Leanders letzte Reise, written and directed by Nick Baker Monteys 8.1 out of 10

Leanders letzte Reise, written and directed by Nick Baker Monteys

8.1 out of 10

Alert: getting started on this note and dealing with a trip to Russia, the subject matter became too political and thus you may disagree with the perspective of this viewer…therefore this is not a spoiler alert, but rather a warning that it may get too fundamentalist and digress from the Leander Trip.

Although there are aspects to object to, characters that are not exactly prime material for role models and the journey on the screen takes the public to meet quite unsavory personages, involved in what Putin denied to be a Russian intervention, this motion picture is rather interesting and unusual.

Jurgen Prochnow is very prodigious, excellent actor with a remarkable 135 credits in films that range from the unknown – but rated by this cinephile here http://notesaboutfilms.blogspot.com/2017/10/note-on-dark-side-of-moon-with-moritz.html - The Dark Side of the Moon to the much-awarded The English Patient to the solid Das Boot, the commercial hit The Da Vinci code and so many more.

He has the role of the main character, the Leander from the title, Eduard Leander.

As he embarks on this mysterious journey, his granddaughter is assigned to meet him at the railway station and see what he is up to, only to find that he is determined, perhaps stubborn is a better word, and he would not abandon this “mission”.

He appears to be on a personal quest, for his own Holy Grail, in that he will not hesitate to cross the most dangerous lines, official or not, some of them not far from where I am, alas, involving the very peaceful country of Russia, which has had nothing to do with the conflict in the Ukraine, but somehow acquired the Crimea, just because those citizens there eagerly wanted that.

It is all nonsense, obviously, and Russia meddles even in American elections, in spite of what republicans see as a clean bill of health, a “complete exoneration” for the worse possible leader of the free world that even our nightmares, or a sick imagination could not have envisaged some years back.

Obama was not the best outcome, at least for parts of the world that felt is too cerebral, uninvolved and detached, but he was one million times better than what looks like the ultimate argument against the American style of democracy, a skewed system wherein Hilary Clinton – and Al Gore before her – has won the popular vote with about 3,000,000 more votes – correct ones at that, in spite of what the orange idiot keeps claiming – than the “best mind, the very stable genius”” , suffering clearly from Narcissistic Personality Disorder and other ailments.

Leander takes a trip to his past, to the East, for he not only comes from there, but he had loved a woman, many years ago and they have been separated during World War II, in which he took part and unfortunately, as we are about to find out, he played a rather vicious role.

On the train taking both the hero and his unwilling granddaughter, Adele aka the very good Petra Schmidt- Schaller, they meet with Lew, a Ukrainian Russian young man, who is very peculiar in that he accepts, is actually proud of his both origins, contrary to what most people seem to feel in Ukraine – which by the way has elections tomorrow, when a chocolate tycoon who has ruled for the past years, inefficiently to say the least, Timoshenko, another rather flawed, known politician, and a comedian that talks admiringly of Jair Bolsonaro – and with that he rather defines himself clearly – fight for the top job.

Lew and Adele will soon get involved with each other, they have sex, and the man would continue to manifest in a rather original way, for he will be willing to go to the end of the world – well, in a civilized, safe form – when this woman, or rather more precisely her old relative, demand or even look like they need his support and company.

They are first guests in the hospitable house of Lew’s family, albeit they do fall in the middle of some arguments there, for Eastern and Western Ukraine seem to feel differently about Russia and the EU, and in the East they still have a war going on, with pro- Russians on one side and those who want to maintain the integrity of the country, government forces on the other.

Russia has nothing to do with it, evidently, for it is only a force for good, trying hard tom protect its nationals – like they might do sometime soon in other countries, perhaps the Baltic states, Moldova, maybe our very own Romania, where a Russian could be beaten up in a bar, perhaps by “little green men with no connection to the Kremlin whatsoever”, and then Putin will have to intervene.

What is very interesting in the motion picture is the fact that the protagonist is both a sympathetic old man, that the audiences start to like, and a repelling war criminal that admits to his past, specifies that he is not just one of those who obeyed orders, but he was the one who told his men to shoot prisoners of war, if in rather complex circumstances, and one cannot be worse than that.

Along this trip, they cross the line – which is in fact on the territory of the Ukraine – where the land is no longer controlled by the sovereign state, where friends of Russia – without official support from Putin – fight to eventually make the motherland Big Again, adding more space, like they have recently done with the Crimea and might do so with other parts of the former Soviet Union.

After all, Vladimir Putin has said that the disappearance of the former Soviet Union is the greatest calamity.

Leanders letzte Reise is a special journey that takes a critical look at the crimes committed in the conflict, just as it also explores the vile past of the hero – who is also an antihero we discover.