Surprisingly incoherent and boring

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

"Winterschläfer" is a German movie from 1997, so it will have its 20th anniversary next year. The director and also the screenplay writer who adapted Anne-Françoise Pyszora's novel here for the big screen was Tom Tykwer and it is one of his earlier, even not earliest, career efforts. The cast includes a handful of names who are still very much known today to German film buffs, such as Josef Bierbichler who received a German Film award nomination for his portrayal here. I will not mention the other ones as you can read the names yourself in the cast of course. This is a fairly long movie as are most others by Tykwer too. It runs for slightly over two hours and tells the story of a terrible accident and about the man who committed it and cannot remember anything because of memory loss. What will be in store for him and how are his friends and their friends sucked into the story? But why would we even care honestly. Apart from Bierbichler, I found nobody in this film memorable at all and sadly also not Matthes who I usually like a lot more than I did here, which is quite a shame as he had so much to work with in terms of his character. I am underwhelmed by some other stuff from Tykwer I have seen in the past and this movie here does not change my opinion about him at all. Still I must admit that, for a young relatively inexperienced filmmaker it is not a terrible achievement and he stepped things up on several occasions as he grew older and more experienced. But this film here does not give him a great name (yet). Thumbs down from me and if the movie delivered in any area, then it is maybe in the atmospheric department. I also think that towards the end, it went pretty wrong with what happened between Bierbichler's and Ferch's character because the idea of depicting what happens when you choose the wrong words is quickly undermined by unrealistic drama and showy action sequences. Back then, Tykwer still needed a lesson in subtlety or maybe the original writer of the book did. Anyway, I do not recommend checking out "Winter Sleepers". Go for something else instead.

German screenwriter, producer, composer and director Tom Tykwer's second feature film which he co-wrote with author Anne-Francois Pyszora is an adaptation of her novel called "Expenses of Spirit". It was shot on location in Germany and is a Germany production which was produced by German producer Stefan Arndt. It tells the story about a nurse named Laura Kirsch who lives in an inherited house in a German village with her sister named Rebecca. After being reunited with her recent boyfriend named Marco, his new car is stolen and a man named Theo who lives on a farm with his wife and three children up in the mountains has to transport his daughter's beloved horse named Lissy to a veterinarian.Distinctly and engagingly directed by European filmmaker Tom Tykwer, this finely paced fictional tale which is narrated from multiple viewpoints, draws an intimate and moving portrayal of an amorous woman who loves literature and her relationship with her boyfriend who loves movies. While notable for it's naturalistic milieu depictions, sterling cinematography by German cinematographer Frank Griebe, production design by German production designer Uli Hanisch and introduction of it's central characters, this dialog-driven and narrative-driven story where a car accident has a man searching for the person he crashed with depicts several dense studies of character and contains a great score by long time collaborators Tom Tykwer, German composer Reinhold Heil and Australian composer Johnny Klimek.This romantic, coincidental and atmospheric drama from the late 1990s which is set in the Bavarian Alps during a winter and where a single woman receives a new patient at the hospital where she works and befriends a projectionist named René at a place called Sleeper's Bar, is impelled and reinforced by it's cogent narrative structure, subtle character development and continuity, brilliant editing and use of music, style of filmmaking and the fine acting performances by German actress Floriane Daniel, German-French actress Marie Lou-Sellem and German actors Ulrich Matthes, Heino Ferch and Josef Bierbichler. A somewhat surreal, imaginative and multifaceted character piece.

Contains Spoilers Ren¨¦: Typical intellectual, director's alter-ego who seems to have a meditative pursuit of life. He has a strange way of dealing with his amnesia: taking photographs of his personal life Being a projectionist is a good symbol of his life attitude: detachment with no obsession or rebelliousness. However, he does not shirk the relationship with other people blindly but accept what his destiny arranges for him, as symbolized by the baby in his lap at the end of the film.Marco: Typical male animal, in addition to chasing opposite sex all the time, his only concern is watching TV and consuming garbage food. His trouble besides jealousy is that he fails to penetrate Rebecca's spiritual world. He has this smug clinging fascination to material things that he even ask for the exact price of Rebecca's mother's inheritance auction. Eager to show off his new sports car but disappointed to find out that his girlfriend is not interested at all. His reaction after losing his car makes a strong contrast to other people's indifference to material wealth. It is interesting that he keep asking Rebecca to do one more part-time job, for what? For giving him more money to those libidinal excursion? That final sequence of falling in the air is wonderful.Rebecca: Female with temperament of literature. Her need of Marco is at one side a prove of the advantages body has over spirit, on the side the yearning and beautification of her curious mind to what Marco represent, a primitive, wild force. However, both he and she felt unquestionably her intellectually superiority and it seems quite normal for a woman like her to establish man-woman relationship like this: She need him but not love him, so need him just like a dildo which can be reasonably substituted by masturbation, or even preferred in certain cases. To piss under the tree is probably from Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex and I am sure Laura wouldn't think of doing that.Laura: Female of melancholy who has less intellectual superiority but more emotional sensitivity and prefers bonny intellectual to simple-minded male animal. Her job in the film is just sitting there watching the patient dying and drinking with other nurses afterwards. She express her female quality in activities such as going to beauty salon and visiting Ren¨¦ after he failed to show up on a date. Her repugnance to Marco is just what we expected.

I agree with my dear friend worldwideweird, with whom I watched "Winterschläfer" and Tykwer's other movies many, many times."Winterschläfer" is one of the best German-movies, if not the best one, and after you've watched it you'll see the world and all the people around you in a different light. There are three reasons for the immense effect of "Winterschläfer":1) the movie picks out as central themes questions that nearly everybody has asked himself: what is my fate? And how is this fate connected with the life of other people? Is there somebody or something watching every step of mine? Where can I find the one that'll change my life? What if this person is sitting in the train just passing by, thinking about the meaning of life and hoping to find someone too?2)These questions are mixed in an extremely thrilling and complex story, set in a small village near Berchtesgaden in the wintry German Alps, a location which is otherwise in film history known only for bad 70s-"Lederhosen"-soft-sex-movies an so called "Heimatfilme" (can be seen nearly every day in German TV, not all are so bad).3)The characters are complex and credible, and they all have their little faults (my favorite is Marco, the guy who's always jealous and seems to be a little bit dim, played by the unique Heino Ferch). If you watch it, pay attention to the color-dramaturgy (is this the right word???): every main character has its own colour as a symbol for his specific character traits.After all, everything in this movie is outstanding: music, sound, camera actions...; this is a real perfect movie, and the only thing I can not understand is that it had become so little attention in Germany. There is even no DVD out here, the Americans got one, really funny!