"Die Unsichtbare" is a German movie from 2011, so it had its 5th anniversary last year. It is probably the most known work by Germany's most known mother-son filmmaker duo Christian and Heide Schwochow. They received a nice deal of awards attention here and the cast got their fair share as well. Dagmar Manzel for example won a German Film Award here, but I must say I am a bit baffled by this as she did not really stand out and same goes for her co-nominee. Instead I liked Noethen and Mühe more from the supporting cast if the former still counts as supporting. It is a relatively long movie, runs for over 110 minutes and stars many big names from the German film industry. The consequence is sadly as well that several of them were really wasted. This especially applies to Corinna Harfouch and Ulrich Matthes, who had virtually nothing to work with. Ronald Zehrfeld has more screen time the other two, but his material is not too great here either sadly. This film is not bad, but looking at the cast Schwochow had at his disposal, this could have been pretty great, so it is a bit of a missed opportunity.
The heart and soul of the film, however, is young Danish actress Stine Fischer Christensen, who was a pretty good casting decision here, for the ugly duckling who gets seen eventually and cast for a lead character in a prestigious stage play. And when we find out about the real reasons of this casting decision, it makes even more sense I guess. Here we have a good example of a film on film, or a film on acting I should maybe say. The way SFC transforms more and more into her character is interesting to witness, how she tries to beat her insecurities and even succeeds, but still this transformation may lead her to catastrophe. Sometimes you need to be somebody else in order to really know who you actually are. I found these scenes and the scenes with the theatre group also much more significant and telling than these with her family and like I said earlier, I find it strange that the German Film Academy obviously saw it the other way around. Now overall, it was a pretty decent watch. Nowhere near the best of the year from Europe or even the world back in 2011, but one of the better German movies from that year. I recommend checking it out.
The heart and soul of the film, however, is young Danish actress Stine Fischer Christensen, who was a pretty good casting decision here, for the ugly duckling who gets seen eventually and cast for a lead character in a prestigious stage play. And when we find out about the real reasons of this casting decision, it makes even more sense I guess. Here we have a good example of a film on film, or a film on acting I should maybe say. The way SFC transforms more and more into her character is interesting to witness, how she tries to beat her insecurities and even succeeds, but still this transformation may lead her to catastrophe. Sometimes you need to be somebody else in order to really know who you actually are. I found these scenes and the scenes with the theatre group also much more significant and telling than these with her family and like I said earlier, I find it strange that the German Film Academy obviously saw it the other way around. Now overall, it was a pretty decent watch. Nowhere near the best of the year from Europe or even the world back in 2011, but one of the better German movies from that year. I recommend checking it out.
