TinsHeadline Touches You

Console best movie i've ever seen.

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Der Fangschuß" or "Coup de grâce" is a French/German co-production from 1976 so this (predominantly) German-language film has its 40th anniversary this year. The director of these almost 100 minutes is Volker Schlöndorff and it is an adaptation of a novel by Marguerite Yourcenar. One of the writers was Schlöndorff's wife Margarethe von Trotta, who also plays the female main character. It is one of von Trotta's last works before the camera before she dedicated her career entirely to filmmaking herself. This is a black-and-white movie, which really was not too common anymore for the 1970s. It is basically the story of two characters only, the male main character, an army officer played by the young Matthias Habich, and the female main character, the woman falling in love with him played by von Trotta. The military background in terms of profession of the male protagonist plays a major role too as it basically sets the setting for the film.That's really all that needs to be said about it I guess. The supporting characters (including Carrière, with whom Schlöndorff worked a lot) aren't that interesting I must say and it is all about the duo of protagonists. Sadly, they are both really unlike able which makes it difficult to get emotionally involved with the film as I myself simply did not care for them at all and I never really wanted them happy, especially Habich's character. In one scene says, she would be the last woman on Earth he wants to be with. In the next scene he acts as if he truly loves her. He is a cold-blooded killer and has really no likable features at all. Of course, it is viable to take the approach to depict a realistic idea and make the audience wonder why she would fall for him, but I guess it was that she is easily impressed by power and violence and always wants what she cannot have until she maybe can even have it. Not exactly positive character traits either and I am as unimpressed by von Trotta as an actress as I am by her as a filmmaker judging from what I have seen so far.The overall outcome is that this is a very underwhelming watch. I never thought of Schlöndorff (despite him having an Oscar unlike the others) be on par with the great German filmmakers of the 1970s: Herzog, Fassbinder, Wenders and this film just solidifies my opinion and perception that he is inferior. Maybe I am also a bit biased as the war depicted in this movie and political climate and time (19th century) were never historical aspects I had interest in. Then again, you could also say that this film could have sparkled my interest if it had been good, but it did no such thing. Finally, I don't recommend the watch and it's really underwhelming, even for a Schlöndorff film. Watch something else instead.

MartinHafer The film begins in Latvia just after WWI. Being a history teacher, I knew that multinational troops occupied much of Russia during this time. There was serious concern about the spread of Bolshevism and the troops were there ostensibly to protect their nations' interests. However, some times they flew missions or had armed conflicts with the Communist army, as the nations involved really wanted to see the so-called "Whites" win. However, the Whites were deeply factionalized--some wanting the return of a czar, some wanting a republic and some wanting something in between. Because of these mixed goals and a lack of a real commitment by the foreign armies, the whole expedition was doomed and left the USSR after only a year or two. However, what I did NOT know was that German troops were also involved. This surprised me, as they had just lost WWI and weren't in the best shape to be mounting such an expedition.This is the backdrop for the film, but it's also about a pro-Communist rich lady and her ill-fated love for a childhood friend who is among the German troops. She throws herself at him repeatedly but in each case he rebuffs her. So, she then sublimates these desires by various affairs. While none of this sex is all that graphic, this and the underlying reason the man isn't interested make this a rather adult film and one I wouldn't show to younger audiences.While the setting for this film is interesting, the overall film is as gray and lifeless as any I have seen. I don't recommend it unless you are an amazingly patient person or you are really into overrated German films. I especially warn away anyone who suffers with depression, as it will no doubt make it worse. The simple fact is that there are so many better German films out there waiting to be seen--such as MOSTLY MARTHA, DAS BOOT, MOTHER KUSTERS GOES TO HEAVEN, WINGS OF DESIRE or ALI, FEAR EATS THE SOUL (among others).

K Banerjee I had never seen any of the work of Schlöndorff prior to watching this film, so Fangschuß came as an overwhelming surprise, a movie whose pathos and displays of cinematic brilliance (Igor Luther) seem like something between the thanatotic films of Bergman and the dreamlike confusions of some of Fellini's work-- Through a Glass Darkly and La Dolce Vita come to mind. More then any film I've ever seen, Fangschuß seems to capture that terrifying collapse of ones life into a sort of unpredictable madness and ambiguity, the torture that the films personal relations depict overshadowing the brutality of the war itself, in a way that all the while juxtaposes the themes of love and death in a way I had hitherto not thought possible. Certainly not light watching-- but I'd recommend this film to everybody, especially since so few people seem to have heard of it.

