Watch Jerichow For Free

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

"Jerichow" is a German movie from 2008, so this one will have its 10th anniversary next year. It was written and directed by Christian Petzold and this movie of slightly under half an hour (without credits) is another statement why Petzold is among Europe's finest now and has been there for quite a while. His films are never really that long but they have great focus and that's much more important than the runtime, perfect this way as nobody needs another half hour or so of dragging scenes and empty moments. The three core players here are Benno Fürmann, Nina Hoss and Hilmi Sözer. Fürmann has worked with Petzold on many occasions and I personally must say I don't think he is a really great actor. This film does not change anything really. His character is relatively lackluster to be honest and I felt that he required little range to work nicely, which works in Fürmann's favor. And so it is all good with the decision to cast Fürmann. Hoss is another actor that Petzold has worked with on quite a few occasions, his leading lady and her character certainly requires a bit more than the previous. But Hoss, even if she has a tendency to give extremely similar performances, is also good enough to make her work. As for Sözer, honestly so far I only knew he'd be in loud movies that Germans would call klamauk at times, so I was certainly a bit surprised to see him in a Petzold movie giving a pretty strong dramatic performance. Definitely the positive surprise here as he may very well be the film's MVP.This is the story of two men forming a friendship after one of them becomes an employee of the other. When the boss' beautiful wife comes into play, things turn sour quickly in their relationship however. It becomes clear relatively quickly that not all of the trio will survive it somehow, even with the reference towards one character falling of a cliff early on. The big question, however, would be which one(s) would turn out to get sacrificed at the end. This is also one of the most interesting aspects and Petzold comes up with a good finale for sure. I personally would call myself a fan of the filmmaker. This one here is probably not my most favorite film of him, but I still enjoyed thanks to the inclusions of interesting plot points like betrayal, violence and conspiracy. A really dark film actually, one of Petzold'Äs darkest perhaps. I think the fact why he is so good right now is that he usually does not include many characters in the center of his films and that he does without pointless supporting characters that add absolutely nothing because they are underwritten or don't get the screen time they need in order to work out. All the minor characters in here, even if they have only one scene, add something to the movie, not because we remember them, but because we remember what their scenes told us about the protagonists, like the scene with the Asian clerk and the reactions of both Sözer and Fürmann are pretty interesting to watch. The consequence is that the central characters are elaborated on even more and honestly, this is what every quality film needs. One of the better German movie from the 21st century for sure. I recommend checking it out because it feels so authentic and atmospheric at the same time and I had the impression I was watching real characters from start to finish. Watch it.

This is really a movie which didn't need to be made. I watched it because I greatly admire Benno Fuhrmann's work in North Face and in Joyeux Noel (a wonderful film, BTW).Enough folks here have done the comparisons with Double Indemnity, etc. etc. The acting and cinematography and realism of this film are all perfectly adequate. However, there isn't much character development, and therefore, not nearly enough to make me care about the 3 main characters. In fact, the one we get to know best is actually the Turkish husband, and I had more sympathy for him in a way that for the two protagonists, largely because we don't really know them. The movie isn't full of a bunch of intriguing plot twists, and the action is relatively slow-moving. The aspect of this film which most interested us was the setting in a part of Germany which none of us have seen. My husband is German, and the part we know is the extreme southwest, nothing northeast. We were also interested to see contemporary Germany actually being depicted. But, I'm sorry, this just isn't enough to justify the amount of time.Producers and directors need to be reminded that people today have a host of other entertainment options available to them and any movie they make should be MORE interesting than say, watching a ballgame on TV, surfing the internet, playing video games, sex with spouse, camping in the woods, going out to dinner with friends, watching YouTube, etc. etc. In other words, having an interesting, entrancing story is, at least in my mind, a good half the value of a film. Unfortunately, so many movies today just don't seem to be aware of the demand for a decent story, and I don't get that. I read a lot of thriller novels, excellently written, all of which would make fantastic films, and furthermore, I know from the authors themselves that they have sold the rights to make a movie from the books. So, I ask myself, why aren't THESE stories becoming movies, instead of a lot of the ho-hum stuff that does become film?

