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The unpredictability of the unexpected |
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| 06/12/2007 |
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Yesterday’s competition films Der Andere Junge (The Other Boy) and Joshua marked a day of children vs. parents. Expectation mounts over Romero and his “night of the living children.”
We met with German director Volker Einrauch, who spoke about his experiences of the dark side of life.
“We live in an era in which we have to work very hard to feel like we are human. Young people especially experience the coldness of the world around them, cruelty, perversion. And they don’t have the tools to elaborate their emotions.”
This is the terrifying idea behind Der Andere Junge, according to director Volker Einrauch, at Courmayeur to present the festival’s second competition film. The story uses the noir genre to put forth a vicious social critique of the traditional values ascribed to the family and education. Einrauch adds: “When you have a child you ask yourself constantly how responsible you are for his actions. But the film doesn’t try to give answers, nor offer a single point of view. It is a description, a portrait; a chronicling of a reaction to a strange event, to something frightening that’s happened.”
The event in question is a terrible incident, an unspeakable tragedy; representative of all of the horrible events that take place today in our spotless cities and turn our false and ordinary routine upside down. And, as well as know: the answer to the unexpected is always unpredictable.
“The characters’ reactions are fundamental to the story,” explains Einrauch. “Each one reacts in a different way, showing his worst side. They all have double morals, things to hide in their relationships with others. The fact that they reciprocally switch roles between tormentor and victim is fundamental to the film.”
As the tension is maintained throughout the film, the spectator naturally wonders: what is happening? What went wrong? Yet in the middle of the chaos there emerges a childlike face, soothing, calm, suspended in a faraway place, in a time without clocks. “Willi Gerk is a great actor and very talented,” says Einrauch enthusiastically. “He immediately understood the character. He worked really well. As a director you can work with actors only so much – beyond that lie the person’s expressions. In cinema you can say a lot with just a face!”
Moreover, among the pain and attempts of the characters to save themselves at the expense of the others, there emerges the figure of a low-key police officer who observes and seems to be the older brother of the young murderer/victim. “I wanted to create a character who was not a cliché,” says Einrauch, “who could understand the situation by taking a step back from it, who feels passion towards the weak. He is definitely not the kind of policeman we usually find in crime dramas.”
The cast – most of whom are known on German television – were tight-knit and had a strong motivation for making a lesson on ruthlessness. “We worked as a team,” says the director in conclusion, “with a low budget and through our production company Josefine. For a long time we made comedies for television but after a while we wanted to change tones. In Der Andere Junge we wanted to explore the dark side of life.”
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