Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
First Run Features has scored big with another absorbing East German import. This eye-opening 1990
critique of conditions under the socialist regime was made just as the Berlin Wall fell. The film
is a credible look at East German conditions made without regard to party policy. It was daring
to criticize a political system that buried youthful innovation under bureaucratic obstinancy.
The worker's paradise seems dedicated to stifling progress and
thwarting the dreams of its young professionals. Few DDR movies acknowledged the existence of
emigration as a strong theme in East Germany; in The Architects it's happening all over
the place.
Synopsis:
Architect Daniel Brenner (Kurt Naumann) is still
trying to pursue a career at age 37. He's designed almost nothing of consequence while building in
East Germany has been confined to the same industrially-sanctioned dull plans used for decades.
Daniel complains to one of his old professors and is given the opportunity to compete for
an important new
cultural and shopping center to enliven a drab Berlin suburb; he picks a crack team of equally
frustrated talent, many of whom gave up architecture for other pursuits long ago.
The design process forms a new professional family for Brenner while his own wife Wanda (Rita
Feldmeier) is stifled by the lack of excitement in her life; she soon announces plans to leave
Daniel for an old beau in Switzerland, taking their young daughter Johanna. Crestfallen, Daniel
doesn't have job satisfaction to comfort him - opposition from party politicians, factories and
economists first cripple the team's innovative design, and then threaten to abolish it altogether.
The powers that be talk about progress and new ideas but seem to crush any individual
plan that shakes the status quo.
The Architects shows one of America's former so-called enemies
as ordinary people with the same ambitions (selfish and altruistic) that we have. Filmmakers
Peter Kahane and Thomas Knauf started their film when its very personal theme was completely
against government
policy. As it turned out, their document of the soul-crushing constraints of a
centralized society was deemed irrelevant when Germany suddenly re-unified right in the middle of
filming. Only by understanding this context can one appreciate the film's spiritual courage. The
few glimpes of East Germany Americans have seen have been politically loaded shows concentrating
on desperate 'flights to freedom,' and cynically flippant comedies like Billy Wilder's
One, Two, Three. 1
The film presents a drama that anyone can appreciate. A trained architect ready to concede
that he'll never be allowed to practice his profession is given a great opportunity, for which he
eventually sacrifices his family and a large part of his self-respect. He assembles a group of
talented associates and has to watch as their dreams are torn apart. The
film's intelligently provocative attitude can be judged in an early scene where one of Daniel's
bosses expresses misgivings about employing female architects -- He doubts
that they can keep their professional priorities ahead of their biological lives. "It's easy"
retorts one rebellious woman, reaching in her pocket and presenting him with a condom. She gets
the same cold reaction that Daniel gets when he declines an invitation to join the Communist Party.
Daniel
Brenner is the golden boy until his team's plans run into opposition. Their modest innovations
are treated like social heresy. Bean-counting auditors condemn any attempt to abandon standard
prefab components, and things like glass ceilings are jettisoned because factories have no
incentive to re-tool. Handsome designs that citizens could be proud of are tossed out in favor of
dull multi-use anonymity. In essence, bureaucratic priorities nullify the efforts of young
professionals to express themselves or create anything of value. Bureaucrats and party wags lecture
the group on their lack of social sensitivity, and then call emigrants who want out of the
dead-end country disloyal defectors.
The Architects is a great alternative to the gross oversimplification of (the movie version)
of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and its idea that superior minds should never compromise.
Daniel's mentor looks out over a section of East Berlin rebuilt in the 1950s, when
reconstruction fervor was strong and says that every building represents compromise and is an
expression of the political power that built it. Daniel's proper path is not to quit but to stay
in the game and keep fighting for whatever innovations he can force through the system. The idea
of blowing up a building out of principle (as Gary Cooper does in The Fountainhead) is
not only irresponsible, it's infantile.
The film works because Daniel's personal story is so well dramatized. The breakup of his marriage
is a realistic account of what really happens when a frustrated wife gives up and announces she's
leaving. She's not content to be a hausfrau,
and there are just no opportunities for her in Berlin. The acting is excellent all around, with Kurt
Naumann making a likeable leading player that we sympathize with from the first scene onward.
Thomas Knauf's script goes from
one unpredictable event to another. A heartless supervisor suddenly becomes a political ally. Unseen
maneuvers cause Brenner's project to be acclaimed, rejected and then accepted again with little
rhyme or reason. Brenner can't get decent construction materials for his civic housing projects,
while a friend restoring old buildings for upscale clients can get anything, even exotic things like
alabaster plaster.
The Architects remains complex right through its conclusion. Daniel's decision to compromise
results in a 'successful' project in which he has no pride. It looks as though he has a ready
partner eager to give him a new family, but he'd much rather have his old one back again. His
associates have quit or are emigrating. Daniel wins a promotion to department head, but is now part
of the system he despises. He's lost his family for this? The movie ends with Daniel straining to
see a glimpse of his daughter across the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate.
First Run Features' DVD release of The Architects will be a consciousness-expanding experience:
Conservatives will be able to see that our Cold War foes were not brainwashed pod people, while
liberals might take heed to note that political oppression in the Eastern Block was a rot that
permeated every facet of living and routine of daily life. State-run mediocrity did little to
stem ingrained prejudice and inequities.
The attractive enhanced transfer is from a spotless element, and the clear track flatters
Tamás Kahane's versatile score. As with other DEFA-prepared discs there are different menu
choices for each of four language paths: German, French, English and Spanish. The extras are
text essays and live-action coverage on the filmmakers and the historical significance of the
movie.
On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
The Architects rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: Text and short docus on DEFA, the director and screenwriter, trailers,
photos.
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: July 25, 2005
Footnote:
1. The Architects
invites comparison to the USA film The Hunt for Red October, a Cold War thriller which was
also in production just as the Berlin Wall came down. Paramount's investment was never at
risk; a simple title was used to place the film's action a few years earlier. The gesture was hardly
necessary. After forty-five years of constant propaganda, American audiences still considered the
Eastern Bloc to be enemies, even if they were no longer Communists. Return
DVD Savant Text © Copyright 2007 Glenn Erickson
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