Germany Today a Normal Nation

1
Germany Today- a Normal Nation?

• Tom Tykwers Lola Rennt (1998)

2
Was Germany ever abnormal?

• German Sonderweg
• National Socialism and the Holocaust

3
Effects on German social psyche

• Question of guilt
• Divided nation
• Special place in the world
• The problem of national identity
• Bonn as capital
• Vergangenheitsbewältigung

4
Role of Culture

• artists as conscience of the nation
• avant-garde aesthetics

5
Changes since unification

• nation state
• foreign policy
• Berliner Republik
• Normalisation

6
Normalisation and Culture

• apolitical art
• neue Lesbarkeit
• American style

7
German Cinema before 1989

• Rainer Werner Fassbinder/ Werner Herzog/ Wim
  Wenders
• Domestic Comedies

8
What is strange about this film?

• Pace
• Camera/Lighting
• not like Hollywood

9
Lola Rennt

• Low Budget (3mill DM)
• Won lots of awards
• the German entry for the 1999 OSCAR for Best
  Foreign Language Film.

10
Lola Rennt

• Fast narrative pace
• different types of film / images
• use of techno

11
Lola Rennt

• A German film?
• Twyker "just as easily be set in Peking,
  Helsinki or New York, the only thing that would
  change is the scenery, not the emotional
  dimension."

12
Lola Rennt

• A Berlin film?
• Brandenburg Gate?
• Reichstag?
• The Nazi past in Berlin?
• Film of the new unified Berlin

13
Lola Rennt

• Sepp Herberger (1954 World Cup)
• Vor dem Spiel ist nach dem Spiel
• Der Ball ist rund und ein Spiel dauert 90
  Minuten

14
Lola Rennt

• Eberhard Diepgen (former Mayor of Berlin)

Taken from Tom Tykwer's Lola rennt A Blueprint
of Millennial BerlinMargit Sinka
(http//www.dickinson.edu/departments/germn/glosse
n/heft11/lola.htmlnaumannback)
15
Lola Rennt

• Michael Naumann, Minister of Culture

Taken from Tom Tykwer's Lola rennt A Blueprint
of Millennial BerlinMargit Sinka
(http//www.dickinson.edu/departments/germn/glosse
n/heft11/lola.htmlnaumannback)
16
Lola Rennt

• Globalisation
• Computer Games
• Or very German?
• Fairytale structure

17
Lola Rennt

• Other issues at work?
• chaos theory
• Purpose of life and the role of fate?
• All you need is Love?