North Sea Is Dead Sea (Nordsee ist Mordsee)

 

Writer/director Hark Bohm

Bohm and Fassbinder (far left) in 1971

NORTH SEA IS DEAD SEA (Nordsee ist Mordsee)                       B+                          Germany  (87 mi)  1976  d: Hark Bohm

I often dream of stealing a sailboat
And simply taking off
I don't know where to yet
The main thing is that I am no longer at home
It just doesn't work with the old folks anymore.

Now let’s see
How far the journey takes us
And where the wind blows me
There must be a place somewhere
For a really wild life
And that's where I want to be now.

—Udo Lindenberg, 1976, Udo Lindenberg - Ich träume oft davon, ein Segelboot zu klau'n ... YouTube (3:17)

A coming-of-age movie from the 70’s when the Federal Republic of Germany was still a divided country, but this child-forward film is considered a classic of German youth cinema, made during a time when hardly anyone was making films for children or young people, yet this film is notable for offering unique insight into teen malaise, realistically capturing social hardships and a yearning for freedom, portraying events realistically, without sensationalizing or embellishment, where the documentary style realism is what gives the film its power, creating a genuine emotional impact, leaving a mark for being authentic, immediate, and uncommonly intimate.  Made by German filmmaker Hark Bohm, one of the early collaborators of New German Cinema who is still better known as one of the staple actors for Rainer Werner Fassbinder, where he maintained a lifelong creative partnership, appearing in a dozen of his films in the 70’s and 80’s, including THE AMERICAN SOLDIER (1970), ALI:  FEAR EATS THE SOUL (1974), FEAR OF FEAR (1975), THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN (1979), THE THIRD GENERATION (1979), BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ (1980), LILI MARLEEN (1981), and LOLA (1981), playing memorable supporting characters, often bringing a stark, realist gravity to Fassbinder’s intense psychological and social dramas.  Yet he was also a widely experienced and altogether unusual filmmaker in his own right, though his largely independent films were rarely screened abroad, many of them featuring his numerous adopted and foster children in starring roles.  Cofounding the Filmmakers’ Film Festival (Filmfest der Filmemacher) in 1979 with Werner Herzog, Volker Schlöndorff, and Wim Wenders, which gave rise to modern independent film funding in Germany, Bohm studied law and was also a university professor at the University of Hamburg, where he inaugurated the school’s film studies program, promoting film literacy, while acting as a vital bridge between the radical postwar generation of German auteurs and modern filmmakers, mentoring talent like German-Turkish filmmaker Fatih Akin.  Written and directed by Bohm, this film focuses on young people’s everyday lives, starring his own adopted son Uwe Bohm as 14-year old Uwe, a freckle-faced kid living at home in a dysfunctional family with his working mother (Herma Koehn) and abusive, alcoholic father (Marquard Bohm, the director’s younger brother) in a dreary Hamburg high-rise housing project.  His deadbeat dad drowns his sorrows in alcohol, regularly beating both Uwe and his mother, creating plenty of unreleased, inner rage in Uwe, venting his frustrations in a series of petty crimes and bullying that he commits with a small gang he leads, starting in the schoolyard, where together they terrorize fellow misfits with derogatory racist taunts, particularly an Asian student with no friends and no father, Dschingis (Dschingis Bowakow, biological son of the director’s wife, raised as their foster son), cruelly described as a “wog,” a “foreigner,” and a “slit-eyed outsider.”  Among the many charms of the film is that it is largely spoken in Hamburg slang, which differs significantly from standard German, making it difficult to comprehend even for native Germans, much like Andrea Arnold, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, and Lynne Ramsay in British cinema.

