Timo Jacobs has been one of the most busy German independent filmmakers for more than a decade, and only recently we discussed his rather crazy, Lakonian Globetrotter comedy “Hochstacker and Ponys”. While she is still waiting for her soon-to-be theatrical release, Jacobs has already completed another film-and places a very blatant U-turn compared to the loose-funny “high-staunches”. Because even if the humor plays a considerable role in content in “Death of my youth”, the tone is consistently serious, sometimes folded – the story of his protagonist, because Jacobs, based on true events, tell the cruel suffering of Kai Peters.
This Kai Peters first plays Jacobs himself, before “Death of my youth” then fangs into several time levels. Together with his wife Melanie (Nadeshda Brennicke) and 15-year-old son Silas (plays himself: Silas Peter), he draws back to the city of his childhood, where he started a job as a caretaker at his old school. When Silas Kai asks why there are no youth photos of him, this supposedly harmless question completely throws the loving father off the track. The abysses of one's own past are going to kai's feet, and Timo Jacobs throws us into us by means of a detailed flashback – together with Kai, who visits the places of his severe childhood and allows long, traumatic memories after decades …
The dates at the comedy trainer Manfred (Sascha Alexander Geršak) quickly develop into trauma therapy for Kai Peter (Timo Jacobs).
This reminder trip begins in the maternal bathtub, and in these first pictures, which is only nostalgically softly designed, you can quickly see the traces of severe physical abuse, which kai (as a child: milo iron leaves) has to suffer. Deep -black bruises sprinkle the back of the eight -year -old, and the soon the following, anxious most expressed statement towards the woman from the youth welfare office, that he is not doing well at home, is immediately understood in all her scope. Kai comes to a children's home where he will live for several years – just to learn the continuation of the usual abuse there by other tormentors. Brutally beaten by the older roommates, the hint, and then the terrible certainty, now comes in the fact that Kai (as a teenager: Oliver Szerkus) must also suffer sexual abuse at all these stages of his youth.
This hint is initially hidden in the eyes of the home manager Strump (Attila Borlan), who does not let the young Kai out of his cold-brutal eyes-even if Timo Jacobs do not show us what happens behind the closed office doors and first of all leaves us alone with our bad guesses, which are gradually solidifying. The fact that his mother Jessica (Sarah Bauerett) and her changing lovers not only beat the eight -year -old Kai, but that she also offers her son for rape against payment is only gradually becoming clear. Just as Kai himself penetrates into the thicket of the repressed memories that threaten his hard -fought, stable family life, Timo Jacobs follows him in a network of flashbacks, which puffs together into an overall picture.
To where it hurts the most
And then there is this initially somewhat puzzling subordinate native, in which the adult Kai, parallel to the process of his own past work, suddenly wants to be a stand-up comedian (his wife said that he “had potential”). Like an echo blown out of Jacobs' own earlier film “Stand Up! What remains, if everything is gone” it sometimes seems when Kai meets the comedy club operator Manfred (Sascha Alexander Geršak) for a long time and-to his own surprise-ponderes much more about the nature of the stand-up comedy than to file at concrete gags and routines. The truth say, show your own weaknesses, in short: take the audience with you where it hurt yourself – that is his role as a comedian.
Hannah Gadsby and other successful representatives of the contemporary trauma comedy would probably not contradict, even if Kais Act in the end is much shirt-sleeved. But that also fits much better here – both with his own character and the staging of this film, especially in a certain unpleasant film.
With the beginning of his carpentry teaching, Kai Peter (left: Oliver Szerkus) already went through an incredible amount-but the traumatic experiences are still not over.
Because Timo Jacobs are involved in his staging – in his comedies as well as in this, as well as in the topic of the comedy, but essentially serious and abysmal film – never about sanding all the corners and edges and delivering the most smooth, self -coherent direction. Instead, he makes independent cinema as ARTE POVERA-as an art that deals with simple, modest materials and does not try to disguise a certain sparseness resulting from the choice of their means, but proudly deals with it. This Kai Peter is, at least as we get to know him in Timo Jacobs' game and interpretation, a down -to -earth and straight man – and yet complex and complex.
This is reflected in a staging that is narrative nested, but still does not require much surface polish. Tim Jacobs basically pursues a consistent counter-draft to that school of the (especially German support) film that still understands every substance into dramaturgy and the visual language of public television, and of course that is the only true answer of German indie cinema to the lack of production means: If these means are too scarce, then not to be used for it, for the To tell TV format. But then you make a “small”, independent cinema – exactly the way you want it yourself and consider it right.
Conclusion: According to his slant-laconic comedy “High Stacker and Ponies”, independent director Timo Jacobs surprises with a radical change of genre and mood. “Death of my youth” is a film about bullying, violence and sexual abuse – based on a true and shattering story. Jacobs tells the life of the real Kai Peter at the same time complex and down-to-earth. For this he finds his own, raw and touching form-and at the same time takes a trip into the artistic processing of trauma, of all things on the comedy stage. A moving film unpolished in the best sense.