It was interesting to see Tykwer's staged magical symbolism, that mixes realities of the living, the dead and the imaginary. It's more about detachment, about loss of contacts, as I see it. Everybody's living in their own room and communicate rarely, and when do, no without understanding. Parents are total hypocrites, father as a balding semiretired hippie (he's too young for a traditional understanding of hippie itself, his youth should've been in 90s, when Berlin was the hippest place on Earth) is in greenwashing business. Mother spends government's millions on building theaters in Africa, kids are busy techno-drug-club partying or vr gaming. Their polish housemaid dies on duty, lies unnoticed under the table for god knows how long, and they even don't know her surname. Then they find a new housemaid, Syrian (symbolically, heh? (Sarcasm) Polish is being replaced by Syrian). The second part of the film dedicated to the attempts to put things back into their places, formally, symbolically and metaphysically. Family is on the quest to find themselves. Syrian housemaid - that's another story, we may argue about it's interpretation without spoiling details. Tykwer made postmortem encounters and dialogues in Lola rennt, so he's not a stranger to ideas of tripping to the other side. And also in Lola he was trying to make things the right way, as they should, to fix the past, to repeat it through, until you reach the desirable. I believe, we see the same "putting things on their places" stuff here, like sorting out problems. It's wonderfully shot, switches to choreography are brilliant and properly dilute otherwise a bit too stiff narrative. It's not a spoiler to say, that the boy named Dio is someone to put in god-like manner the final stone in place. How was it? A hand of god? Still, I believe, that stylistically Lola was two levels superior, but probably that's not Tykwer's fault, its just the times we're living at. And chronometer - almost three hours... Film doesn't get better when it gets longer, sorry, Tom.
6/10
Tom Tykwer’s latest film, Das Licht, is a visually arresting and symbolically charged meditation on modern disconnection and the elusive (Tykwer's special) quest to “put things back in their places.” From the opening moments, the film’s persistent rain sets a somber tone, serving as an external expression of the characters’ inner turmoil—a constant reminder of the fluid boundaries between the living, the dead, and the imaginary.
At its core, Das Licht is a portrait of a fractured modern family. The father, a balding, semiretired hippie whose youthful heyday should have been in the vibrant 90s Berlin, now finds himself entrenched in the political white/greenwashing business. His exposed bald spot is not merely a physical trait; it symbolizes the void where once vibrant, left-wing ideals once resided — leaving behind only cynicism and dirty old habits. The mother, on the other hand, channels state funds into totally corrupted neocolonial business of building theaters in Africa. Meanwhile, the children are lost in a world of techno-drug-club parties or VR gaming, communicating rarely and without any real connection or understanding. In a particularly jarring intro subplot, the family’s Polish housemaid dies on duty — her identity lost in the total indifference from employing family — only to be replaced by a Syrian woman. (I wonder, whether her death or death of the delivery guy reflect any of Tykwer's personal attitude towards them?) While this transition was probably meant to comment on shifting immigration demographics, it ends up feeling like a superficial, even clichéd, nod to trends that have long since passed their prime.
The film’s second act shifts gears into a broader, more introspective quest for order and self-discovery. Here, the attempt to “fix reality” becomes a metaphor for the family’s search for identity—an effort that is as much about reconciling with the past as it is about constructing an ideal yet-to-be-known world. One of the film’s most ideologically explicit moments comes when a daughter confronts her parents with a scathing litany of their personal sins—a raw, unabashed moment of revisionism that is quintessentially German in its exploration of history and mistrust to previous generations.
Technically, Das Licht shines in many respects. The cinematography is a step forward from Tykwer’s celebrated Lola rennt, capturing claustrophobic spaces and shifting perspectives with a meticulous, almost hyperreal precision. The film’s choreography, whether in the dynamic interplay of staged sequences reminiscent of a carnival, ballet, or opera, or in the visceral, shaking imagery, serves to constantly remind us that we are witnessing an enactment on a grand, metaphorical stage rather than a slice of everyday reality.
Yet, the film is not without its flaws. Clocking in at nearly three hours, its runtime is at times burdensome; there are moments when the pacing lulls, and one might even find their attention drifting.
A particular note of levity is provided by the character Dio—a precocious boy who, with his persistent renditions of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” assumes an announcement of his almost divine role that is to be revealed at the very end.
Ultimately, while Das Licht is packed with intriguing ideas and technical brilliance, it falls short of surpassing Tykwer’s masterpiece, Lola rennt, the comparison to which he's sentences for life. The bar was set incredibly high with his own personal status, the rarity of his movies and the media hype around this premier, and although this film is an ambitious exploration of modern detachment, crisis of family, society and personality and the struggle to regain a sense of order, it never quite achieves the metaphysical narrative and emotional resonance that defined his earlier work. Tykwer’s vision is expansive and thought-provoking, but here it remains a fascinating, if imperfect, experiment in capturing the fragmented nature of contemporary existence.
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