You Won’t Believe How Berlin Shaped Festival Legend Tom Tykwer

by

Just as Martin Scorsese is synonymous with New York, Paul Thomas Anderson with Los Angeles, Yasujiro Ozu with Tokyo, and Federico Fellini with Rome, Tom Tykwer is closely associated with Berlin.

Tykwer has created just three films centered around Berlin – his breakthrough movie “Run Lola Run” from 1998, the mid-career gem “3” in 2010, and now “The Light”, which kicked off the 75th Berlin International Film Festival. Among all directors, none encapsulates the essence of this city, with its complex beauty and contradictions, quite like Tykwer does.

Tykwer, who resides in Prenzlauer Berg after almost 40 years in Berlin, expresses that everything he requires is readily available here. He cherishes the company of loved ones, the cinemas he frequents, and the city’s unique blend of stunning and appalling architecture – a combination that both charms and frustrates him, serving as a constant source of inspiration.

The Light is not only Tykwer’s third film to open the Berlinale, following his films Heaven (2002) and The International (2009), but he has been a frequent attendee at the festival since 1992. That was the year when his short film Epilog was screened in Panorama. Additionally, he collaborated on the script for Wolfgang Becker’s Berlin-based movie Life Is All You Get, which competed at the Berlinale in 1996. He has also showcased anthology films like Germany 09: 13 Short Films About the State of The Nation (2009) and Rosakinder (2013) at the Berlinale, and served as jury president in 2018.

Tykwer states, “For the third time, I’m opening a film festival, and I couldn’t be more proud to do so with a film that truly embodies Berlin’s spirit. Since ‘Run Lola Run’, I haven’t created a movie as deeply connected to this city as this one. It portrays Berlin in its entirety – capturing the people who call this city home, those always on the move, commuting via subway, bicycles, taxis, and engaging in lively debates on the streets. This is my city, this is where I belong. ‘The Light’ encapsulates what my Berlin feels like.

Tykwer is often referred to as a “Chosen Berliner” by locals, meaning he moved there intentionally. Similar to many of Berlin’s residents, Tykwer is an immigrant, having been born in West Germany, specifically in Wuppertal – the backdrop for his 2000 thriller, “The Princess and the Warrior.” As a child, he often joined his father, a garment merchant, on business trips to the metropolis.

Tykwer reminisces about a time when West Berlin was still isolated within communist East Germany. His father focused on selling fashion for older women in the community. He’d transport his merchandise to department stores, with a collection of clothes kept in the back. I would sit amongst these newly-wrapped garments, often reeking of chemicals, while my father drove up front, continuously puffing on unfiltered Camel cigarettes. This frequently made me feel sick and I would vomit.

However, the journey through the passageway of East Germany, marked by barbed wires and towering sentry posts, hidden beyond the Iron Curtain, was more than compensated for when I finally arrived in Berlin.

The city was an overwhelming, thrilling, nerve-wracking, and breathtaking spectacle I had ever envisioned. And the cinemas! There were a staggering 120 theaters screening approximately 800 movies each week. You could find anything you wanted to watch. People would go to the movies as early as 4 in the morning because nothing opened before noon in Berlin back then.

Once, back in 1978, when he was just 13 years old, Tykwer secretly slipped away from his father’s hotel room to watch a late-night showing of John Carpenter’s famous film, “Halloween.

He fondly remembers his admiration for John Carpenter’s movies, specifically ‘Dark Star’ and ‘Assault on Precinct 13’, but due to their R-rating, he was too young to watch them at the time. However, in Berlin where age restrictions were less stringent, he managed to sneak out and catch a late-night screening of ‘Halloween’. This clandestine viewing experience intensified his love for the film, as it became twice as exciting. The theater was packed with 250 people who braved midnight on a Tuesday to watch a horror movie. Overwhelmed by this shared experience, he decided then and there that Berlin was where he belonged. Although he doesn’t recall saying it, his father claims that the next day, he declared, ‘This is where I want to be buried.’

During the ’80s, even as a teen, Tykwer frequently visited the city for the Berlinale, an intensive, two-week program showcasing international films annually.

Instead of telling my parents I was staying with an aunt, I was actually spending the whole day watching movies. During that time, there was an all-access pass that allowed you to watch every movie in Competition, Forum, or whatever category they were in. Screenings lasted from 3 a.m. until 8 a.m., then started again. I’d go to Schwarzes Café on Kantstrasse, which is still open today, and stay there for four hours drinking cocoa while I slept in the corner. After waking up, I would watch more movies – films by directors like Andrei Tarkovsky and Peter Greenaway. My personal best was watching 11 movies in a single day.

