| THE EDUKATORS Die Fetten Jahre sind vorbei |
 2004 - Germany / Austria
Director: Hans Weingartner
- Reviewed by Vickie
Daniel Brühl (Goodbye, Lenin!) stars as Jan, a political protester who adheres to the “change one, change one hundred” mentality. He and his best friend, Peter (Stipe Erceg), call themselves “The Edukators” and routinely break into the homes of the rich to screw with their furniture, leave cryptic messages condemning wealth, and, hopefully, instill enough fear that their actions bring about gradual change. One day, Peter’s cash-strapped, recently evicted and even more recently fired girlfriend, Jule (Julia Jentsch), moves in with the pair. She and Jan don’t really get along, but slowly put their differences aside and grow quite close while Peter is away on holiday. Overly comfortable with each other, Jan and Jule eventually share their secrets—Jan reveals his Edukator work, and Jule explains that she’s horribly indebted to a high-profile businessman named Hardenberg (Burghart Klaussner), whose car she accidentally hit. Suddenly inspired, she suggests they pull an Edukator raid on Hardenberg’s home, but when their distraction with attraction results in a costly error, Jan and Jule find themselves with Hardenberg as a hostage, and Peter called in to help solve their new “problem.” At this point, the halfway mark, the film switches locales and switches gears, as the group heads to a remote mountain cabin to figure out what to do. Unfortunately, this is also where the action slows to a crawl and the movie becomes nothing more than four people sitting around on rustic furniture, talking about their political beliefs. It felt like the filmmakers thought a rural setting would be cool!... but then realized they had nothing for their characters to do once they leave the city and land in the middle of nowhere. The actors, especially Brühl and Jentsch (who occupy the most screen time) are good, but not exceptional, and Klaussner is somewhat uneven as the wavering businessman, who goes from evil hard-ass to cooperative prisoner in record time. There are reasons for his transformation, but none felt entirely believable. It didn’t help that, appearance-wise, he reminded me so much of Stephen Root in Office Space. I kept waiting for him to wield his Swingline stapler and take out his captors. The first hour of The Edukators is lively and tense and held my interest, but its second hour loses steam. It wants to be too much of an essay on politics, and its repeated “here’s what I believe!” speeches on the part of its characters grew tiresome fairly quickly. I wanted to yell, “Less talking! More doing, please!” Then again, maybe I just have lowbrow expectations. I wanted a kidnapping caper and, instead, got a decent but somewhat slow drama about idealism gone awry. |
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Part thriller, part talking-heads drama, this German offering examines
political idealism and capitalistic excess through the eyes of a trio
of young people and the wealthy businessman who becomes their captive.