The Free Will (2006)

Thanks for the memories!

Simply A Masterpiece

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

German screenwriter, producer and director Matthias Glasner's fifth feature film which he co-wrote with Jürgen Vogel and screenwriter Judith Angerbauer and co-produced with Jürgen Vogel, Christian Granderath and Frank Döhmann, was shot on location in the city of Mülheim, the Baltic Sea Island of Usedom and Berlin in Germany and in Belgium. It is a German production and premiered In competition at the 56th Berlin International Film Festival in 2006. It tells the story about Theo Stoer, a rapist who after spending more than nine years in a psychiatric hospital for crimes he committed while living and working as a kitchen helper on a Baltic Sea Island, is sent to an assisted living residence in Mülheim, Germany. Helped by a parole officer named Sascha, Theo gets a job at a printing office, begins to practice Martial Arts and is encouraged to find himself a woman whom he can take out on a date. Though struggling with a high level of anxiety Theo follows Sascha's advice and has no luck. He decides to give it a rest and focus on his daily tasks, but one day he is introduced by his boss Claus Engelbrecht to his daughter Nettie, a 27-year-old kitchen assistant who is about to move out from her father's house and into her own apartment. Theo and Nettie are both lonely individuals who seek the company of others and without knowing anything about Theo's history, Nettie becomes attracted to him.Finely and acutely directed by European filmmaker Matthias Glasner, who was co-writer, co-cinematographer, co-producer and co-editor on this feature film, this quietly paced independent film draws an incisive and unsettling portrayal of a man who is trying to get back into society after serving time for committing horrendous crimes against women and an intimate and humane portrayal of a friendship and of a lonely, considerate and independent-minded woman who finds a connection and falls in love with a person she hardly knows. While notable for its gritty and naturalistic urban milieu depictions, the versatile production design by production designers Tom Horning and Conny Kotte and the fine editing by Matthias Glasner, German film editor Mona Braüer and film editor Julia Wiedwald, this at times silent and character-driven story depicts two merging studies of character and examines themes like loneliness, guilt and human relations.This dense, somewhat disturbing and demanding psychological drama which alternates between the two main characters' viewpoints and between realism and non-realism, is impelled and reinforced by its rigorous narrative structure and the introspective and heartfelt acting performances by German screenwriter, producer and actor Jürgen Vogel and Swiss actress Sabine Timoteo. An unsentimental and afflicting love-story which gained, among other awards, the Prize of the Guild of German Art-house Cinemas Matthias Glasner and the Silver Berlin Bear for Outstanding Artistic Achievement Jürgen Vogel at the 56th Berlin International Film Festival in 2006.

This movie is the best example for what happens, when someone does not focus on the script while making a movie.The DVD booklet says a lot about intimacy, about how this intimacy with the characters was developed while making the movie. I can only say: Thanks for wasting at least an hour of my life. The movie starts with a most brutal raping scene that made me wanting to puke. From there it staggers along, with a lot of scenes showing Jürgen Vogel naked exercising, masturbating, and similar, until the love story with Nettie (played very well by Sabine Timoteo) develops.The movie is 163 minutes. With enough meat to make it 90 minutes. In an interview the director (who shows his semi-existent camera skills in too many shaky scenes) talks about the script becoming "a kind of map with a lot of blanks to be explored while filming", and thats shown in the movie. 5 minute long end scene with Nettie holding Theo at the beach, 15 minutes chasing Theo through Berlin, etc. No focus. No story. Very arty. Thanks for wasting German TV-fee money on that one.And we see way too much of Jürgen Vogels penis. Some things need not to be shown. Art is too impress without showing. Too show it all just shows that the director lacks the means to create all the horror and disgust without the clear picture. On the contrary when Theo breaks into a woman's apartment to rape her we see him leave, but we have no idea whether his demons got the upper hand or not. So there is sadistic curiosity when someone is raped, but when the free will has it's short time, it's too much to just state the fact and the audience is left in the dark.The camera is so bad that it hurts. Has no one ever told the director that a digital camera is not the right choice for dark scenes ? When a leg in the dark, or a face, consists of about 5-7 shades of grey, the camera might have been the wrong choice. And the movie has a lot of dark scenes. And they all look the grainy way which is the best such a camera can do in such a scene. Maybe some less intimacy and some more professional pictures might have been achieved by using a real camera man instead of doing it all alone.So, after all, the movie sucks. The actors are great (3 stars for that), but thats about it. 3 years of research and writing, just to throw the script away as soon as you start filming. But hey, who cares, it's not as if this movie was supposed to make any money. A classical German.

