Chris Kraus’ Holocaust dramedy is a pretty wild work on the verge not only of hysteria, but also of failure.
Today at 3sat and until December 9th in the 3sat media library to find: “The Flowers of Yesterday” with Lars Eidinger as a Holocaust researcher in a life crisis: the job is gone, the hair is falling out, and the past strikes back.
If Chris Kraus were a professional footballer, he could be described as over-motivated. The director of “Four Minutes” (2006), “Poll” (2010) and “15 Years” (2023) wants too much in his films, stuffing them full of stories, motifs, themes and genres beyond their narrative capacity. But this also requires a lot of courage in German films that are often too adapted. And so Kraus’ Holocaust dramedy “The Flowers of Yesterday” is a pretty wild work on the verge not only of hysteria, but also of failure – but always an experience.
“The Flowers of Yesterday” airs at 11:10 p.m. on 3sat.
Stream in the 3sat media library until December 9th.
Holocaust researcher Totila Blumen (Lars Eidinger, “Nahshot”) is suffering from a nervous breakdown: his boss snatches the big conference away from him, the woman is cheating, and the French intern Zazie (Adèle Haenel) hates Germans and Toto in particular and shares with him but a biographical secret… In a retro look dominated by wooden brown and sunny backlighting, Kraus mixes grief and trauma with slapstick and screaming fits in wild variety. This is often tiring, often furious and makes clear-sighted observations about the German way of dealing with the Shoah: no one needs ritualized concern; Only fully acknowledging your own guilt helps you not to go crazy because of it. In this sense, one of the smartest films on the subject.
