TaryBiggBall
It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.
Raymond Sierra
The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
Catherina
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.
markwood272
I selected this DVD off a library shelf at random. I had never heard of Young Torless. My idle curiosity was well rewarded. The film belongs in the same league with Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Zero for Conduct, Lord of the Flies, or other similar works. Perhaps there is allegory here, a foreshadowing of the murderous future of the Germanic peoples. Or maybe a nearer, smaller-scale atrocity: several scenes are as chilling as eavesdropping on a Leopold and Loeb strategy session.This is expertly crafted film making. Everything – casting, shot composition, editing, plot structure – works. Barbara Steele landed one of the great roles of her career. The music is especially effective. Hans Werner Henze's use of modern tonalities played on ancient instruments functions perfectly, achieving the film score ideal that complements the picture and other sounds, a Greek chorus without words. Aided by Henze's score, some of the scenes in Young Torless brought back with painful clarity many a sad, bleak, cloudy-morning memory of sophomore year in high school.
tparis-2
Basini, a pathetic, slow witted and rather homely weakling, is targeted as a thief and is subjected to a series of humiliating, degrading experiments in the attic of a military academy. Basini willingly enslaves himself to his classmate Reiting, brilliantly portrayed as a popular bully "with gusto" (as one reviewer noted)by Fred Dietz, and seems to relish the abuse he has to endure.Basini is objectified- his debasement is seen from the point of view of Torless, who is fascinated by Basini's willingness to take whatever punishment is meted out, and his two chums - Reiting and the brainy sadist Beineberg. Eventually the sadists,who are running out of novel ways to torment their victim, decide to turn Basini over to the entire school, where he is strung up by the heels in the gym and subjected to an enthusiastic battering by his gleeful classmates. Basini is expelled as a moral degenerate, the "sensitive" Torless voluntarily leaves the academy. and the two arch-torturers stay on to graduate - no doubt with high honors. Musil's 1901 novel is more sexually explicit. In the novel Basini is stripped naked and battered by his classmates in preparation for a whipping. Basini turns himself in to avoid being flogged to death. In the novel Basini is described as pretty and sexually alluring. Seidowsky, the actor who portrays the victim in this movie, is pudgy and dull-eyed. His tormentors are handsome - almost charming at times, and that is likely closer to reality than we'd care to imagine. A modern remake could explore the homo-erotic sadism more explicitly than Schloendorf dared in the 1960s.
irishtom99
people should not be distracted about the specifics of the plot,or the tangential,secondary themes of cruelty/sexuality..schlondorf has made his metaphor clear and passionate..people in positions of power(due to talent,wealth,titles of authority,physical stregnth,etc)are not entitled to abuse others,no matter what their alleged justification;and people who witness such abuses and do nothing are worse than enablers, they are accomplices..the obvious association is with the Nazis,but this is a universal problem that could be likened to the Spanish inquisition,the salem witch trials,the torture of prisoners during the iraq war,the red scare hearings and countless others..my own feel is that torless is held up as someone who contributes mightily to this particular evil,but fools himself into thinking he's not involved..his final speech was a lame attempt to justify his conduct..the film may not have been entertaining,but it was thought-provoking
mdm-11
Set in an indefinite time and place (likely the pre-WWI Germany/Austria), at a boarding school for adolescent boys, one student is caught stealing, and subsequently blackmailed and sadistically terrorized. One of his tormentors (the title character) passively observes much of the brutality against the victim, but eventually is overcome with emotions about his part in the evils inflicted on a fellow-student. An eventual investigation into the incidents by the school board leads the authority figures to believe that this "Young Toeless" is emotionally high strung and unfit to continue his studies at the school. Thinly veiled commentaries about young males in a society that expects total obedience and loyalty, while fanning flames of hate and urges to feel superior to others. Physical and emotional torture of a peer is shown as intoxicating and thrilling. The title character escapes this "world" by exclaiming that he now understands all about this "mystery", thus needs no longer to be involved. Once all was found out, the "meeting" among the class, where everyone "got their story straight" reminds of the post WWII investigations (culminating in the Nuremberg Trials), when one citizen would vouch for the other and vice versa, insisting all were innocent or "following orders". An emotional maturity is required for viewing this film. I would not recommend it for an audience under the age of 16. Otherwise this is a thought-provoking drama with many discussion points.
