"Nachtgestalten" or "Nacht Gestalten" or "Nightshapes" is a German movie from the last year of the old millennium, which means it will soon have its 20th anniversary. It is one of the career-defining works by East German writer and director Andreas Dresen and he as well as several of his cast members received a pretty impressive deal of awards recognition for their work here. I would not say that they were bead, but all in all it may have been slightly too much praise. I had the feeling on several occasions that the characters (in terms of both writing and acting) came off generic and stereotypical. But then again, there are sequences and moments when they are really interesting to watch, which is also why I overall appreciated the effort by everybody involved here. The background situation is that the Pope is in town, but this is really just side information and, honestly, the film would have been almost exactly the same without this visit. Instead, this film is much more about the not so famous people living in Berlin, such as a taxi driver, a prostitute, a homeless couple and a little African boy. It is actually really three stories in one film I guess, so maybe three short films in one full feature film as the action jumps from one group of protagonists to the next repeatedly. There is no real connection between the main characters, but there does not need to be for this film to work. Almost the entire movie (except the ending that depicts the next morning) takes place on the same evening in several areas of Berlin and we see characters communicate with each other. Violence is a topic here, but also love and friendship. The film, during its entirety, attempts to succeed and deliver with its realistic approach, but as such, it only partially worked as, when the film went into detail, there were occasionally moments and developments and characters' reactions that did not feel too authentic and realistic and put a question mark behind the entire project. It's a solid film, but not an outstanding or even perfect one. As a whole, I still think the good outweighs the bad, which is why I recommend the watch. definitely one of the better films from 1999 and I am not surprised the German Film Awards liked it so much. What I am surprised about, however, is how you can put Gwisdek into lead and everybody else into supporting. This does not make any sense at all and is actually disrespectful to the works of Bormann and Horwitz, who may have been the MVP in this film in may opinion. A certain contender for career-best performance.
Review of Night Shapes
