Yeah.
Two worlds. The silence of a spacious apartment, bursting with an alarm clock. The humble silence of the elevator, unbreakable until the doors on the floor where your office is located open. The silence that takes you up at the presentation of the prestigious award and the subsequent noisy party. Are you happy? I have everything I need to be happy.
Are you happy? Yes! Great job, where you can ride expensive cars with carte blanche from their owners. A beautiful girl, nothing but a "princess" whose ex-friend occasionally manages to escape without a fight. Personal transport, albeit with an open roof, but with a blanket and a hat in the back seat. I can also invent what I want when I want, drive around the city naked and run at 35 kilometers an hour. How did I know that? You better not ask.
Knowing the introverted character of Karl, it is not surprising that he has no friends. That the boss's humiliating assignment to work a few days in the parking lot to, say, do research, he responded with tacit humility to his fate. Knowing the cheerful nature of Hans, you can guess how easily he makes acquaintances with people. How quickly a new, not too talkative colleague will become a partner in child racing on sports cars, an associate in any stupid undertakings and a friend with whom, it seems, I know all my life.
What was to develop into a particular case of class conflict and a painful example of the social stratification of society turns out to be a practical “discourse” about simple human happiness. As it turned out, it consists in the ability to seize the moment and enjoy freedom. Including impunity. You only need to see what the heroes are doing in the underground parking lot, to forever feel fear, trusting the car to the employee. One can only be glad that the film is kept within the strict framework of tragicomedy and does not use criminal potential.
It is about freedom from fear of breaking the norm and causing universal condemnation. Just the main impetus to happiness was the rejection of statuses and labels. Just starting to play someone else's role, the main character is liberated, as if he ceases to pull a keel of responsibility to spoil the image of a smart girl and a pedant. It awakens a second personality, and perhaps the only one, because without it, the brilliant insurer is doomed to remain a living robot. His friend, on the contrary, as an example for imitation, remains faithful in himself. As a young adult, he is afraid of being exposed because the truth will turn his castle into a pile of sand and make a great general a loser. Like any child, however, he knows the main truth, incomprehensible to adults.
A small cozy film is not so much about the friendship of soulmates, but about the fact that all people are kindred souls to some extent. Incommunicability and social prejudices are the first to make it difficult to understand. At one time or another, you wait, finally, for a sentimental story or action-packed stamp, but all the predicted angles borrowed from a famous movie are bypassed. No, this is not a desire for originality, but only for naturalness and simplicity. Without them, a movie about finding happiness and truth seems almost impossible.
It’s a shame that this is a little-known movie because it’s really amazing.
While the film’s narrative is calm enough, it’s absolutely thrilling from the start – it’s incredibly exciting to watch the development of such unusual and so opposite characters.
This film is about two different views of life: reasonable-cold, cynical and closed and irresponsible unusual, warm and open. Of course, their friendship is built on conflicts and contradictions, gradually developing characters and revealing to them the depth and complexity of the surrounding world.
It's very interesting to watch a film shot from within the culture about a kind of everyday life.
In short, this is a very soulful and entertaining film about the friendship of two extraordinary and unlike people.
The film is German and about Germans. In the Russian equivalent, Karl would spend his life hanging out with affordable women and cocaine. And Hans, most likely, would have to be a woman who would awaken in Karl real feelings and rid himself of inner emptiness. But the action takes place in Germany and, therefore, the main character wobbles between his boring, but highly paid, job and his no less boring half-empty apartment in the complete absence of contact with the fair sex. On the instructions of his superiors, Karl is forced to downshift for a couple of days, as a result of which he meets a cheerful newcomer colleague who manages to finally stir up Karl.
I have some associations with the lives of others. Of course, there is no socio-political theme in My Friend, but the theme of empty existence and the disclosure of meaning in life, through the review of another life, is present in both of them. From my experience in Germany, I can tell you that Karl is a typical German. Therefore, perhaps such a theme is important for German culture and swings from film to film. And for me personally, that's good advice on how to deal with these Carls when they're dating in real life.
I'm sorry I didn't show Carl's background. What exactly led to the fact that a successful person closed himself in, and remained a mystery.
Can people with completely different characters get along with each other? Definitely impossible to answer. How it is impossible to deny that this versatile acquaintance contains many positive aspects: for example, it helps to look at things differently, at oneself. The film by Sebastian Shipper “My Friend” vividly illustrates the flaws in the relationship of completely different people.
In general, each of us has a different perception, but we somehow find a common language with each other.
Which is better – spontaneity of actions, improvisation of each of your actions and words – the exclusion of planning anything, life here and now, in this reality, or the thoughtfulness of each of your steps, rationalism of thinking, sobriety of behavior? It seems that individually these two certain types are not ideal, those with which one can live in peace. Is it necessary to live “calmly”? One-sided life becomes boring, you need to change something over time.
However, mixing with each other, these types give an interesting result.
In the film, the characters are not separated by different financial relationships, not by the constancy or lack of work, but by these forms of life: each has its own approach to it.
Too strict and thoughtful, responsibly suitable to work man meets on his way a risky fictionalist, poetizing women, cars. And this brief encounter, served under a light friendship sauce, changes everyone in this story a little. But not for the worse, that’s for sure.
The frenzied movement on the night track on the multimillion-dollar cars just released from the assembly line limits absolute freedom except with metal and plastic. In the same way in the relationship of these different people: no one owes anything to anyone, but still something “brings” them together.
“We are not friends” – the heroes themselves openly say to each other, even cry “from emotions”, but they disperse without duels, without quarrels. And maybe no offense.
And who knows, maybe these people met specifically to learn to see the full spectrum of life. And even though they were neither friends nor even acquaintances, each of them tried on the skin of the other, each of them became wiser.
You're funny, Hans. But you don't see the world as it is. (c)
Hans sees the world as a beautiful place, Hans is happy, Hans enjoys every minute of life and, yes, Hans is fun. This is how he accidentally meets on the life path of Karl - serious, silent and eerily calm. The differences at first glance seem huge, but if you look closely, and they have enough in common at least for conversations: curiosity, having a good sense of humor, or even take the same taste in choosing a girl.
Why does Hans become a friend of Karl, why does Carl let into his life a man who from the first appearance in the frame irritates the audience with his obsession, and from the second already and Karl? The answer is the question. Because Hans just gets into the measured world of Karl, not waiting for an invitation, because he offers him to play friends (not in words, but actions), makes a move and waits for a response, and a new move follows after the response. They complement each other, they harmonize, which means that opposites really attract.
Old as the world - Hans has almost nothing but a love of life and an old machine that, by the way, looks like him - battered by life, but moving forward, Carl - a prestigious job, a huge apartment that, like his life, is filled with emptiness and loneliness. All we have to do is watch. Watching these two people meet. Watch the birth of a good friendship between them. Watching friendship overcome all obstacles, big and small. Watch the right ending.
Once again, I am convinced that German cinema has its own qualities, German cinema is guessed, among others, by its simplicity of the idea and its original embodiment. In the acting abilities of both actors, I did not doubt that Bruhl, that Vogel have many wonderful roles in their asset. Watching this movie was a great pleasure. How pleasant it was to look at ordinary people whose faces do not look like perfectly painted masks, whose bodies are not dressed in screaming fashion outfits, whose emotions and feelings are so close to ours.
10 out of 10