While a beloved film in Germany, it is practically unknown in North America, so this is a film that deserves rescue from oblivion.  Bohm lived in the region for three months prior to filming to research the subject and develop the screenplay with his actors, creating something original and critical, yet what’s unique about the film is the prominent casting of family members, where the two starring roles are arch enemies played by the director’s own foster children, creating an unusual sense of intimacy that carries throughout the entire picture, reflecting a time when children had to cope with being alone on the street, where the brash attitude of punk rebellion from a child’s vantage point recalls Linda Manz in Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue (1980).  When we witness the xenophobic, bullying behavior of the gang, it recalls those self-absorbed kids from Fassbinder’s KATZELMACHER (1969), which was notable for the way he arranges a group of disaffected and bored young people a little differently each time in a line facing the camera, returning to this same image frequently, a highly stylized way to project venomous racist hatred, like a Greek chorus, evolving out of his own play, which transfigures a cinema of poverty into bleakly triumphant rites of despair.  Set in Wilhelmsburg, Hamburg, the second largest city after Berlin, known as a multicultural, vibrant neighborhood with a mix of industrial history, creative art scenes, and green spaces, crossed by hundreds of canals connecting the Elbe River to the North Sea.  Much of this film is spent on the waterways, which is a distinctly different approach, creating a completely different visual landscape, beautifully shot by Wolfgang Treu, capturing several sunsets over the sea.  Evolving out of the harsh, unforgiving environment, Uwe and his gang break into a slot machine, but Uwe keeps the money for himself, which leads to disgruntled friends, who wait in vain for their cut.  Instead, he buys a switchblade, but on the way back from the store, he notices Dschingis building a raft out of scrap wood.  The next day Dschingis finds his raft destroyed, with the gang looking on, again taunting him with vile racist disdain, prompting an angry attack, with Dschingis thoroughly outnumbered, but he fights them off, and a dual ensues between Uwe and Dschingis, who ultimately prevails, causing the others to flee.  Dschingis forces Uwe to help him repair his raft.  In an attempt to repair the damage with his gang, still waiting for their cut from the robbery, and in an attempt to save face after losing the fight, finding his leadership in question, Uwe steals a car, but his joyride is cut short before the police catch him, returning him home to his father, who brutally beats him afterwards, nearly killing him, leaving him scarred and bandaged.  A raw and skillfully written social study of growing up in an impoverished working-class neighborhood of troubled youth and generational conflict, the two boys eventually overcome their animosity and bond over shared feelings of alienation, realizing that they have the same dysfunctional family problems and social burdens, with Dschingis eventually standing up for him. 

With visible signs of abuse on his battered face, Uwe decides to skip school, asking Dschingis, of all people, to notify the school for him, meeting up afterwards, refusing to go back home, wondering if he can stay with Dschingis, but his mother (Natalia Bowakow, the director’s wife) refuses, claiming it’s against the law to illegally hide a child, which only infuriates Dschingis, both of them commiserating on what to do, where they decide to run away together.  In short order this becomes a buddy hangout movie, as the second half shifts into a compelling, heartfelt adventure as the two abused and bullied boys form an unlikely alliance.  Using the repaired raft, they set out from the Port of Hamburg, but the homemade contraption proves too slow and cumbersome, finding themselves precariously positioned between tugboats, freighters, and much bigger ships that nearly run them over or capsize them, where they stand out like sitting ducks, so Uwe decides to steal a much faster dingy, which allows them swifter movement from the wind in the sails as they continue heading down the Lower Elbe, spending the night along the banks of the river, where in the morning light they find themselves near the Hahnöfersand Correctional Facility, a juvenile detention center, realizing those prisoners are hardly older than they are, suddenly imagining seeing themselves there.  Part of the controversy at the time was the film was rated unacceptable for viewers under age 16, due to the harsh depiction of reality, yet those same viewers could watch extremely violent action thrillers.  What this amounted to was political censorship based on outdated ideals about protecting children.  From stealing boats to knife-wielding stick-ups and kung-fu fights (both have Bruce Lee posters in their rooms), it’s difficult to watch the casual schoolyard racism and brutal honesty about 1970’s social environments, yet Bohm sustains a compelling theme of alienation.  As the two boys continue downstream, approaching where the mouth of the Elbe meets the North Sea, they are approached by a police boat, but manage to escape through the shallow reeds in a side channel, quickly abandoning their boat to hide onshore, breaking into a kiosk at night as they were desperately hungry, where the two of them resemble a modern day version of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, where life along the river presents everpresent dangers.  Forced to continually evade police with narrow escapes, the final shot is an image of their boat sailing down the river, seen against the setting sun, away from the hopelessness of everyday life, while a poetic refrain from Udo Lindenberg’s song leads from a blue sea to a black screen with no end credits, Ich träume oft davon, ein Segelboot zu klau'n // Udo Lindenberg YouTube (2:26).  Engaging and suspenseful, never resorting to a moralizing, yet artistically impactful, the film deals with the miserable living conditions suffered by many young people from the postwar working-class generation, becoming a believable adventure film that addresses the feelings of disaffected youth growing up without love.    

