Der Samurai
Director: Till Kleinert
Writer: Till Kleinert
Cast: Michel Diercks, Pit Bukowski, Uwe Preuss, Kaja Blachnik, Ulrike Hanke-Haensch, Christopher Kane
Part of: /slash Filmfestival

Plot:
Jakob (Michel Diercks) is a police man in a small town. He lives with his grandmother (Ulrike Hanke-Haensch) and tries very hard to have everything just right. At the moment he is fascinated by a wolf that roams through the local woods and that he tries to catch and not just kill. But then he stumbles on a man (Pit Bukowski) in a wedding dress who just got a samurai sword delivered to him via Jakob. Katana in hand, that man starts to wreak havoc on the town and Jakob’s life.

I knew nothing about the film going in. It was another case of “it’s in the /slash program, so I’m going to see it, whatever it is”. And it left me absolutely breathless. A weird, fascinating, bold film that is completely fucked up, melancholy and fun at the same time.

Der Samurai had me excited for various reasons. It is generally wonderful to see German-speaking genre films. There are too little of them and even fewer that do not try to emulate the Hollywood tradition, only with German actors. And Der Samurai is very German in a way. In another way, it is very unlike anything I’ve seen. It takes well-known genre elements and places them in a new context, geographically as much as semantically.

That also means that you never really know what’s going to happen. It continuously defies the formulas it sets up itself. That is just wonderful to watch.

Apart from the plot and the script that really tears into Jakob’s psyche, it achieves all of that with frankly gorgeous camera work and great lead actors. Pit Bukowski has this animalistic presence and, to be honest, just the perfect face for the role. His performance is so loud – just as his character – that it’s easy to lose sight of Michel Diercks. Which would be a pity because he has a quiet tension to him that fits Jakob perfectly and he hits all the right notes there as well.

I was just completely blown away by it. And afterwards our group discussed the meanings of the film hotly. Which is exactly what it should be like.

Summarizing: Quaint in the freshest sense of the word. Everyone should watch it.

[Till Kleinert was also at the festival and talked a bit about the film. Which means that I now have another person  to add to my “absolutely adorable, young, German film directors” list. So far it consists of Till Kleinert and Axel Ranisch.]