Watch The Red Cockatoo For Free

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.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Blistering performances.

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

"Der rote Kakadu" or "The Red Cockatoo" is a German German-language film from 2006, so this one had its 10th anniversary last year. It was directed by Dominik Graf who I consider perhaps the most overrated filmmaker we have in Germany right now. Three people worked on the script and for at least two of them the film is probably their most known work and this quantity of writers makes it especially disappointing to see such a mediocre outcome. Talk about too many cooks spoiling the broth. I like Zehrfeld and Schwarz (both around the age of 30 here) and the movie may have turned out even worse without them. Don't care too much for Riemelt, but he wasn't too bad either. The cast generally is fairly decent if you take a look at the rest of the performers here. The time where this is set is also interesting as with all the films before and after the 1960s we have here in Germany there are surprisingly few about the exact time the Berlin Wall was built here in Germany. This is another reason why the low quality of this film here is another letdown, there certainly was the opportunity to create something fresh and new.The problems I had with this one are the exact same ones I keep having with other Graf films too. He seems to be trying so hard to make an impact in so many areas, be it historic context, character studies, thriller movies and you could find 3 or 4 more perhaps that he forgets elaborating properly and really convincingly in each and every single one of them. It is a bit of everything, but not enough of anything and at over two hours this makes it an extremely annoying watch at times because you just see that the talent isn't there. But once again, you definitely also have to blame the writers to some extent and the ending with the shot fired is a perfect example of bait and obvious drama with little depth over really substantial exploration. Sure you can be grasping at straws and try to find connections like the screaming stop or I'll shoot being liked to people trying to leave the country in the next decades, but I personally find it all a bit far-fetched. This film is not half as meaningful as it attempts to be, not half as witty or entertaining as it aspires to be. The problem is not the ambition, which is huge, the problem is the execution and that the talent was simply not there for the people who wrote the script. I suggest you stay far away from this one. Not recommended.

From my point of view "Der Rote Kakadu" is a missed chance. Earlier this year I saw Henckel von Donnersmarck's "Das Leben der Anderen", a film that also deals with the DDR. There is one main reason, why "Der Rote Kakadu" isn't reaching the impact of this film: The characters. Director Dominik Graf spends really a lot of time establishing the characters, the place and time. But I think he wasn't really that much interested in the characters and their story, what he is really interested in is giving the viewer a feeling of how it was, a feeling of the time. But in the end he fails on both lines. The character story wasn't able to keep me interested, as I felt that the people in this film were very artificial. But the film was also not able to get across the feel of this time shortly before the wall was built. Sure, there is a lot of music and dancing of the time, and there are also good moments in this film, but what was essential?

Broad performances, very interesting individuals in a wider story context than just a love-story or would-be-comedy about East Germany again, not so unnervingly 'funny' as »Sonnenallee« etc. The savage and insinuating violence of a dictatorial regime, the willingness of people to stick to their dream of a new society (Luise) just until it's shattered, are universal themes. The specialty of blatant disregard for the genocide and dictatorship that just took place and shook the earth is in this outcome very German. It struck me that the late regime is never a topic for those young people in the movie, the murdering of millions of innocent children, women and men because of their so called »race«. And then again, the characters are mostly too young for their part (but they surely have former Nazi-parents). But than I realized: it was never a topic in Germany as a whole those days, it was stored away in some dark cellar just to make it go away and don't come back until... a movie like »Sophie Scholl« came out about the few brave there were..., very human, very sad (even sadder that the latter became an Oscar-Nomination as even crap as »The Untergang/Downfall« did). But this movie does not pretend to be all this stuff, it is just more universal, less German, more intellectual, sensual, even the gags are more sophisticated than the regular German ones (they are good! - they make the characters edgier and even more lovable). I don't want to forget to mention the great acting, the touching love-story, the growing-up story. At first I didn't want to see another GDR-Movie but it turned out to be much more sophisticated and multi-angled than that. Very warm and focused on the characters, and Jessica Schwarz is lovably natural again without letting go the earnest part of her character - who wouldn't fall in love with her... go see it!

I have seen 'Der Rote Kakadu' just tonight and was amazed about it. After some so called 'Ostalgic' movies (from German Ost meaning East), which all told stories about and in the GDR, as if it had been a strange fairy tale country, this movie was different. At one point it shows the brutality of the totalitarian zero-tolerance system of the GDR at the start of the 60ies and at the same time it tells a differentiated love story. After the 'rote Kakadu' I was more than cured of all Ostalgia and understood more about the relationship between men and women, and strangely at the same time I was entertained extremely well! If I had to recommend a movie, as the critical person I am, I would recommend this movie to everyone, who wants to understand a bit more.