Note

Hark Bohm died of natural causes surrounded by his family at the age of 86 in November 2025.  

On the Beach at Night Alone (Bamui haebyun-eoseo honja)

Director Hong Sang-soo

 

ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT ALONE (Bamui haebyun-eoseo honja)        C+                  

South Korea  Germany  (101 mi)  2017  d:  Hong Sang-soo  

On the beach at night alone,

As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,

As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.

—Walt Whitman, brief excerpt from Leaves of Grass, 1855, On the Beach at Night Alone by Walt Whitman | Poetry Foundation

While the entire film community at large is in near unanimous approval of this film, praising it to the hilt, with some even claiming it may be the director’s best film, don’t believe them.  Having now seen eleven of this director’s films, this is the first real misfire, becoming the most superficial of all his films, suggesting he’s lost some of his perspective, at least for this film.  While overtly autobiographical, though hardly identical with reality, this film utilizes actress Kim Min-hee to the point of over-saturation in an overtly transparent attempt to regain her stature, which apparently worked, winning the Best Actress award at the Berlin Film Festival, the first award ever handed out to a female actress in a Hong Sang-soo film, as she is in nearly every shot of the film, with all the attention of the script paid to her throughout.  Going through recognizably similar personal travails that she’s had to endure in real life, caught up in a scandalous adultery affair with this director, who left his wife to be with Kim, which left a stain on her career, though here Hong continually puts her up on a pedestal, viewed as an acclaimed celebrity, where she’s grown used to hearing people sing her praises and literally worship the ground she walks on, as one after another genuflects at the altar of this actress.  One quickly grows tired of every secondary character in the film thinking exclusively of her, where the director, apparently, expects viewers to adore her as he does, which feels like manipulative overkill, actually cheapening the film and dulling the senses.  In true Hong fashion, the film is well-crafted, told in two parts, where each mirrors the other, but is discernibly thin, mostly revealing what we already know, offering precious little insight, where they come across as two people who think only of themselves.  If there is one common feeling that pervades throughout the film, it is overpraise, and neither the director nor his lead actress actually come to terms with this inflated view of themselves, as instead it’s written into the narrative.  People that place themselves so far above others aren’t really that interesting, as they deludedly view themselves in a substantially different manner than anyone else, thinking they and they alone are worth thinking and talking about, becoming overly egocentric, actually minimizing the influence of others, or ignoring them altogether.  As if he’s above the fray, Hong misses an opportunity for true self-awareness, which have been a mainstay of his films since the beginning, making this feel more like a travesty. 

