Monday 19 March 2018

Review of Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer

Guten tag guys. I don't normally do movie previews but hey since I was in one and was on the red carpet in Berlin last weekend, why not? Aber warum nicht as we say in German. I've had quite a lot more luck in Germany as an actor, thanks to the near chronic shortage of Chinese looking, German speaking actors in Germany. This wasn't a major part, but it was a big enough speaking role for them to want to invite me to the premieres and you can see my photos/videos on Instagram. I must admit, I didn't even get the whole script, I only knew the scenes I was in and it was really only at the premiere that I got to see the whole film. When I mentioned the film to my German-speaking friends, all of them knew the story of Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer (I'll shorten that to Jim Knopf from now on) as it is only of the most-read children's story books by Michael Ende in the German language and there have been numerous adaptations into various formats like cartoons, radio and a TV series. For them, it is like Harry Potter - like even if you haven't read the book or seen the films, you will know of it as it is so popular, the only difference is that Jim Knopf was written in 1960, whilst Harry Potter was a lot more recent, only first published in 1997. Here's a picture of me on the red carpet in Berlin!
On the red carpet premiere in Berlin, 18 March 2018

The movie revolves around the world of Jim Knopf - a black baby picked up in the sea by pirates and sold off to an evil dragon in Kummerland, however, the postman makes a mistake and sends the baby instead to a small island called Lummerland, where the baby was adopted by a kind German family. As Jim grew up, the King of Lummerland decided that the island was getting too crowded and ordered Lukas to get rid of the train service - but rather than get rid of his beloved train Emma, Lukas decided to leave Lummerland with Jim and his train. They sail across the ocean, ending up in a place called Mandala which to all intents and purpose is China. They stumble upon a message in a bottle from the princess Li Si of Mandala, begging for rescue as she has been kidnapped. Well, the rest of the movie is about how Jim and Lukas embark on a long and hazardous journey across mountains, deserts and volcanoes to rescue the princess from the evil dragon - it is a well made, very high budget movie from Warner Brothers of course (yes it is very similar to a lot of Disney films of the same genre) and I expect the English version (it will be dubbed because you can't expect most kids to read subtitles) will introduce this famous German story to a much wider, younger English speaking audience.

Some elements in the story did bother me though, as it has readers for decades. For example, Lummerland (which is very European) is surprisingly modern - people wear modern clothes, there are telephones, a train network, a postal service and a shop that definitely places it in the 20th century but Mandala (or China) looks like something right out of a 古装 (period costume) movie, like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Was this how the author Ende saw the rest of the world - with Europe being very civilized and modern whilst the rest of the world being portrayed as exotic and backward? It was not like there was some kind of Dr Who style time traveling involved, the Mandala portrayed looked more like China from the 14th or 15th century. Yeah, I found that disturbing. There was also the names of the Chinese characters which were clearly not Chinese but rather what an uninformed German person thought Chinese names should sound like - one of the lead characters is called Ping Pong and I'm like, yeah Ende chose that because people play Ping Pong and would be familiar with that, that sounds Chinese. Some elements of it come across as politically incorrect in the same way you can read the script of Madama Butterfly and say that it is overtly racist in the portrayal of Japanese people. The world was a more racist place in the past where factually incorrect representations of other cultures were tolerated - so what do you do in this case, when you take something like Madama Butterfly or Jim Knopf written a long time ago? Do you 'clean it up', censor it and rewrite it for a modern audience - or do you actually stay faithful to the original script?
Well in this case, they chose to stay faithful to the original script which I suppose is a route you can take - after all, you don't start censoring and rewriting The Merchant of Venice because Shakespeare's writing comes across as anti-Semitic and the play could be deemed highly offensive to Jews. Should we pretend that white people weren't racist in the past and start retrospectively censoring works of art that could be deemed offensive to a more enlightened modern audience? Take for example, the scene when Ping Pong offers Jim and Lukas the imperial breakfast that the emperor didn't touch - it was meant to gross out the viewer, we see live worms and maggots wriggling in the plates as if that's what real Chinese people ate. Look, I live in London and there are a lot of things that my white friends here find gross but I find delicious: chicken's feet, century egg, durian and sambal belachan (fermented prawn paste) tops the list. In the case of durian and sambal belachan, it tends to be the smell that puts them off, but otherwise chicken's feet usually grosses them out the most. Why not use real Chinese food to feature in that scene rather than wriggling worms, which can come across as ignorant and racist? Oh and in Mandala, everyone speaks German and not Chinese - so I guess in such movies, you have to suspend your disbelief. But hey it is for that very reason that I have success as an actor in Germany.

