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Waste of time

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

I selected this DVD off a library shelf at random. I had never heard of Young Torless. My idle curiosity was well rewarded. The film belongs in the same league with Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Zero for Conduct, Lord of the Flies, or other similar works. Perhaps there is allegory here, a foreshadowing of the murderous future of the Germanic peoples. Or maybe a nearer, smaller-scale atrocity: several scenes are as chilling as eavesdropping on a Leopold and Loeb strategy session.This is expertly crafted film making. Everything – casting, shot composition, editing, plot structure – works. Barbara Steele landed one of the great roles of her career. The music is especially effective. Hans Werner Henze's use of modern tonalities played on ancient instruments functions perfectly, achieving the film score ideal that complements the picture and other sounds, a Greek chorus without words. Aided by Henze's score, some of the scenes in Young Torless brought back with painful clarity many a sad, bleak, cloudy-morning memory of sophomore year in high school.

The Left Elbow Index considers seven elements in judging films--acting, production sets, plot, character, dialogue, artistry, and continuity--on a scale of a high of 10 to a low of 1. Concerning acting, one finds it steady and slightly above average. The seem to be no substantial dramatic high points, although there is opportunity for some. Then again, there are no troubling low points either. Probably "even" would best describe, resulting in a rating of 7. The production sets rate an 8, mostly due to the nature of the school building and the isolated town on the Austria-Hungarian border. The indoor sets, with the exception of the gym, appear mundane and just sort of there. Costumes are not really a factor since school uniforms are the order of the day. The plot is a typical coming of age one, with the positive added ingredient of morality, thereby resulting in a 6 rating. Character suffers (a rating of 5) seeming because the personalities of the principles are fixed when they arrive at the school, with the minor exception of Torless who challenges recognition, but retreats. The dialogue seems uninspiring, although appropriate and controlled. It rates a 5, but that may be too high. The artistry is good (an 8). Great camera angles, the elements of the New German Cinema, and the implied preface to Hitlerism, all in black and white, have merit. The continuity is also good (another 8). The film maintains a tone of terror, in which, as writer-director Schlondorff claims, evil becomes natural. There is a minor problem with films of this type in that it is not difficult to predict the rise of National Socialism after it has already come. The film time is 1910, the movie was made in 1966, and Hitler's time is sandwiched in between. Fortunatly, this is not a history movie, it is a philosophical one which implies that the roots of National Socialism were in place in Germany decades before the rise of Hitler, who, ironically, was Austrian. The film is in some ways prophetic in that cultural terror seems always an undercurrent. The film is well worth seeing, even if the Left Elbow Index rank is 6.71, overall.

"Young Torless" could have been a much more dramatic film. It's based on a book I haven't read and I'm told much of the events described in the book are either omitted altogether or simply glossed over. Perhaps the film was heavily censored. I did get that feeling. The setting was a boarding school for boys with constant bullying of the weaker individuals and there was a passing reference to some homosexual encounters If the students had little previous experience as actors it was a credit to the director to reach the standard that was attained, but on the whole the acting was rather bland and lacked dramatic impact. In the scene where the boy is strung up by his feet, he should have been stripped naked hanging like a carcass at the abattoirs. Just imagine how much more demeaning and humiliating this would have been and would have given the school authorities more reason to take strong action against the perpetrators. In the film Torless who is pretty much inactive most of the time as a cold detached observer of the bullying going on around him bursts out with a speech about the fine line between good and evil while the school authorities sit and listen in quiet contemplation. The mathematics tutor was of little help to anyone including Torless.The black and white photography added the right touch to the mood of the film but the script was far too bland. Even the scene with the prostitute was a bit of a let down and did not raise much excitement with the school boys.

It would be extremely difficult indeed impossible for the great master of New German Cinema Volker Schlondorff if he were to make Der Junge Toerless in current times as many would surely accuse him of spreading the message of anti Semitism.The truth is in reality this film does not harbor any such ideas.However that was not the case in 1950s when he directed this film based on a book by Robert Musil.Of course,it is not a layman's fun stuff film in the conventional sense of the word but one cannot remain indifferent to whatever that has been portrayed in the film. Many have praised the stand taken by Toerless in which he feels empathy for the victim but decides to ignore the events claiming to himself that as they are not affecting him why should he bother too much about them ? The real danger is that some of the viewers might perceive it as a thinking of the past and a very negative politically incorrect ideology. It is in the context of these thoughts that this torture drama behind the closed walls of a boarding school must be viewed.This is certainly not for the weak of the heart.