When I read the plot summary for this Z-graded TV-movie, it said that it was about d the dilemma and doubts of a young East German border guard during the seventies. However, instead on concentrating on that point, it goes completely off-focus: the time devoted to the exploration of the doubts of the young border guard about his country and the communist system are reduced to a minimum. What the director actually focuses on and films with an obvious pleasure that would give nausea to many people is the process of bullying that takes place within the platoon, and what is even more disgusting is that he is definitely on the bullies' side: all their victims are depicted as pathetic, as if they 'got what they deserved'. This is even made clearer at the end, when we read about the destinies of the border guards after the end of the communist East Germany: all the bullies got away, and all the victims ended up badly, especially the most bullied boy, who was labeled 'gay' by his 'comrades' ended up in Berlin stabbed by a homosexual. This clearly shows an extremely nasty and obnoxious nostalgia for a fascist system, where everyone who did not 'fit he right profile' could be prosecuted and made a scapegoat and it is a definite shame that the director disguised it in a wannabe 'liberal' drama, and that apparently many people, judging by the high rating this on-screen garbage got, swallowed that lie.
Review of An die Grenze
