical edge to it. It's unsettling in the way that the weirder bits in Toni Erdmann are unsettling.