Amrum

 

Fatih Akin with Hark Bohm

Director Fatih Akin

Akin with Matthias Schweighöfer and Diane Kruger

Akin with Hark Bohm

Screenwriter Hark Bohm

AMRUM        B+                                                                                                                      Germany  (93 mi)  2025  d: Fatih Akin

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT                                                                                                      by Fatih Akin

Hark Bohm wrote a screenplay full of poetry, grace, and suspense — Amrum. When he realized that he would no longer be able to make the film himself, he asked me. I hesitated — after all, I am an auteur filmmaker who must always find a personal connection to the material. In any case, the screenplay had to be rewritten, as it was much too long. Since Hark writes everything by hand, his own revision would have taken too much time. I offered to take on the rewrite. Hark agreed. In the process, the story grew close to my heart. It was like adopting a child — at some point, you no longer question it, you simply love it unconditionally.

At first, I conceived the whole thing as an experimental film: how can I manage to shoot a Hark Bohm film? I revisited his work, analyzing his camera angles, his direction of actors, his editing — and above all, his attitude. But the closer the shoot approached, the more I realized that this was nonsense. I have to make my own film!

From that realization, everything started to fall into place. The films that came to mind when Hark first told me the story were Bicycle Thieves and Shoeshine by Vittorio De Sica. The scenes where Nanning searches for driftwood at night made me think of The Night of the Hunter by Charles Laughton. The whole film was supposed to breathe the spirit of Stand by Me by Rob Reiner — thus, my cinematic upbringing became the first personal connection to the film. Others followed.

But the most important realization came to me shortly before completion earlier this year: friends who had been living in a kind of Disneyland version of Germany, have started talking about leaving the country. But Goethe said: "Where we are educated, there is our homeland." And I don't want to leave it to the Nazis.

Amrum tells of expulsion from paradise. For me, the film became a mission — a journey into the depths of my "German soul." Perhaps it was the last lesson that Master Hark Bohm taught me: cinema remains an eternal mystery.

There are very few films that accurately depict Nazi sympathizers with any degree of humanity, yet this is no ordinary film, introduced as “A Hark Bohm film by Fatih Akin,” who adapts a first-time, autobiographical novel by the same name based on the childhood memories of German actor, author, and film director Hark Bohm, a long-standing friend of the director, most closely associated as an actor in a dozen films made by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died just two months after the film was released.  Both deeply connected to Hamburg, Bohm originally intended to direct the movie himself, but his declining health forced him to hand over the project to Akin.  All the more emotionally powerful because of its dramatic restraint, there’s a lot of heart and soul in this picture, which distinguishes it from others, beautifully blending a tender coming-of-age story about the loss of innocence with the barbarism of the adult world, set against the waning days of the Third Reich, defined by a crushing ideological collapse and moral disorientation, becoming a painterly canvas that accentuates the psychological toll of the characters and thoughtfully expands filmmaker Fatih Akin’s career-spanning exploration of German identity.  Spending most of his career focused on non-ethnic Germans and their experience in German society, this is inspired by Hark Bohm’s own published autobiographical memories growing up as the son of a high-ranking Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) officer during the final days of World War II on Amrum, part of the sparsely populated North Frisian Islands in the North Sea.  It took considerable effort on the part of the entire country to acknowledge mistakes and correct the unspeakable historical sins of the past, where acknowledging guilt is part of a pervasive collective sentiment present in the German national consciousness to the point of becoming an essential part of its postwar identity, which has often been used to justify paradoxical positions, such as the unconditional defense of a genocidal state like Israel, using the memory of the Holocaust as a moral shield against any form of valid criticism or questioning.  With their home in Hamburg destroyed in an Allied bombing campaign, he and his family were forced to relocate to the safer environment of a quiet, rural island, joining others from the “mainland” who have evacuated from their bombed-out cities.  Given very limited distribution, told from the vantage point of twelve-year old Nanning (newcomer Jasper Billerbeck, who was discovered during a sailing training in Lower Saxony, though Bohm was actually only six at the time, too young for the conscientiously-evolving thoughts entrusted to him), who is living with his staunch Nazi-supporting mother Hille (Laura Tonke) in the later stages of pregnancy, his younger brother Macker (Tjard Nissen), and his Aunt Ena (Lisa Hagmeister), spending most of his time working in the potato fields of a nearby farm of Tessa (Diane Kruger), an ardent anti-fascist, who rewards him with milk and food for the chickens,  As a squadron of Allied bombers can be seen overhead, a new group of tattered refugees arrives by horse cart, as the Russians are reportedly only 50 kilometers from Berlin, mostly stared at as outsiders, and while they are treated differently, not really wanted or appreciated, they are all Germans. 