A wintry air provides the natural setting of the latest Hong film, opening with a sublime and distinctly heavenly passage (the opening phrase) from the Adagio movement (17:28) of one of Schubert’s breathtakingly beautiful final works, Schubert / Rostropovich / Taneyev Quartet, 1963: Quintet in C major, Op. posth. 163 - Complete YouTube (53:27), as the film opens in Hamburg, Germany of all places, a beautiful city situated on a gorgeous waterfront.  Young-hee (Kim Min-hee) plays a famous actress who is taking a break from all the publicity in Seoul swirling around her illicit affair with a married filmmaker that ended badly, perhaps getting as far away from the scandal as possible, visiting an older friend who lives there, Jee-young (Seo Young-hwa), who loves the natural beauty of the town, as the two smoke off the balcony, take walks, or visit bookstores, where a terminally ill man strangely describes his own piano compositions, “These are simple pieces, but if you go deeper, they become more complicated,” which could easily be a reference to Hong’s own film career as well.  As they walk around the city, Young-hee is continually waiting for the possibility of an expected friend to meet them, though nothing is certain.  As Young-hee explains it, “He knows where I am.”  Having lived with a man for ten years, suggesting “men all want the same thing,” Jee prefers living alone, free from compromise, or interruption, rebuffing her younger friend’s offer to dreamily live together in this European city, though Young-hee clearly wants to see her mystery friend, but is instead content to openly share her romantic regrets with Jee, still stung by heartbreak, acknowledging she’s still in love with this man, but confused by the disconcerting state she’s in, wondering “Where’s love?  It’s not even visible.  You need to see it in order to search for it.”  Eventually having dinner in the home of a local couple (that incudes Mark Peranson, editor of Cinema Scope magazine), before the night is done, they find their way to the beach, where the scene fades to black before beginning again, listing new cast credits.  Each half is shot by a different cinematographer (Kim Hyung-koo and Park Hong-yeol, respectively).  When the lights come on, Young-hee is all alone in a darkened movie theater, a familiar place in Hong films, an often indistinguishable world where reality and fantasy intersect.  As she walks out the theater door, she begins to reconnect with old friends who happily welcome her back to South Korea, now staying at a beachfront hotel overlooking the sea in the coastal city of Gangneung, which we are reminded is revered for being the most livable city in the country, according to some poll (exactly the same with Hamburg). 

The reintegration process moves slowly, first meeting one friend for coffee, who has to abruptly leave before another arrives, leaving her a moment to smoke outside, singing a mournful song to herself before embracing a flower in bloom.  This coffee collective eventually meets for the first of two dinner sequences, where we see Young-hee drunkenly lash out at others, suggesting they don’t know what they’re talking about, calling all men idiots, then exasperatingly raising her voice to condemn those at the table as people who aren’t even “qualified to love,” literally dismissing them from her stratosphere, before turning to the woman beside her and offering her a kiss.  After a short embrace, the two women depart, leaving the others embarrassingly caught off-guard and a bit befuddled.  The next day we find Young-hee dressed in her familiar overcoat, sleeping on the beach, with the pounding waves seen over her shoulder.  A man wakes her up, claiming he was worried about her, and asks her to come warm-up with his friends, as they’ve built a fire.  They are members of a film crew that happen to be in town for a film shoot, meeting up later for a second dinner sequence with the director present, who, it turns out, is Young-hee’s romantically connected director, Sang-won (Moon Sung-Keun), but she is so inebriated she tells him he looks like a grandpa.  He, on the other hand, becomes obsessed with telling her how “pretty” she is, where all his cohorts at the table agree with his assessment, behaving like puppets, affirming everything he says like a religious mantra, actually mocking the sincerity of his thoughts.  Continually shining the light on this actress, the director offers nothing but platitudes, heaping praise upon her that she seems more than delighted to absorb.  When he breaks down, obviously still not over their relationship, it only affirms the hold she still has on him, reading a passage from a book that he wrote for her, recalling how it felt when it was happening.  While the two are clearly in their own little world, the others at the table are ignored and treated as if they’re not “qualified” to be there, but they are, presumably observing this private moment which is unlike any other that they’ve witnessed, offering a rare window into the vulnerability of their lives.  Returning to the earlier scene at the beach with Young-hee asleep in her overcoat, it is viewed from a different perspective this time around.  After she is awakened, there is a long pan to the right where the film crew sits around the fire, returning back to the place where Young-hee was lying but she’s no longer there, as if it was all a mirage, before continuing the pan to the left where at the far edge of the screen we see her being carried off on the back of some strange man, fading to black, with a final credit sequence playing in utter silence.