BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

BelSports 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.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) This almost 10-year-old movie is a definite contender for longest German film in recent years. It easily passes the 150-minute mark and yet manages to drag on only very few occasions. Most of the film is well done and will have you curious about what is gonna happen next. A lot of that is thanks to lead actors Jürgen Vogel and Sabine Timoteo. I also liked Zapatka's performance while I thought Hennicke was fairly forgettable. The film is directed by Matthias Glasner and also written by him with the help of Judith Angerbauer and Vogel himself.Let me say that this is a very graphic movie. Vogel plays a convicted sex offender and in the first 10 minutes we already see how he rapes a young woman. A similar scene happens at the end of the movie and that is by far not everything. No taboos here and the ending is very tough to watch as well. Yet, it never feels that these scenes were just included for the sake of it. They all serve a purpose. Even if we know the main character is a violent monster, we still feel with him and hope he can be cured and will not commit any crimes again, maybe even become happy with Timoteo's character.The movie takes place in Berlin, but as a Berlin resident, I have to say the references were not that big. I only remember a metro station sign. It's all about the question if he can defeat his evil desires and choose love over all the temptation that constantly seems to follow him. My favorite scene is maybe near the end when he realizes what he has done and what is going to happen to him (again) in the bathroom. Maybe the best-acted scene from Vogel's career. In terms of impact, the ending is very important too. I liked how joggers just ran by not realizing the drama that had just taken place. Also the decision of Vogel's character is also a very clever reference to the film's title. I am not sure if I would watch this film anytime soon again, but it I certainly recommend it if you are interested in the subject, appreciate films with little dialog and can deal with the heavy material. Finally, i want to add that I very much liked the way "Ave Maria" was used here.

user-7767 I would not like to give a summary of the impulsive scenes or the techniques used in the film. I do refrain from talking about the movie as a logical construction. Anyway, that is exactly what was done at Ludwigshafen's 'Festival des Deutschen Films' - trying to pull the discussion onto a more emotional level, the director himself and the two protagonists failed. which stands for the extreme distance people (and eve the cast) seem to be able to keep having watched the movie. This lets me conclude that the movie, although displaying one part of human life/struggle, was unable to move people's substance.. This is the first movie that made me doubt, if the medium 'movie' can really reach people's core. Not even the realistic display of rape seems to be enough to touch people.

tkam Just saw this at the Tribeca Film Festival and it's one of the most intelligent, raw, intense and thought provoking films I've ever seen. It's unfortunate that some audience members and critics will focus on the graphic scenes of rape, tender lovemaking, masturbation and emotional trauma. The movie ultimately is about the extreme strength and fragility of personal will. We're shown how one person's surfacing unconditional love strengthens that person's will enough to accept and (heart wrenchingly) and not stop the complete relinquishing of another's personal will. Heady stuff, but very cleanly done. The two lead performers, Jürgen Vogel & Sabine Timoteo, fully inhabit and bring to surface the deeply-buried emotional chaos and trajectories of their characters. (The brilliance of their work would be lost on audience members who aren't used to understanding different cultures, i.e.: Germans cool, thoughtful communication style.) Their performances are nothing short of phenomenal.If you love great film making, see this. But brace yourself for a very compelling and intense 2.75 albeit efficient hours. You will be blown away. I found it very insightful and moving.

the_man_with_a_long_name I, too, saw this film at the Berlinale, and though the matter of rape was treated with maturity and frankness, the film itself was constructed poorly. More than anything, it was bland - camera placement and cuts were standard fare, non-diagetic sound was near non-existent, and the dialogue was highly unrealistic, comprising of long, drawn-out pauses interspersed with briefly-spoken lines.The upshot of this was that I felt no attachment to the characters beyond a basic sympathy for their current predicaments - dialogue was stretched out to the point of losing its emotional resonance, and many lines were delivered with little feeling from the actors. I was particularly unconvinced by Sabine Timoteo's performance, whose talent restricted her to screaming rather than actual crying. Compared to Claire Dane's stunning depiction of anguish in Romeo and Juliet, I felt wholly unsatisfied by her performance.It was these factors that made the characters feel less than human, failing to imbue them with life. This, coupled with the utterly bland direction and editing, meant that I felt no attachment to them, and I was left gagging for each coming line of dialogue purely to provide a break from the silent, expressionless moments in between. Drawing out the narrative to over two and a half hours simply rubbed salt in the wound.The Free Will was not in itself awful, but there were so few points of interest that I found myself becoming restless within forty minutes, and when the credits rolled in what will doubtless be considered a brilliantly emotional finale, I still felt little attachment to the characters.