A quiet, atmospherically dense drama that is less politically than humanly told, remarkably distinct in its perspective, essentially a film about maturation, disappointment, and the search for a place in a world in upheaval, Akin beautifully establishes the daily rhythm of life on the tiny island, unraveling in small vignettes that have an accumulative power, becoming something uniquely different, yet also dramatically powerful, turning collective war trauma into a chamber play that is emotionally and psychologically complex.  Nanning has a nearby friend in Tessa’s son Hermann (Kian Köppke), about his same age, who borrows his copy of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, where they compare notes about what is considered an Amrumer islander, as they have their own language and history, with historical ties to Denmark, renowned as skilled whalers and seafarers, though today their economy has shifted almost entirely from seafaring to agriculture, sustainable tourism, and nature preservation, as the island sits within the protected Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Park near the border with Denmark.  Offering freedom and adventure, Nanning hardly goes to school anymore, especially since he is teased there by the other children, who reject him for not being from Amrum and not speaking “their” northern Frisian dialect (the first movie to extensively feature Öömrang), as he was born in Hamburg, continually viewed as an outsider, just like the other war refugees, discovering, even from a child’s eyes, that hatred is part of the human condition.  His parents are fanatical Nazis, where a portrait of Adolf Hitler hangs on the wall in his kitchen, a swastika flag flies outside the house, with his mother being a Bund Deutscher Mädel or BDM leader (female branch of the Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany), his father a Nazi SS Officer who has written numerous books on eugenics, his Uncle Onno (Jan Georg Schütte) is a German Socialist Party board member on the neighboring island of Föhr, while Nanning himself is a member of the Hitler Youth, and proudly wears the uniform.  Caught up in the ambiguity of trying to make sense of a world that doesn’t align with what he’s been taught, Nanning learns about his parents’ hideous convictions and grotesque past, as Akin excels in slowly doling out information, heightening the disarmingly poetic visual style while prolonging the suspense.  One of the few figures Nanning can look up to is his Uncle Theo (Matthias Schweighöfer), who gifted him a whale’s tooth knife before he left for New York City (noting that more Amrumers live in New York City than there are on Amrum).  Over the course of the film, Nanning learns his Uncle Theo was exiled or estranged from the family because Nanning’s parents (and relatives) turned their backs and refused to help Theo’s Jewish fiancée escape a concentration camp, where she was subsequently murdered by the Nazis.  Nanning, of course, has little understanding of what any of this means, finding it hard to believe his parents would do something like that, facing difficult moral dilemmas without providing simple solutions, as the film centers on the child’s slowly realized recognition of his parents’ sin.

