Who am I? A nobody. A nobody superhero whose secret power is to be invisible. Baran bo Odar's latest film had two screenings recently at TiFF 2014. I only had the chance to make it to the second one and the director was conspicuously absent. He gave "missing his daughter" as an excuse. It's hard to be disagreeable with such an excuse and really I didn't have too many questions.
I haven't seen his first film Silence yet and now it has made it onto my list of to be seen. Not because his latest is particularily brilliant, but rather that it is a solid piece of rather unusual filmmaking from Germany. Instead of the often slow and contemplative pieces coming from the Berlin School like The State I am In. Odar's Who am I? has more in common with Run Lola Run, Tom Tykwer's 1998 film about a disenfranchised rebellious daughter, and the neat tricks you can play with time and film. Like Tykwer's film, Obar explores the Berlin landscape in a fast pace of filmmaking more in tune with the Berlin electronic dance music scene than with emo.
Obar's film latches on to the theme of young alienated masculinity with power and parallels the hardship of the protagonist, Benjamin, with his comic book heros, who all inevitably lose their parents to a violent death. Obar however casts a wide social net beyond the question of "belonging" that touches on the effects of alzheimer's, suicide, the absent father figure, social alienation, racism, consipiracy theories and also love.
The film is centered on genius hacker Benjamin who belongs to a small group of activist hackers known as CLAY. They escalate their pranks, seeking recognition (and ultimately a sense of belonging) from the "big players" until they come up against a group involved with the Russian mafia. This could have been another movie on an almost worn out trope, but its playfulness and the fast pace keeps it going, even tricking the audience at the end into believing the authenticity of the reveal.
One of the curious turns of the film involves its emphasis on reality. The internet, the dark net and so on are all composed eventually of real people sitting in real coffee shops. Forgetting that this reality exists is portrayed of the potential problems of the immersive virtual world we are in the midst of creating. No system is safe because no person is infallible. But also because each virtual system is interwoven with a dynamic and changing reality. At the heart of this film is the recognition that the immaterial and the material cannot be separated.
I haven't seen his first film Silence yet and now it has made it onto my list of to be seen. Not because his latest is particularily brilliant, but rather that it is a solid piece of rather unusual filmmaking from Germany. Instead of the often slow and contemplative pieces coming from the Berlin School like The State I am In. Odar's Who am I? has more in common with Run Lola Run, Tom Tykwer's 1998 film about a disenfranchised rebellious daughter, and the neat tricks you can play with time and film. Like Tykwer's film, Obar explores the Berlin landscape in a fast pace of filmmaking more in tune with the Berlin electronic dance music scene than with emo.
Obar's film latches on to the theme of young alienated masculinity with power and parallels the hardship of the protagonist, Benjamin, with his comic book heros, who all inevitably lose their parents to a violent death. Obar however casts a wide social net beyond the question of "belonging" that touches on the effects of alzheimer's, suicide, the absent father figure, social alienation, racism, consipiracy theories and also love.
The film is centered on genius hacker Benjamin who belongs to a small group of activist hackers known as CLAY. They escalate their pranks, seeking recognition (and ultimately a sense of belonging) from the "big players" until they come up against a group involved with the Russian mafia. This could have been another movie on an almost worn out trope, but its playfulness and the fast pace keeps it going, even tricking the audience at the end into believing the authenticity of the reveal.
One of the curious turns of the film involves its emphasis on reality. The internet, the dark net and so on are all composed eventually of real people sitting in real coffee shops. Forgetting that this reality exists is portrayed of the potential problems of the immersive virtual world we are in the midst of creating. No system is safe because no person is infallible. But also because each virtual system is interwoven with a dynamic and changing reality. At the heart of this film is the recognition that the immaterial and the material cannot be separated.
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