I saw this at the German Film Festival in San Francisco, and having been to a few of these before, I was prepared for a depressing experience. What's with these Germans? Anyway . . . this is a brutal, thorough, carefully crafted portrayal of the tortured life of what Americans call with politically correct blandness a "sex offender." Our protagonist, Theo, is raping his third victim when we meet him. He is a smoldering, violent thug. We next encounter him, 9 years later, as he is released from a mental hospital into a supervised residential setting. He is a broken man. He is riding a beast he hates, and he has no idea when the beast will bite again.As a portrayal of psychology, angst, subtlety of emotion, and real human relations, I would give this film a 10. The sparring session between Theo, and his budding girlfriend Nettie, is a brilliant display of the subtle forces which are torturing the both of them. The fact that these two people have the sparsest dialog in the history of cinema may not be realistically correct, but it is an excellent artistic way of turning the focus to their inner emotions. This film is art, after all -- not a documentary.The only reason I didn't go for 10 stars is that I had a persistent feeling that something was missing. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I would have liked some back story about Theo's youth, something that would make him a whole person. The film does work without that, but it is a lack that a writer and director of such brilliance could somehow have remedied.This is not a feel good, date movie.

"Der freie Wille" is the tragedy of the rapist Theo (Vogel). After years of imprisonment and struggle for a normal life and love, he realizes that he can never be free of his pathological sexual urge. I saw this movie yesterday and it left intense, but contradictory impressions on me. First and above all, I appreciate the brilliant and authentic acting of J.Vogel, S.Timoteo, M.Zapatka and the whole ensemble. I saw real persons, not roles, sharp characterizations, not clichés, good actors, not stars. I appreciate the courage of the producers to realize such a movie, too. It's necessary to make movies like this. But in my opinion it has some severe structural problems, and that's why I refused to let story & characters affect me till the end. What a pity! Okay: some extremely disturbing scenes are shown, because the story isn't nice. Okay: this movie is a hard challenge for mind & heart, because cruelty against women is bad reality - worldwide. Okay: the main character Theo is a tragical monster, because of his unsolved conflict. Okay: Theo's only girlfriend Nettie (Timoteo) has to be both a highly neurotic and very intelligent person - other girls wouldn't be able to like Theo, and he wants her love so badly. Okay: the story is concerned with pain, cruelty, dread, fear, sorrow - all the abysses of human soul. But 3 hours long? It seemed to me that the movie contains too much unnecessary scenes (i.e. Nettie's job in a Belgian chocolate factory), that didn't help the story and unfortunately failed its impact on me. Eventually, for Theo, his victims and Nettie their lives are infinite real time human catastrophes. But to be and stay deeply affected by a character's tragedy in a movie, it isn't necessary to reveal every little detail of his or her life as if it happened in real life. This fact even weakens my attention and sympathy for the anti-heroes.It appears to me, that the movie couldn't decide between drama and documentary. But the really bad effect on me as the film's audience, who expects drama art, not real life: in the long run it's too exhausting to follow the plot. Unfortunately the key scenes get the same attention as the under-plots (and after a too long time no attention anymore). Therefore the dramaturgy kills itself. Besides, too much Method Acting. The story is intense enough - why so much long takes of sighs and yells? Timoteo does a brilliant job - when she shows her feelings subtle and reserved. I was also fascinated by Vogel's performance - when he shows soul instead of nakedness. I also concede, I'm not happy with the very hard ending. But somehow I would've liked it, if the movie would've been cut as a piece of drama art, not as a diary of pain. c.k.