The Film Analysis

Two acting giants meet for the first time: Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino bring Michael Mann together on the screen in this neo-noir thriller - the first duel is talking, the second is shooting. "Heat" is one of the most important films of the 20th century, but it wasn't even nominated for an Oscar in 1995. The story is actually quite simple: a cop is chasing a gangster, but when the two look at each other, they are looking in a mirror image. In his almost three-hour film, Michael Mann shows a Los Angeles as we have never seen it before: this merciless city shimmers gray-blue and is characterized by total individualization. "Heat" is first and foremost a film about loneliness in the modern age, halting and obsessed with something they cannot name, the protagonists move through the streets. Both De Niro and Pacino have long since lost sight of their goal, but it is too late to turn back. What else could they do? Watch sports on TV and prepare barbecue in the evening? The cop and the gangster are afraid of boredom and ordinariness, but they pay a high price for it. Michael Mann not only draws multi-layered figures within a complex web of economy and crime, but he also shows a masculinity that many current discourses do not even want to perceive.Read more by Wolfgang M. Schmitt in der Filmanalyse!

Is "Peal Harbor" by #MichaelBay primarily a #war movie or a #love movie? And if it is a love movie, we should also ask: Who actually loves whom here? With this blockbuster, Michael Bay and producer Jerry Bruckheimer wanted to create a similarly opulent and successful film in 2001 as James Cameron had previously succeeded with "Titanic". There is no doubt that "Peal Harbor" is not high-class kitsch compared to Cameron's award-winning film, but terrible trash - even though it was very successful with box-office takings of 449 million US dollars. But as in "Titanic," a historical event is intertwined with a love story. However, the three-person constellation - Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale - makes it much more complicated. However, we have to detach ourselves from the concrete history to learn why the Japanese actually attack.More on this from Wolfgang M. Schmitt in the film analysis. 

David Lynch is the great maverick of U.S. cinema: His films are in some ways part of Hollywood's tradition, but at the same time they make a disturbing break with it. This is particularly visible in the 1986 classic "Blue Velvet" - with Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Isabella Rossellini and Denis Hopper. This work, situated between film noir and coming-of-age film, invokes common narrative and aesthetic Hollywood conventions, but takes them in a completely different direction. David Lynch shows the offbeat in the idyllic, the barbaric in the peaceful, the obsessive in the schmaltzy. The focus is on a young man who goes in search of his desire and in the process is confronted with his own dark side. It is often said that David Lynch makes obscure films, that they are chaotic psycho trips, labyrinthine and ultimately indecipherable. But what if exactly the opposite is the case? "Blue Velvet" does pose some riddles, but they can be solved if you pick up the right key. This key is Sigmund Freud. Let's subject the work to a psychoanalysis, let's put "Blue Velvet" on the couch:More on this by Wolfgang M. Schmitt in the film analysis!

„Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark" was released in 1981. The material was developed by "Star Wars" creator George Lucas, but director Steven Spielberg implemented the idea, which said goodbye to New Hollywood and marked a return to Hollywood's studio system. The blockbuster does not thrive on the new, but on a remix of the old familiar: Thus in "Indiana Jones," which is laid out as an American answer to the British James Bond, set pieces from the genres of adventure and detective films, film noir, the comedy and the western are cobbled together to create a film for the entire family. Indy (Harrison Ford) must find the Ark of the Covenant, where the Ten Commandments were kept, because it can make a state invincible. Remarkably, God himself intervenes in the action. It is not the hero, but a higher power that ultimately directs the destiny. This deus ex machina brings about a remythologization that amounts to a peculiar, anti-modern understanding of the state.More on this by Wolfgang M. Schmitt in the new Film Analysis!“ 

With "Oppenheimer", Christopher Nolan presents a biopic that sets standards. This film vibrates for 181 minutes to show the multi-faceted figure of J. Robert Oppenheimer from several perspectives. Nolan jumps wildly back and forth in time, an impressive star ensemble fits into the aesthetic, which consists mainly of close-ups. Nolan focuses on two themes in particular: 1. what responsibility do scientists have?2. what is the relationship of the state to its citizens - and vice versa? The father of the atomic bomb appears in this film in all his turmoil, but is not a cinematic monument, a psychological drama, nor do we experience a celebration of the cult of genius; rather, this film throws us into the present again and again. At the same time, "Oppenheimer" is a highly intelligent reflection on the medium of film and the gaze of the camera.Read more by Wolfgang M. Schmitt in the new Film Analysis!