From the maker of HEAD-ON (2004), The Edge of Heaven (Auf Der Anderen Seite) (2007), and 2017 Top Ten List #9 In the Fade (Aus dem Nichts), which Bohm co-wrote, Akin’s films tend to be ambitious, raw, and emotionally explosive, where anger, pain, and rebellion simmer, exploring subjects like ethnic identity, immigration, and cultural conflict, yet this is a very different film, on a much smaller scale, calmer, unusually measured, more intimately spare and introspectively subdued, told through the warmth of a child’s eyes, where the massive sky and setting sun merge above the restless sea, with wind in the dunes and water everywhere, featuring plenty of scenes of animals in their natural environment, like beetles on blades of grass, waterfowl on the beach, honey bees, geese in flight, or desolate mudflat sequences that reveal what the tide has brought in, which feel more like poetic Terrence Malick touches. Cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub captures Amrum’s stark and unforgiving landscapes through expansive wide shots, often pulling back to reveal a vast, water-saturated terrain that feels suspended in time, with the island dotted with thatched cottages.  The film turns when Nanning innocently announces that he’s heard that the war may be over soon, where he’s excited about the prospects of seeing his father again, but his mother, a prisoner of her blind allegiance to Nazi ideology, sternly sets him straight, indicating this kind of talk only weakens the troop’s morale, as they are risking their lives every day fighting for the Fatherland, claiming whoever told him that deserves to be thoroughly punished.  Despite their hardships, Nanning’s life on the beautiful and windswept island is mostly idyllic, where his mother’s aggressive posture takes him by surprise, not really knowing what to make of it.  After hearing the actual news of Germany’s imminent defeat on the radio, followed shortly afterwards with Hitler’s demise, Hille takes a turn for the worse, falling into a deep depression, keeping to herself, refusing to eat, even after the birth of her child, realizing that the entire foundation of their beliefs, the very social structure that sustained them, is close to total collapse, emblematic of the collective trauma of the nation, wondering “What kind of world is this for a child to grow up in?”  All she talks about is wanting white bread with butter and honey, precious commodities that are nearly impossible to find, but that doesn’t stop Nanning from looking for them anyway, literally scouring the island, discovering it is filled with people responding to Germany’s impending defeat, with some relieved, some fearful, and some in denial.  In a succession of encounters that will highlight the fractures that tear this small society apart, caught up in the enclosed and restricted space, his entire family is viewed as strangers, treated with the prejudice and hostility normally reserved for foreigners, despite the fact they have owned a house on the island for countless generations, discovering how far removed their life is from the others who are not Nazi sympathizers and just want the war to be over, vehemently regarding his family as outsiders whose militaristic views are barely tolerated, as so many of their Amrumer neighbors have immigrant relatives fighting in the U.S. army.     

Akin presents a devastated and unstructured society comprised of convinced Nazis who cling to lies to the very end, war refugees forced to leave everything behind, people thirsting for personal revenge against the Nazi regime, and those who simply wished to be left alone, while addressing the issue of German collective guilt, the legacy of National Socialism, and the question of how this burden would continue to affect later generations.  On some of his adventures across the island he is joined by Hermann, whose mother is demonstrably anti-Hitler, but his grandfather, Grandpa Arjan (Lars Jessen), teaches Nanning how to gut and skin a rabbit, while also discovering his grandfather’s hidden radio tuned to foreign enemy stations that play American jazz, like Fred Astaire’s Cheek to Cheek, Fred Astaire - Cheek To Cheek 1935 (Leo Reisman) (Irving ... YouTube (3:17), or later after the war is over we hear the celebratory sounds of Louis Armstrong’s Stardust, Louis Armstrong- Stardust YouTube (3:34).  He also drops in on an old whaler, Sam Gangsters (Detlev Buck), who teaches him the seal dance, laying on the beach on his stomach while kicking his rear legs, luring seals in from the ocean where Sam can shoot them.  Nanning’s journey is interrupted by a group of war refugees who take advantage of their strength in numbers, stealing what he was gathering for his mother, while beating him up in the process.  Wearing his Hitler Youth uniform, he makes a bike crossing through the mudflats during low tide to visit his Uncle Onno on a neighboring island, seeking sugar for his mother, but he has to recite a Nazi pledge before his uncle will part with it.  Easily the most harrowing experience is his return back home, as the tide has risen, making passage nearly impossible, where he has to wade through water above his shoulders, holding the sugar over his head while steering the bike underwater, until eventually it is too much, where he has to swim, losing his aunt’s bike in the process, returning the next day for butter, only to be confronted by one of the bullies on the journey home, sending them both back into the sea, where Nanning actually ends up saving the other kid from drowning, much to his sister’s gratitude, calmly leaving afterwards with the butter intact.  He has a dream afterwards of meeting his Uncle Theo on the beach, protesting his innocence by stating, “What my parents did isn't my fault.”  His uncle reminds him, “You are not to blame, but you are still involved.”  You can’t choose your parents, but therein lies an underlying theme, that you cannot escape your past and the questions it raises, as Nanning’s emerging moral conscience suddenly awakes to the moral collapse around him, expressing an enduring need for compassion.  In a monumental tribute, set to the dreamlike soundtrack of Hainbach’s Amrum (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) YouTube (7:12), an experimental electronic composer, there is a close up at the end of Hark Bohm with the sun shining on his face, the grownup version of Nanning looking out into the ocean at the setting sun, who lived to see the release of the film, where Akin pays him the ultimate memorial tribute by breathing life into his final screenplay.   