Oslo Jargo (Bartok Kinski) **Film plot and ending analyzed**The Baltic states in 1919 are witnessed two years after the Russian revolution, the country is torn by civil war between the Whites and the Reds and the old Prussian nobility that realizes that this is no longer Germany. Konrad and his volunteer corps have withdrawn from Reval to his parents' castle in Kratovice determined to defend the outdated feudal system. Konrad's sister Sophie maintains friendly relations with the rebels, especially Gregori Loew, the son of the Jewish village tailor. Although she shares his views, she lacks the strength to tear herself out of her surroundings. She falls more and more deeply in love with Konrad's friend Erich von Lhomond, a dashing gentleman rider who "likes to fight a losing battle" because he would only be an insignificant figure in ordinary life. He is not particularly interested in women and is attracted much more strongly to Konrad than to Sophie. He brutally rejects her love but responds more and more jealously as she throws herself headlong into various affairs with his comrades in the corps. Things come to a head at Christmas: when Sophie kisses young Volkmar von Plessen, who wants to marry her, Erich slaps her in front of her aunt and the other officers. She only admits to her love once more. Erich orders her to wait until he returns from a foray against the Bolsheviks. However, Sophie has in the meantime learned the truth about Erich von Lhomond and her brother. She sharply demands an answer from her beloved and then leaves the castle to join Gregori Loew and his band of rebels. The situation in the Baltic has become hopeless for Lhomond and his fighters. Konrad has been killed in one of the last battles and the remainder of his troop decides to head for Germany. Sophie and her comrades are captured by Erich in a battle for a farm during which Gregori Loew is killed. The other rebels are shot at Lhomond's command. Sophie demands that Erich execute her himself. Volker Schlöndorff had first come across Marguerite Yourcenar's novel "Der Fangschuss" in 1965 while working on his film TÖRLESS. Even then, he had been attracted by the idea of making a film based on the novel by an author who had become famous for her historical novels and was the only woman in the Académie Française. FANGSCHUSS follows on from TÖRLESS in both form and content, both films displaying the same respect and caution towards the literary original; both are produced in black-and-white and both are basically about suppressed sexuality and reactionary behaviour with the aim of revealing sadomasochistic relations and fascist tendencies. Volker Schlöndorff has by no means left the political arena to concentrate on a historical subject or purely human problem in this film, which was produced one year after the sensational success of DIE VERLORENE EHRE DER KATHARINA BLUM; the "problematical relationship between men and women" (Volker Schlöndorff) portrayed by the film in the form of a highly dramatic affair is closely related to the social and historical background of a struggle between supporters of the old order and the supporters of new social ideas. Sophie is not only driven to join the rebels by Erich's emotional coldness and the humiliating realization that he used her to come closer to her brother, but also by her revulsion of war and the male solidarity among the officers, as well as by the realization that they need the war "in order to live out their lives" and satisfy their secret cravings. Schlöndorff clearly contrasts the scenes showing the private relations and strains between the protagonists with scenes showing the fight against the rebels and the shooting of prisoners. The leading actors and particularly Margarethe von Trotta have prevented the film from fulfilling its intention of telling the "story of an act of humiliation ending in revolt" (Schlöndorff). Margarethe von Trotta's Sophie remains a shadowy figure capable of expressing her anger and defiance at Erich's cool remoteness, but she fails to display the emancipation of a woman who sees through the men's military madness and rebels against it. Sophie's revolt is emotional, not political. However, the subject of Sophie's desire, the handsome Erich, is also a somewhat pale figure and the erotic triangle between Erich, Konrad and Sophie is created in the viewer's imagination rather than in the reality of the film. Schlöndorff's film thus lacks the dramatic core intended by the director, but he compensates this shortcoming with dense atmospheric images of the barren snowscape and the castle's rundown interiors. With their black-and-white shading and their grey tones reminiscent of the films produced by Jean-Pierre Melville, Schlöndorff's "first mentor" to whom this film is dedicated, these images evoke a decaying, dying world in which real, open relations between people have become impossible. Despite the weakpoints in the screenplay and in the handling of the actors, this gives DER FANGSCHUSS a dramatic presence making the historical situation transparent to the present on at least an emotional level if not on an intellectual plane. It is a powerful film... full of noise and furor...