The piercing sound of the fax machine goes through your heart and soul. Not just because it’s so high. But because in the house of the rich Hamburg intellectual family Reemtsma he suddenly represents fear – and the thin line between life and death. The literary film adaptation of the autobiographical novel “We are probably the relatives” by Johann Scheerer begins with this sound. The cinema drama from 2022 can be seen for the first time on free TV this Friday – at 8:15 p.m. on Arte.
The drama revolves around the kidnapping of the father – the millionaire cigarette heir Jan Philipp Reemtsma. It was in the hands of the kidnappers for 33 days. The dramatic moments of waiting and hoping are told quietly and forcefully from the perspective of the then 13-year-old son.
It is a straightforward and at the same time fascinating work that director Hans-Christian Schmid has staged. One that lives primarily from the two main actors Claude Heinrich (“Dark”) as son Johann and Adina Vetter (“Mrs. Jordan Equals”) as mother Ann Kathrin. In a wonderfully unobtrusive way, the two manage to show the emotional worlds that alternate between hope, fear, boredom, worry, uncertainty, overwhelm, stoic acceptance and activism.
The story of the kidnapping: Reemtsma was kidnapped in March 1996 from his workhouse within walking distance of the family home in Hamburg-Blankenese. A letter and a hand grenade lie on the landing. The kidnappers are demanding 20 million euros. The family and the family lawyer (Justus von Dohnányi) involve the police. And with that, the “relatives program” that is carried out by the police in the event of a kidnapping rolls over the mother and son.
The house becomes an operations center and the relatives’ carers move into the family home with their own sleeping equipment. The lawyer and a close friend (Hans Löw) also become permanent guests and thus part of the community of fate. Everyone sits together at the dining table. There is small talk about previous missions. The roller rolls irreverently.
At the same time, the mood is extremely ambivalent. The carers play table tennis with the relatives, the son goes to the fair with them and of course the search for the Easter eggs hidden in the garden by mom and the police that evening is also not missed. Everything fluctuates between compulsive normality and extreme exceptional situations.
The mother initially lets this and the police’s mistakes happen in the hope that her husband will return quickly. The son observes from a distance and almost silently the drama of his family and the sloppy police work. At least two money transfers organized by the police failed, presumably because the kidnappers were suspicious. Finally, the mother – who has finally become angry – organizes her own handover of money together with a priest and others.
The film “We are probably the relatives” is far from an action plot. The kidnapping itself or Reemtsma’s time in the hands of the kidnappers hardly play a role. And yet the film, which is more like a chamber play, is captivating from the first to the last minute. Everything is told primarily from the son’s perspective. And so Scheerer, with his book published in 2018, and Schmid in the film adaptation of the novel, create an intensity that resonates.
2024-04-11 22:41:12
#Kammerspiel #relatives