2017 Top Ten List #9 In the Fade (Aus dem Nichts)

Director Fatih Akin (left)and actress Diane Kruger

IN THE FADE (Aus dem Nichts)          A-                       
Germany  France  (106 mi)  2017  ‘Scope  d:  Fatih Akin     

A rare film that couldn’t be more timely, especially in Germany, where the European refugee crisis has given rise to a nationalist anti-immigrant movement, specifically the neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground (NSU), which has carried out a series of bombing attacks targeting immigrants living in Germany.  Akin himself is a Turkish-German immigrant, where he views himself as a potential target.  According to information discovered on a neo-Nazi website known as Nuremburg 2.0, Akin’s name appeared on a list of artists and politicians targeted by them, which provoked him to write this film, co-written by Hank Bohm, a lawyer, better known as an actor affiliated with Rainer Werner Fassbinder.  In some respects, this is a contemporary update of Fassbinder’s ALI:  FEAR EATS THE SOUL (1974), where an older German woman and a young North African black were the targets of racist actions, literally ostracized by their respective families and friends, as well as the surrounding cultural communities, while this film also has a German woman and a Turkish immigrant husband, with the husband, along with their young son, becoming the target of a neo-Nazi bombing attack.  In the 60’s and 70’s the bombing campaigns in Germany were led by radical left extremists, the Baader-Meinhof gang, becoming the Red Army Faction (RAF), while a half century later the movement is comprised of radical right extremists in the NSU.  In an interview at Cannes with Alissa Simon, Director Fatih Akin on Returning to Cannes With Competition ... - Variety, Akin points out a recent scandal taking place in the German military where right-wing extremists created fictional personalities pretending to be Syrian refugees, actually planning bombing attacks so refugees would be labeled as terrorists.  This caused huge headlines of outrage against the refugees, where the government, in response, stopped letting refugees into the country, which was the precise goal all along.  While this paints an ugly picture of Germany, other nations are facing a similar surge of right-wing, neo-Nazi’s leading a wave of anti-immigrant hatred.  This is basically how Hitler got his start, by demonizing and then criminalizing anyone that wasn’t a member of the Aryan race.  It would be foolish to think these movements don’t have an impact, or that they don’t fabricate stories meant to instill fear and panic, as they helped elect the current President of the United States, who, thus far, has been averse to denouncing white supremists and neo-Nazi’s, as they helped get him elected.  Few other films are dealing with this issue head-on. 