Jericho lies at the Jordan, in Palestine, Jerichow in Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany. That is used to be in the GDR, you can recognize in the movie by the senseless license-plate initials "JL".Despite the film makers confession that this movie was inspired by "The Postman rings twice", there is for sure another movie, and a German movie, that must have been the direct source of "Jerichow" (2008), although Christian Petzold does not mention it: I mean R.W. Fassbinder's film "The Merchand of the Four Seasons" (1972). Both women - Irmgard and Laura - have no family of their own and married a man whom they never loved. Both Hans and Ali are drinkers. Both are suffering from a heart-disease and both kill themselves at the end. Hans is a green-grocer, Ali sells Turskish fast food. Both women, are relatively attractive and sleep with any other men whenever there is an opportunity. Both Hans and both Ali engage an auxiliary worker for themselves on the basis of confidence, and both wives cheat their men with these coworkers and steal money by aid of them from their husbands. Both Hans and Thomas have been "Blue Helmets", i.e. with the army abroad: Hans in the Foreign Legion, and Thomas in Afghanistan.While is it possible that Fassbinder had used the Postman-novel or the film by James M. Cain, the "Merchant of the Four Seasons" has much more parallels with "Jerichow" than "Jerichow" has with the "Postman". I still think that "Jerichow" is a very good movie, like all movies of Petzold, by the way, but it is a breach of decorum that the actual source has never been mentioned.

This German director's remake of 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' has a harsh, pared-down intensity that leaves a lasting impression. The husband is a rich Turkish-German businessman, a bottom-feeder made good whom nobody wants around. He's really quite nice--and nice to the lean, muscled vet he takes on as a helper--except that he beats his wife. Ali (Hilmi Sözer) runs a bunch of fast food road joints. Thomas (Benno Fuermann) was dishonorably discharged from service in Afghanistan, is back in his old country home and needs work.The opening scene shows Thomas at a funeral near the town of Jerichow, west of Berlin. A parent has just died and he wants to renovate the country house and live in it. He tries to hide some money from his brother to use for that. He gets caught, and knocked out. This is where Ali comes and asks Thomas to drive for him, because he's drunk.Alienation is a big theme here. Bonds do not exist or if they do, are born of emptiness. Remember Faye Dunnaway's line to Jack Nicolson in Chinatown? "Are you alone?" and his reply: "Isn't everyone?" These folks are shut up in their cold little "windowless monads," to cite a German philosopher. Such also is the cold, ugly world of Forties American noir. Petzold has neatly transposed it to 21st-century Germany. It's what we don't know about Thomas, Ali, and Ali's wife Laura (Nina Hoss) that makes them interesting to us.Petzold tells a simple, effective, highly focused story whose action is held together by the glue of bad behavior and suspicion.Thomas isn't exactly a drifter like the John Garfield character in the 1946 original, but he comes close. The only job he can get is tossing cucumbers into a machine at harvest time. But after the frequently drunk Ali has his driving license revoked, he calls on Thomas to help him full time as driver and co-worker for the deliveries and collections from his roadside snackbars. Laura helps with the accounting, Laura and Thomas immediately meet, and before long they're sneaking kisses and more, with dangerous boldness, almost as if Ali were blind like the cuckolded husband in Nabokov's 'Laughter in the Dark' (which is set in Germany).'Jerichow' doesn't pause for a breath and has no frills or beauty--though the photography has an elegant clarity both in depicting the landscape and painting the light around the three characters. What we get is like a good short story. The spaces become vivid--the runs through heavy rain between houses, the cliff over the water where the victim will come to grief, the space between Laura and Thomas on a bed, the space between Laura's breasts and her thin print dress.Unlike the films of Faith Akim, this isn't from the Turkish-German's point of view, but Ali is not a simple rotter but a man of warmth and vulnerability as well as brutishness. He has lived in Germany since he was two but he remains an outsider. There is also the quality in this theme of feeding his wife's infidelity. He beats her, he cannot satisfy her, she does not like him. But none of that shows. He sees Thomas can handle responsibility and trusts him with runs on his own. It is possible to walk back and forth between the two houses. The three have a picnic on the beach when Ali gets drunk (as usual) and dances. He's angry when Thomas alludes to Zorba--the Greek! The final scene will return to this place. Petzold also has a clever plot device by which for a long period we don't know where Ali is and he may be spying on the illicit couple. Laura, of course, has nasty secrets too.What Petold lacks of the cultural richness of Faith Akin or sleazy atmosphere of Götz Spielmann, he makes up with intensity and menace. Once in a while Forties noir finds a perfect contemporary match and this is such an occasion. Petzold is clearly a director of great understated sureness and accomplishment who deserves to be well known outside his native Germany. Hans Fromm's cinematography is an essential element here, and the performances are fine. Opened in Germany January 9, 2009, scheduled for French release in April. Shown as part of the Film Comment Selects series at Lincoln Center, New York, February-March 2009.