Watch Life Is All You Get For Free

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Dreadfully Boring

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

"Life is a construction site" huh? Well, first of all that title held absolutely no meaning to me whatsoever. Even now I must admit that I still do not fully comprehend such a strange movie title. I saw the parallels between the title and the renovation of Berlin and of course the ever ongoing dilemmas that the characters seemed (for some masochistic reason) to repeatedly place themselves into. In the beginning of the film I found myself completely turned off by the characters. I quickly lost any feelings of sympathy that I first experienced when I witnessed what a terrible life the lead character was slowly being suffocated by. Not only was he irresponsible and in through my eyes just plain weird (I mean who would leave their father's corpse to rot while they went out on a date, seriously?) but most of his suffering seemed to be self-inflicted. He had to have know how bad Vera was for him and his already deteriorating life. His first encounter with her landed him and jail and an incredibly hefty fine. I think that I first realized how little value Jan placed on his life when he didn't even bother to speak up and defend himself in court. He at least wasn't guilty of shoplifting or rioting the rioting charges that were surely placed upon him but he just accepted his punishment without even so much as a bat of an eyelash. Again, who does this? Jan obviously had very little desire for happiness or stability and Vera only served to pull him even further down into his abyss... in the beginning anyways. There were small pockets of the movie that teased us just with an inkling of hope, of potential happiness. The first scene of the movie that I remember Jan smiling was while running from the police with Vera. Even though he didn't know her he defended and left with her and he did it with passion and a smile. Who in their right mind would do this? The moments spent between Jan and his niece also offered some redemption from the ever enclosing darkness that continued to move towards Jan. Something about their relationship seemed off though, like they would be wrong if viewed from a different perspective. Perhaps it was the childlike nature of Jan or the elevated maturity level of his niece but at times it almost seemed as if they were in a relationship. This dirty feeling left me feeling anxious whenever they were alone together. When she crawled in bed with him and he placed his arm around her in a very spoon like position I had to turn away from the film for a moment. The entire scene just felt wrong which of course fit perfectly with most of the other off putting scenes in the film. And the ending? I haven't been this upset over a film's ending since Die Weisse Band. Nothing I felt was fully resolved, I had no answers to the multitude of questions that the film dumped on me like yesterday's trash. BUT with all of this said, with all of the dingy, tainted moments that the filmed possessed and kept shoveling off the screen onto us there was always this very, very, very faint glimmer of hope. I found myself latching onto to this small ray in the darkness like a breath of fresh air while I was slowly drowning in a sea of sludge. After I walked away from the film I swore to never, ever watch this again. Over the last week however my mind has slowly changed. I began to feel like there was more truth here than I first realized. Jan's cluttered life and severe depression in some ways reminded me of my own life and how I have just up and walked away from my problems (never from a decaying corpse though!) to try and eke out some sort of distraction from life. Good or bad distractions, it didn't matter. As long as I had some sort of consistency, as long as I could still chase that one ray of hope in the darkness then almost magically I could find the strength to keep moving, to fight of the worst of evils: stagnancy and apathy. And this is truly what I believe Jan was doing throughout the film; he trying to keep moving. As soon as we stop moving we die and just by making his choices (even though most of them were terrible) Jan was telling us that he wanted to be happy, that he wanted to live. I suppose in a construction site if you stand still you will inevitably be run over by a piece of machinery or some heavy object will fall and crush you so you have to keep moving, keep building, even if your foundation isn't as secure as some others. Now I think I understand why it's called "Life is a construction site".

we want our 2 hours of life back. no story, bad acting, made one of the best cities in the world look bad, dark, ugly and dirty. did the guy run out of money and couldn't finish the movie or something?! cause there was clearly no end, actually, no beginning, no climax, no sense. it's like they got random people and showed a clip from their life with no conclusion and apparently they chose a not so exciting time of the people's life. besides... would you really leave your dead father with his face on a plate of noodles but run out to go on a date and then take your date back to his place and LAUGH with her while you carry the dead body? if you only watch one German movie, make sure this isn't it! and if you do make the mistake of watching this one, don't be discourage... there're other German movies that are actually "watchable" and very "likeable"! even that crazy, loud Lola chick is better.

As the title suggests: 'Life is a construction site', this whole movie seems to be a construction site - one that won't be finished. The movie spectator has to watch dull characters wander through a boring script, but very rarely he is likely to sense a spark of sympathy or an emotional reaction. The character of the greek girl alone is played with carefulness and emotion but apart from that, most of the movie is a waste of time.If you like to watch movies about the topic of people desperately looking for love in a cold world I'd strongly suggest Pedro Almodovars 'All about my mother' or 'Magnolia' instead! I'd also suggest an alternative German movie: Watch 'Train Birds' a.k.a. 'Zugvögel... einmal nach Inari' by Peter Lichtefeld - a brilliant masterpiece.

Leben ist eine Baustelle, titled in English as Life is All You Get, explores the aftermath of the Wende in late 90's Berlin. The story of Ossi Jan Nebel, which means 'fog,' is a mixture of discontent and pleasure, nihilism tempered with hope. As he encounters conflict after conflict, it is not any individual obstacle that is insurmountable, but the sheer number of them that threaten to crush him. Paired with Vera, the mysterious yet charming street-singer, Jan finds himself in emotional strangleholds that can only be understood through an examination of the sum total of events. How else explain leaving a dead man in the kitchen to go on a date? A great extent of the film's tensions are related to issues of sex and sexuality. Jan lives with his sister and her lover, and acts as a surrogate father/brother for his niece, whose real father is unmentioned throughout. The film opens with a street riot that appears as a video game, and Jan wanders through the maze from the bed of a woman to his temporary job at the slaughterhouse, unable to comprehend the devastation that surrounds him. This inability to comprehend, or to face, continues when Moni tells him of the threat of HIV and he refuses to get tested for what seems to be an interminable amount of time. Meanwhile, Jan's relations with Vera are conflicted and dubious: they keep secrets from each other without even trying. His roommate Buddy moves in with him and they revitalize the apartment of Jan's deceased father. Nevertheless, until the end a gloom hangs alternately over one man or the other. The Greek woman appears with all the exoticism of a far-off island and relieves some tension and loneliness simply through existing, and yet even this raises tensions, as Buddy and she grow close, but in a fit of misunderstandings, we find her in bed with Jan. Perhaps, as was discussed in class, this film plays into the crises of heterosexuality so evidenced in the earlier comedy wave. Simultaneously however, Leben ist eine Baustelle draws upon the economic hardships of the characters as much or more so as their sexual identities. It is their struggle for survival that ultimately binds them together, whether selling birds or being birds. The film does not end with any solutions, as both German and English titles attest, there is no solution. To exist is to attempt to create, and so a hybrid family skates across the ice, Vera, Jan, Buddy, Jenny, Kristina, breathing thin air and sharing their dreams.