While this is a fairly mainstream film with an arthouse sensibility, it received horrible reviews when it premiered at Cannes, calling it insipid, disappointing, average, predictable, by-the-numbers, or heavy-handed, with Richard Porton of Cinema Scope even calling it a con job, all undeserved, with critics really missing the boat, as many continue to have their heads in the sand over the ugly rise of fascism and the neo-Nazi movement.  And while Akin does resort to cliché’s or stereotypes, it is only because those stereotypes are becoming more prevalent in influencing public sentiments.  After WWII, who would have thought, despite a German educational campaign to eradicate the depiction of Hitler as a hero, in just 50 years there would be such a resurgence of fascism not only in Germany, but around the world.  While the film may ultimately take a fatalistic view, this is not so strange in the world of cinema, which doesn’t pretend to have answers, but instead seeks to provoke audiences out of a sense of complacency, where the status quo tends to ignore home-grown extremist groups, preferring instead to target Muslim extremist groups like ISIS or al-Qaeda, as they’re easier to blame, where an international consensus already denounces their actions.  Not so easy when it comes to your own citizens, as denouncing them is eliminating some of your own potential voters.  The problem is convincing them to take an alternative path, but many who gravitate to neo-Nazi movements have nothing left but prejudice and hatred, misguided ideas that are not easily changed, where violence is the only outlet for their deep-seeded anger.  Western societies always think education is the key, that we can eradicate racism through knowledge, but extremist groups target the disinterested and less educated among us and fill their minds with inflammatory rhetoric, giving them a false perception of power.  Akin’s film is not a political exposé, and there is no mention of al-Qaeda or ISIS, instead it is an individual journey through the personal hell of having to live with terrorists wiping out your family.  While there is a lengthy courtroom sequence that attempts to address the legal issues, which in itself is unique, as we’ve rarely seen the German legal system in action, where not only the state is prosecuting, but the victims’ wife and mother is considered a co-prosecutor, using a conversational style that can be eye-opening for the uninitiated, yet this is the tool where society holds the murderous accountable for their actions, but due to an imperfect quality of justice, the system doesn’t always work.  Nonetheless the courtroom sequences are gripping, especially the back and forth sparring between the two opposing lawyers, Denis Moschitto and Johannes Krisch.  

One of the more intriguing aspects of the film, and there are many, is the introduction of German actress Diane Kruger to a German audience, where she is largely seen as a model, not an actress, as she has never made a German-language film before.  Awarded Best Actress at Cannes, the film is primarily seen through her eyes, though this is no ordinary character study, as it doesn’t delve into her background or life history, but simply presents her response to the incendiary incident at the center of the picture, initially wracked with agony and pain, going through inconceivable personal anguish, made all the worse by the bickering and infighting between the family and in-laws, where she is blamed for poor mothering skills, allowing her child to be at work with his father and not taking care of him herself, then trying to hold it all together at the trial, unleashing a personal fury against the defendants at one point, as they refuse to even look at her, where viewers don’t ever really know her, but we certainly get an idea what she’s going through, as it’s written all over her face.  She’s a bit of a bad-ass, coming off as a biker chick, with a variety of tattoos, but we have no backstory.  The opening sequence is actually hilarious, as Nuri (Numan Acar), dressed in a white suit, is cheered like a soccer star that just scored the winning goal as he walks down the gangway of what turns out to be a prison, eventually entering an isolated room where his bride-to-be (Kruger) is all dressed in white.  The auspicious beginning is followed by a deluge of rain, as every single introductory shot takes place in a downpour, yet they seem to have a happy marriage, producing an adorable young son, who’s kind of a geek, but their lives are lost early in the film, where the rest is all about the ramifications, the various phases of grief, anger and outrage, holding out hope for justice, where it all takes place on her face, everything you need to know, culminating with a controversial flame-out at the end, though not nearly on the level of Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970), yet equally as provocative.  Antonioni’s film was also trashed by the critics.  Akin is known for his brilliant use of music, and this film is no exception, though it’s more low key, downbeat, and even self-destructive as interpreted by Josh Hamme from the American band Queens of the Stone Age.  This time Akin has made a film of social conscious that rages against right-wing extremism with its own impassioned fury, showing how easily law enforcement gets sidetracked, reinforced by its own bias and prejudice, yet ultimately they’re what we’ve got to pursue criminal investigations and any hope of justice.  Not an easy film to deal with, exposing open wounds along the way, yet illuminating, especially the skewed angle of the final shot, turning the world upside down, actually imagining other, perhaps even worse, possibilities.  In the meantime, white neo-Nazi’s continue to be the most troubling of all the extremist movements, but overlooked because they’re not Muslim or ISIS, just part of the prevailing racist worldview that insists dark skinned terrorists are more lethal.  They couldn’t be more mistaken.    

