KnotStronger
This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.
Roy Hart
If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.
Raymond Sierra
The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
SnoopyStyle
German student Stefan Brückner hitchhikes across Europe looking for adventure after finish studying math. He meets Estelle Miller at a party in Paris. Despite warning from a friend, he follows her to Ibiza. As she falls further into heroin, she introduces him to the needle.This is a rather slow and straight forward drug movie. My major problem is the lackluster couple. Other than getting naked and being beautiful, Estelle is not more than a bohemian druggie. Stefan starts off as a stiff. Despite the hippie changeover, his character is never far from being stiff. There are darker portrayals of drug use around. Director Barbet Schroeder has some mainstream success later on as well. This one is an art-house film with some interesting bites.
Robert J. Maxwell
I didn't find it as terrible as some people. It's really a chronicle of the times (1967). Klaus Grünberg is an innocent young German lad who meets the American girl Mimsy Farmer at a party in Paris. The chief reason they're there is so that Grünberg's good friend, Michel Chanderli, can sneak into the bedroom where all the coats have been flung and go through the pockets looking for money. That's how poor the two of them are.But, having met Farmer, Grünberg is struck with her and pursues her to the paradisiacal island of Ibiza, where he finds her somehow mixed up with a vaguely genial Landsmann named Wolf. The sun is blazing, the buildings are white, the scenery magnificent, and the descent into the maelstrom begins. First she introduces him to "pot." He kind of likes it. Grünberg and Farmer sneak away from the town and from Wolf, and relocate to a mountaintop retreat where she reluctantly involves him in "horse" -- that is heroin -- showing him how to cook it and how to hold the tie with his teeth. She doesn't tempt him and in fact tries to discourage his use but before you know it they're both addicted and have stolen from Wolf and begged on the streets for more.Winter descends, the weather turns cold and bleak, the tourists depart and take their gaiety with them. We last see Farmer squirming around on the floor and screaming for a fix, and Grünberg OD's in a dark hallway and his body is sniffed out by a dog.It's a sad tale, rather like "The Panic in Needle Park", in which a user sadly watches his amour become hooked, except that in this case the addiction is unintended by both parties. You really DO get addicted too, because of something called the opponent process theory. Your body has a number of built-in receptors for naturally produced "happy" substances. If you begin using opiates, what happens is that your body adjusts to the new inputs, and develops still more "happy" receptors, so you need more heroin just to remain normal, never mind high.I didn't find either of the principles unlikable, but rather tragic because of their flaws. Grünberg isn't receptive to good advice, either from his friend Chanderli or from Farmer. He turns possessive because of his love for Farmer and slaps her around. She, in turn, loves him but she disappears mysteriously from time to time and seems to have nothing constructive in mind for the future. Both may be bad, in their own ways, but neither is evil. At the same time, there's barely any plot. I have no idea what the writers had in mind besides the exploitation of a prominent culture movement of the period.It's a thought-provoking movie too. The thought it provokes is, "They're living in this whitewashed Taj Mahal overlooking the Mediterranean and neither has a job worth mentioning. So where the hell is the money coming from?" That's the thought it provokes. I'd love to know the answer because Ibiza looks pretty tempting, regardless of the season.
Nabob13
I purchased this film somewhere around 6-8 years ago from Movies Unlimited, basing said purchase on The Pink Floyd soundtrack (which, as a teen, I saw in the local Record Bar, w/o any idea about the film) and Mimsy Farmer's role in it. I never watched it ...but then Friday night, Jan.13th,2012,my wife and I watched it. And I thought Mimsy's roles in "Road to Salina" or "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" were wild! If "Midnight Cowboy" won the Best Picture Oscar that year, "More" should've won the Best Foreign Film, hands down!! Early Pink Floyd songs ("relics") include "Cymbaline", "The Nile Song", "Quicksilver", and "Cirrus Minor", very indicative of The Graduate's Journey to Tarturus. Ibiza locations, as well as Paris' Latin Quarter locales, invoke a false exoticism few drug-related films of the era(even "Easy Rider")can boast.I recommend this film to '60's collectors as well as to drug-councelling services. It's certainly not typical or cliché'-ridden as "The Trip" or "Psych-Out", and not moralistic as "Days of Wine nd Roses" or "Go Ask Alice". Really blew my mind.
benzobrill
A German freshman, Stefan hitch hikes to Paris during summer break were he falls for a mysterious young woman he meets in the Paris freak scene. He then follows her in the famous isle of Ibiza, the hippie joint were meets Wolf, a man who throws Hitler-Jugend knives, owns bars and hotels and keeps Estelle under his thumb with dope. The couple tries to escape Wolf, Stefan gets hooked with dope and jealousy for Estelle, who's groovy and a free spirit. Great photography and music, plot is quite usual for the period but it's not an exploitation kind of movie, cold and dramatic. The moral is quite strong (he was looking for the sun...) but I would not say it's a film against drugs even it puts enphasy on drug use.