But is the film's message racist? No. Ende wrote it in 1960 after a horrific time for Germany in WW2. He was ten when WW2 broke out and he endured a lot of suffering from a young age, witnessing the very worst of human savagery in the war as the Nazis were eventually defeated. But the horror didn't end there, Ende found himself in West Germany as Germany was split into two. Jim Knopf was published just before the Berlin Wall was built in a very turbulent time in German history. Putting aside the portrayal of China in the story, you have a German family happily adopting a black baby and never questioning the fact that he is not white - even when Jim asked why his adoptive parents are white and his skin is black, Lukas merely replies, "well that's just the way we were born". At the end of the book, it is clear that Jim Knopf and Li Si are in love and the parents don't have a problem with that, but simply say that they are still a bit too young to get married (note that in the book they do get married - but not in the film). The attitude of the characters towards Jim Knopf is at least half a century ahead of its time - Germany today is a one of the most progressive countries in the world,  still openly welcoming refugees. There is clearly a strong correlation between the horrors of Holocaust under the Nazi regime and what Germany aspires to be today as a nation that is not racist. So whilst Ende's portrayal of China is at best inaccurate and politically incorrect (if not downright offensive at times), some of the other issues he tackled about people from different countries working together for a common good are decades ahead of its time. Given the mess the world is in today, it is good to have a film like this out there with such a positive message for young people.
Did I enjoy the film? I did actually. Initially, I was simply waiting for my scenes and then I thought, okay, that's it, I've seen my big bald head on the big screen now - what else is there left for me to see? But I was drawn into the film, I did care about the characters and credit has got to be given to the lead Solomon Gordon from Northampton who was cast as an unknown in this film, having had virtually no acting experience prior to to this film. Being British, he was not a German speaker either but took a crash course in tackling a vast amount of German dialogue as the lead in this film. Sure, there was a cast of equally brilliant actors as well, notably Annette Frier as Frau Waas and Christoph Herbst as Herr Ärmel but a lot of films in this genre tend to fail when they rely either too heavily of CGI animation or when they are just too condescending to the younger audience. It is not easy to get the balance right in this case, especially when you have characters like the lovable Nepomuk - the half dragon half hippo outcast who lives on his own because the true dragons have rejected him. The cinema roared with laughter as Nepomuk explained that his father had bad eyes. So how do you bring such a character like that to life on the big screen, interacting with real human actors? Well, I shall leave you to be the judge for yourself when you watch the film, but I certainly thought they did an incredible job with Nepomuk.

Ultimately, you have to bear in mind the fact that movies are big business - this film sets a record in Germany for the biggest budget so far of 25 million Euros (30.8 million USD, 21.9 million GBP, 40.6 million SGD) and it is not even us actors who are being paid that much, rather it is the lengths they go to in order to create the fantasy world that Jim and Lukas visit. This is a Warner Brothers film, they don't cut corners and some of the more majestic outdoor sequences were filmed in South Africa, rather than created with CGI. Furthermore, this story has been so much a part of the lives of so many German-speaking people: at the premiere I met parents who told me that they grew up with this book and are now so happy to share this story with their children. It will undoubtedly be a success in the German speaking market of course in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, but I think the true challenge would be to see if the film will be a commercial success in places like America, where most people have never ever heard of this story before. There are no Hollywood big names associated with the film and perhaps some of the cast would be familiar to the German public but the names would mean nothing to your average American in Chicago or Miami. But with enough good reviews and a clever publicity campaign, it would be nice to see this film reach beyond a German-speaking audience once it has been dubbed into English. In the meantime, the German version does come with English subtitles. I would recommend this film if you have children under the age of 14 - it is one of those family films that will be typically enjoyed in the festive season so I am wondering why it premiered now rather than last Christmas? Anyway, hit the pause button at 0:26 if you wanna see my big, bald face in the trailer. I hope you will get to see this film sometime soon and many thanks for reading. Vielen dank!

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