Unknown

UNKNOWN                          C+

USA  Great Britain  Germany  France  Canada  Japan  (113 mi)  2011  ‘Scope  d:  Jaume Collet-Serra

The film opens with a rush of energy that surprisingly gets you into the thick of the action right away, where Liam Neeson gets separated from his wife at a posh Berlin hotel once he realizes he left an important briefcase behind at the airport, heading back in a taxi without even letting her know.  Out of cell phone range and in a traffic jam, an impatient Neeson urges the driver to take alternative methods, sending a jolt of energy through the audience when the taxi spins out of control and heads over a bridge into the icy waters of the River Spree, where the driver (Diane Kruger) ingeniously manages to free herself and rescue her unconscious passenger before disappearing anonymously into the crowded city streets.  4 days later, Neeson awakes from a coma in a hospital, still forgetful of details but desperately needing to find his wife (January Jones), though she’s left no word that she’s looking for him.  When he bolts from the hospital to attend an international pharmaceutical convention at the upscale hotel where he was expected to deliver a speech, his wife doesn’t recognize him and another man (Aidan Quinn) has assumed his identity as her husband.  Leaving him the odd man out, none of this makes sense, yet he has no way of explaining who he is with little money and no identification, and even Google searches for his name and position have been replaced by photos of Quinn.  Who is this guy, and why all of a sudden does he suspect men are following him? 

This relatively young Spanish director does have an energetic flourish with speed and pace, accentuating the desperate straits of a man who has had his identity stolen from him, yet still has the smarts to pursue all the missing angles he can find, where a nurse at the hospital slips him the name of an underground former East German Stasi figure (Bruno Ganz) who has a way of finding people.  Ganz is terrific in the role and is easily the man of interest in this movie, as his home is lined with old Army photos and a wall filled with commendations.  He adds a well needed coherent literacy to the script about a man who is living in a muddled state of confusion.  When Neeson tracks down the taxi driver, who reluctantly agrees to help despite being an illegal Serbian worker who relentlessly avoids the cops, the paranoid mood escalates when two contract killers arrive unexpectedly at her doorstep which leads to a thrilling sequence where Neeson and the girl have to fight their way out of certain death.  At this point, the two are linked, where despite not knowing why they’ve been targeted, they are in the thick of it, followed immediately by a hair-raising car chase sequence right through the middle of Berlin’s crowded downtown streets, past historical relics such as the Victory Column and the Brandenberg Gate that leaves nothing but panic and destruction in their wake. 

Like Jason Bourne from THE BOURNE IDENTITY (2002 – 2007) trilogy, Neeson continually has flashbacks, which are the only clues to his previous existence, reminders of a life he once knew, and the film is thrilling while Neeson attempts to make sense out of who he is, as Ganz pushes unorthodox secret buttons behind the scenes, but becomes all too predictable once he figures it out, where it’s literally handed to him on a platter of belated clues and explanations that really undermine the whole fun of the picture.  When it eventually comes down to just good guys against bad guys, that’s a whole lot less interesting than a throwback to the Cold War era style film presented in shattered pieces with fragmented images and delusional thoughts about a missing identity, where Neeson is constantly besieged by threats against his life while also trying to put together the missing mosaic of his apparently stolen life.  By the time Frank Langella arrives on the scene, the ending is deflated and all too contrived, like letting the air out of a balloon, but there’s plenty of fun while Neeson’s life is in turmoil, also excellent use of shots in the snow as well as ice flowing in the river.  Perhaps the thrill factor for the audience might never have diminished had the character been left “unknown” and in the dark, which also leaves open the possibility of a sequel, a concept the director has already embraced.