Review: Systemsprenger
Ferris Bueller's Completely Off
Movie posters make or break a film. Like book covers, potato chip wrappers, clothes, light bulbs, underwear, supermarket branding.. you get the point. Systemsprenger's posters were around me for much of the last months and never did I once have the motivation to even remotely check what the movie was about. It looked juvenile (literally), lazy and pink – enough to tell me that it is about a young girl who is crazy.
Crazy she is, with all the shaky cameras running behind her for half the movie. Gimbals. The movie needed gimbals and better shot selection. Or perhaps some animation and an eye for detail. Instead it follows the Berliner style of impromptu kitsch, sometimes a bit too much. Being unpolished, overexposed with grungy music super-imposed does make the movie look raw but so do vegetables before they are cooked.
The movie had its moment in the fact that it made me empathize with my social worker friends. It made me think of the days after their night shifts and how sunken and harrowed they looked. I wanted to tell them that I experienced the same in the kino, which necessarily is not a good reason to relate with. The child actress was insufferable, she screams and she screams and she screams. Somehow none of the adults in the movie seem to be able to take a stance, not for a moment was this world feeling real. It looked like a construct because that is how it was written.
Another glitch is the lack of a budget for some medium level graphics which are quickly exchanged for random camera movements and quick cuts. That is what is supposed to make for style in this film, you can call pricking your eyes with a needle if you wish to. This movie is the most disturbing movie I watched this year after Climax. What makes Climax special is the inventiveness of its director who immerses you into his worldview and makes it plausible that such situations exist. Systemsprenger is more a fungal piece of bread developing all kinds of colors on its surface and you decide to eat it anyway because it is Monday and you have to get to work. Is that disturbing? Yes. Is that enriching? Perhaps for someone with bulimia.
I could only wish for the movie to end at multiple intersections throughout the film. There were at least four different story trajectories that could have made the experience tighter but the director, Nora Fingscheidt, goes for the maximum scream minimum impact which is definitely not a sensual argument. Once the credits started rolling I had to run outside to get some breath, it was a weekday and unlike the traumatized lead in the film I had things to do and had to do them well. Not all of us can run from our problems but I would recommend running away from this movie for sure.