I watches it on TV on Tuesday (in the middle of the night, but it'S our Easter vacation, so no worries). Fuck, that Hanks guy is so good.
Of course, I had an eye out for the historical accuracy of the setting, and I saw several errors. It would be unthinkable that a student like Pryor would just walk into East Berlin past a wall that was already almost finished. Or that he would not carry his passport. When the Wall was built, West Berlin was shut off, period. Some passages (i.e., at Bernauer Strasse, at Friedrichstrasse Station, and at Checkpoint Charlie) would still be operating, but no-one without the proper permits would get through, and there were very, very few proper permits. Just walking past a hole in the wall is ridiculous. And of course, they didn't shut off East Berlin, they shut off West Berlin along its entire perimeter, of which the border with East Berlin was just one part.
The scene where Dovovan lrides home to his dingy hotel in West Berlin an witnessses would-be refugees being mowed down by machine gun fire is absolutely ridiculous, too. The advanced buildup of the Eastern border strip we seee in the film was a thing of the late 60s and the 70s, but that aside, you didn't just walk up to the wall and tried to climb it. And you were usually incapacitated by a single shot from a well-trained officer, not mowed down gangland style.
Speaaking of the hotel: there is no reason a well-paid lawyer wouldn't be able to afford something clean with heating, if the CIA didn't want him to reside in an upscale place - as if there was only one good hotel in West Berlin in the 60s
. Oh, and the burglary scene is a funny idea, but if the GDR did not have one problem, it was street crime. Also, to get lost between Friedrichstrasse station and Untern den Linden, where the Soviet (today, Russian) embassy resided would take one huge amount of disorientation. It is literally a five minute stroll along broad boulevards. Finally, why is it a bleak and snowy winter in Berlin but a brightly glorious, balmy fall in New York? I wouldn't exchange Berlin's weather for New York's if I were you.
Rechtsanwalt (attorney) Vogel, by the way, is historic. He went on to make his living organising prisoner buyouts and everything having to do with people in conflict with that border. He was a prominent GDR figure when I grew up, and I seem to remember he was in some legal trouble after unification for working with the Stasi a little too eagerly.
But of course, atmospherically, the film is very good. The S-Bahn trains are spot on (for the Western part of the S-Bahn; the Eastern trainsused a cream white tone instead of beige) down to the sound that they make on the trackes. I sat on those wooden benches when I used the S-Bahn as a teen in the eighties. I loved the scene in front of the big cinema, with all the hit films of the year on display, with their German titles. It is a wonderful bow of respect to his teachers by Spielberg. However, I would bet that One, Two, Three wasn't really there at the time. No-one in Germany found the film funny when it came out, shortly after the wall was built. It was recognized as the masterwork it is only later, in the eighties.
The bridge scenes are very intense, and they are propably realistic, too. Of course, I know when they filmed it, because their lights lit up the night in our home a mile away. So I know it was a wonderfully calm May evening. And, sure enough, the actors don't make little clouds of vapor when they breathe, even though it is supposedly achingly cold.
All in all, a good Spielberg film. A little light on historical detail, but very very good at catching a mood. With impressive actors, not only in the lead roles.
Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2017 10:21 pm