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BERLINALE 2009 Panorama / Germany

Poetry and prose in Struck's Sleeping Songs

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The Berlinale’s Panorama section – celebrates its 30th anniversary this year – hosted Sleeping Songs, the third film by previous contender Andreas Struck (whose debut feature Chill Out was selected in 2000). The title was warmly received by viewers.

Following the example of Hannes Stöhr’s recent Berlin Calling [+see also:
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, the film’s anti-hero is a successful musician in crisis, in this case a jazz trumpet player (Stefan Rudolf). For reasons of the heart that remain largely unknown, he ends up homeless on the underground and throws his instrument in the river. Next to the body of a recently-deceased homeless woman, he finds a paper bag that contains some poems.

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He then gets caught up in a brawl with other vagrants, for which he is sentenced to community service in a cemetery. There, he decides to set the poems to music and try to win back his girlfriend (Chulpan Khamatova).

Certain aspects of the film are truly successful, such as Andreas Doub’s cinematography – much applauded, along with other visual elements – the incorporation of music (composed by Nils Petter Molvaer), and the poetry in the superbly lyrical scenes looking back at the deceased vagrant’s life.

However, Sleeping Songs dwells a bit too much on the young man’s existential crisis and the romantic aspect of his plight is unconvincing and too naively sentimental.

Screenwriter Dagmar Gabler has brought a woman’s touch to the film: along with cleverly asking what lies inside homeless people’s bags, she explicitly suggests that the women in the film are too good for the losers they’re in love with. We can only agree.

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(Translated from French)

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