Lars Eidinger on Berlin Opener ‘The Light’: “We, the Privileged Wealthy, Are the Problem”
After a decade spent exploring the lives “of my grandparents’ generation” in the 1930-set period series Babylon Berlin, Tom Tykwer has returned his focus to modern-day Germany with the cinematic opus The Light, the opening night film of the 75th Berlin International Film Festival.
Tykwer, along with The Light stars Lars Eidinger and Nicolette Krebitz, and first-timer Tala Al Deen discussed the inspiration behind the feature at the Berlinale press conference ahead of the movie’s world premiere on Thursday.
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Lars Eidinger and Nicolette Krebitz play Tim and Milena Engels, a late-40s couple juggling privilege and discontent: He’s a trend-chasing ad exec, holding onto his left-wing progressive views while assisting major corporations in their greenwashing; she’s wrestling with a doomed arts project in Kenya. Their teenage twins spiral in opposite directions — one lost in Berlin’s club scene, the other in a VR fantasy — while their eight-year-old drifts alongside unnoticed. The Engels’ life is disrupted by the arrival of Farrah (Tala Al-Deen), a mysterious Syrian refugee who takes a job as their housekeeper. A former medic with unclear motives, she becomes the gravitational force pulling the fractured Engels clan into sharper focus.
Tykwer said the impulse for his 2016 feature A Hologram for a King, came from a desire to bridge “the abyss” he sees between the generations, with everyone “isolating themselves, living in their own microcosm, in their own fish tanks… everything is nice, but no one is even talking to each other any longer. It’s like they have to have their heads underwater.”
At the same time, Tykwer noted, the generations are growing closer together, behaving similarly and going through similar struggles.
“Ravers are growing old, but they’re still going to the clubs. The younger generation must accept them — or even embrace them. This generational mix is closer than ever, cutting across class and creating a new kind of community.”
The city of Berlin plays a leading role in The Light and even though his cinema version is drenched in endless rain, Tykwer expressed his enduring love for the German capital. “Berlin is the greatest cinema city in the world because it’s unfinished… there are grotesquely ugly things built next to wonderful buildings [but] at the same time, things are happening.”
Eidinger, picking up on the theme of the city as a never-finished construction site, said he once spotted “a construction site built on a construction site” in Berlin.
Eidinger also countered the allegation, made by one of the journalists in the room, that The Light only depicted a small segment of Berlin society, namely the rich and privileged world the Engels move in.
“I think the more personal a film is the more universal it is,” he said, “The main headline of this film is: We, the privileged wealthy, are the problem.”
Tykwer, who has twice opened the Berlinale before — with Heaven in 2002 and The International in 2009 — said he was at first sad The Light wasn’t chosen for the festival competition but said, on reflection, he thinks its the ideal movie to kick of the 75th Berlinale.
“We talked about this, how this film is about a dysfunctional family and I think it’s just such an interesting term because it imagines there is something like a functional family. Well, I’d say it’s only machines that always function, human beings don’t function, and that is what turns them into human beings. We have to make peace with that, with [our] contradictions,” Tykwer said. “Maybe we can use this film as a starting point to not just enter into [political] debates, to say this is right and that one’s not right, but to perhaps even find something to help us live with the contradiction that both parties might be right. That, I think, is also the objective of a festival like this.”
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