Timeless (4 Stars)

Today I went to see a special screening of "Timeless" in Stuttgart. The director Alexander Tuschinski, who lives in Stuttgart, attended the screening, together with most of the actors. After the film there were very few questions from the audience, so Alexander spent most of the time holding a monologue, explaining how he made the film, throwing in a few random anecdotes. He apologised several times for talking too much, but in my opinion he could have talked for another hour. I was fascinated by how he managed to make such an extravagant film on so small a budget. Most of the actors are amateurs, his friends from Stuttgart who were prepared to work for free. The film has a few professional actors, such as Helmut Berger and Harry Lennix, who appeared for practically nothing. The soundtrack is a mixture of 1920's songs, now in the public domain, and his own compositions, so he didn't have to pay royalties. The days of micro-budget films aren't gone.

The film is about Arnold, a young German who accidentally jumps through time from 1932 to 2020. He just missed the beginning of the Nazi regime, but he must have noticed the social unrest in the Weimar Republic. After arriving in the future he goes to his old apartment and finds it being used by right wing extremists. He has to flee when the police arrive, and he bursts in on a meeting by left wing extremists. The police raid this meeting as well, so he flees again. He meets Konstantin, played by Alexander Tuschinski himself, a very likeable left wing thinker who can't stop talking. Is Alexander playing himself?

For 108 minutes the viewer is bombarded with not so subtle messages about modern culture, in particular German culture. We see the dangers of both right wing and left wing thought, we see the shallowness of television, the commercialism of self-help and religion, the subversion of the CIA, the anonymity of the government and much more. In the film leading politicians are the ones who enjoy submitting to dominatrixes, presumably as a counterpart to their job. If I had to name one fault in the film, it's that there are too many messages in too little time, but maybe that's deliberate. It shows how Arnold is overwhelmed by the speed with which conflicting messages flash in front of his eyes in the modern world. He can't keep up. He ends up carrying a gun not out of personal conviction, but just because it's what everyone else is doing and he doesn't have time to think about it.

"Timeless" is already available on Amazon Prime in Germany, so I'll watch it again soon. It's a film that's too good to watch only once.