Change Your Image
BobMorane
Reviews
The Pannwitz Stare (1992)
Quite important topic but not quite entertaining movie
This documentary deals with physically disabled people and how others respond to them. The protagonists describe in interviews their lives, their everyday experiences and challenges and what they wish for their future.
One of them calls the way others look at him "The Pannwitz Stare", which refers to the book "If This Is a Man" by Primo Levi. In this book the author describes his time in the concentration camp Auschwitz during the second world war. The task assigned to one of the physicians in Auschwitz, Doctor Pannwitz, was to select the Jews who were still able to work from the ones who were not in order to kill them. According to Levi, Pannwitz did not look at the detainees as fellow humans but as animals, as if observing fish in their aquarium.
The movie delivers an interesting and important look into a world most of us will never know. Its main objective is to provide information (like every documentary's is) and not to entertain its viewers. After some time, though, it gets a little boring, as the protagonists tell similar stories. Nevertheless, it is an important movie with an important topic.
Dieter (2006)
Dieters life as an animated feature - better than you expect.
"Dieter - Der Film" is the first animated TV movie directed by Michael Schaack (together with Toby Genkel) who was very successful at the German box office in the last fifteen years with the "Werner" movies and "Kleines Arschloch", from which he is now doing a sequel.
"Dieter -Der Film" deals with the life of Dieter Bohlen, a worldwide famous German musician and producer. From his childhood in Oldenburg and his first steps in the show business to the rise and fall of his band "Modern Talking", his affairs with women and the marriage with Verona Feldbusch (who starred in "Driven") to the reunion of "Modern Talking", this movie captures the important events in the life of the former judge of "Deutschland sucht den Superstar", the German version of "American Idol".
The animation is very fine and reminds you sometimes of the "Werner" movies. The voices also fit quite good to their real life examples. The humor is not as crude as in "Kleines Arschloch" or "Werner", but still funny because the movie shows Bohlens life in an overstated way.
If you do not like or even hate Dieter Bohlen, his music and the story of his life you probably won't like this movie but if you do not or do not care of Dieter Bohlen at all this movie will entertain you quite well.