"American Beauty" by Sam Mendes from 1999 is already a modern classic. The film drama, which won five Oscars, has even found its way into school lessons and is considered one of the best films. Wolfgang M. Schmitt takes a critical look at the debut film, which was the beginning of a furious career for Sam Mendes.

We have to think of Christopher Nolan as a lucky man, because he has achieved something tremendously rare in Hollywood: He has made himself independent of the whims and fashions of the culture industry, which primarily wants to systematically underchallenge the audience. Demand is considered an imposition today. "Tenet" stands in the way of this alarming development and relies on the thinking viewer. It can already be said: we will not only talk about this film for a long time, and we will refer to it in future discourses when we try to understand the conflicts that are coming ever closer to us - and to us.  Christopher Nolan tells a story with the means of the agent film - the references to James Bond are unmistakable - and with fabulous actors - first and foremost: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson and Elizabeth Debicki - that is by no means meant to merely illustrate a physics mind game, this film is rather very concretely about us and about climate change. Nolan seduces us to leave linear thinking and seeing in order to gain clarity and to find a way out. In doing so, "Tenet" ties in less with "Inception" than with "Interstellar".More on this by Wolfgang M. Schmitt in the film analysis!

Discussions about trigger warnings recur weekly. Is it paternalism? Well-intentioned? Or silly? There is a lot of confusion here: the trigger warning is actually a communicative tool to announce potentially stressful or traumatic content before it is presented. The aim of this advance notice is to give people who are vulnerable to emotional or psychological stress due to their individual experiences the opportunity to prepare for the upcoming content or, if necessary, to decide whether they want to expose themselves to it. In the meantime, however, trigger warnings are increasingly being extended to warn against all kinds of microaggressions and outdated stereotypes - streaming providers and film festivals in particular are relying on this strategy.More on this by Wolfgang M. Schmitt in Film Analysis!

Conspiracy theories are currently more popular than ever, often based on a world view, as we can see in Peter Weir's cult film "The Truman Show": It is assumed that everything is controlled by one person - currently, various conspiracy theorists have settled on Bill Gates. They give him a role similar to that of the "Truman Show" director and creator Christof, who has the show, in which Truman (Jim Carrey) is unwittingly the protagonist, completely under his control. But what else does the dystopia have to say to us today? Is it merely a media critique of reality TV? As much as we sympathise with Truman, we should realise that we, who are constantly filming ourselves voluntarily, have little to do with him.More on this from Wolfgang M. Schmitt in the video!

Paul Thomas Anderson has asserted in various interviews that his great film "There Will Be Blood" is not a story about capitalism, but is instead about archaic forces, about man against man. The film is also not to be understood politically. Of course, if you watch the film, this is all nonsense. Either the director has not understood his film or he is using this misdirection to weaken the film's criticism of capitalism after the fact. "There Will Be Blood" not only harks back to the era of Classical Hollywood, but also films the 24th chapter of Marx's "Capital", in which the emergence of capitalism is explained. The "original accumulation" was by no means as idyllic as bourgeois economists thought; instead, blood, fire and violence ensured that the economic system could develop. At the same time, however, this also ensured the relative freedom of individuals. The film by Paul Thomas Anderson is also about such individualisation processes - because it is first and foremost a work about two entrepreneurs: an oil baron and a preacher. With his leading actors Daniel Day Lewis and Paul Dano, Anderson also creates great acting cinema. Find out more from Wolfgang M. Schmitt in the video.

Alfred Hitchcock's film "Vertigo" is not just a masterpiece, it is the best film of all time. With a magnificent cast including Kim Novak and James Stewart, this thriller set in San Francisco is far more than just a suspenseful, mysterious crime film. It is also a complex work about the structure of our desires, about film as such and about seeing and watching as well as our own blindness. Find out more from Wolfgang M. Schmitt in the video!