Tykwer belonged to a new wave of passionate cinephiles, self-taught individuals who indulged in late-night movie screenings, VHS tapes, and art house theaters. Their films blended classic cinema motifs and preoccupations with contemporary video game visuals and music video styles. Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe in Chicago, Lana Wachowski and her sister Lilly were following a similar path, eventually crossing paths with Tykwer in Berlin.

However, we’re talking about the late ’80s here. That was when Tykwer, despite being turned down by every prestigious film school in Europe, found his footing in West Berlin. He started as a projectionist and later moved to programming at the iconic Moviemento theater, established in 1907, which was a popular hub for Berlin’s cinephile community. Alongside three others – producer Stefan Arndt, directors Dani Levy, and Becker – Tykwer set up his own production company, X-Filme Creative Pool, in 1994. A year prior, he had made his debut with the film “The Deadly Maria“, a Hitchcockian psychodrama about a repressed housewife who murders her husband and father. However, it was at X-Filme where Tykwer truly found his stride. His thought-provoking Alpine thriller “Winter Sleepers” (1997) garnered attention on the international festival circuit, and his subsequent work – a low-budget crime drama about a girl, a gun, 20 minutes, and DM 100,000 – would captivate audiences worldwide.

In “Run Lola Run,” we embark on an exhilarating 80-minute journey, driven by director Tom Tykwer’s extensive understanding of cinema, accumulated from countless hours in the smoky cinemas of Berlin. The story revolves around Lola needing to find 100,000 Deutschmarks within 20 minutes to save her boyfriend’s life, a classic genre plot. The film’s main message, that our destiny is influenced by random events and everything could have taken a different course, was borrowed from Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Blind Chance” (1987). Tykwer drew inspiration for the continuous running figure from Eadweard Muybridge’s pre-cinema studies of motion, where action was analyzed through a series of still images. However, the unique blend of music video, animation, and video game aesthetics with classic film techniques in “Run Lola Run,” including the old silent film gag of people carrying a sheet of glass across the street, is purely Tykwer’s style.

In its debut at Venice, the film Run Lola Run resonated powerfully with Berlin’s gritty atmosphere. Each frame and every beat on its pulsating techno soundtrack (co-created by Tykwer, Klimek, and Heil) echoed the spirit of the city. The fiery-haired protagonist, Lola, portrayed by Franka Potente, swiftly became an iconic figure as she sprinted through the city in her worn-out Doc Martens. Although Lola’s name was borrowed from German cinema history — it was the nickname of Marlene Dietrich’s character in The Blue Angel (1930), and Barbara Sukowa’s alias in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1981 classic — this Lola was authentically born on the streets of the reunified city.

In “Run Lola Run,” Tykwer masterfully portrayed the essence of ’90s Berlin. It’s a blend of techno optimism, encapsulated by the gleaming, futuristic glass and steel architecture of Potsdamer Platz, which rose on the former no-man’s land of the Berlin Wall, contrasting starkly with the grit and griminess of a city facing financial hardship (the slogan then being: “Berlin: poor, but sexy”). Despite its attempts to move forward, the city was still burdened by the shadows of a heavy and inescapable past.

The movie was a success, earning $7.6 million for Sony Pictures Classics in the U.S., and drawing attention to Tykwer in Hollywood. Subsequent productions with larger budgets, more prominent actors, and English dialogue ensued. These included “Heaven” (2002) featuring Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi, “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” (2006) with Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman, and Ben Whishaw, then unknown, “The International” (2009) starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts. Tom Hanks starred in “A Hologram for a King” (2016). The Wachowskis reached out, marking the beginning of a lifelong friendship and creative partnership that led to co-directing the sci-fi fantasy epic “Cloud Atlas” (2012) and Tykwer directing episodes of the Wachowskis’ Netflix series “Sense8”, as well as composing music (with Klimek) for Lilly Wachowski’s “The Matrix Resurrections” (2021).

Regardless of the circumstances, Tykwer chose to remain in Prenzlauer Berg, and instead brought Hollywood to him. The futuristic landscapes of “Cloud Atlas” were constructed at Studio Babelsberg, as was a full-scale replica of New York’s Guggenheim Museum, the location for the climactic shootout scene in “The International”.

In his 2010 film trilogy titled “3”, he delved deeply into the heart of Berlin, contrasting it with the rebellious spirit of “Run Lola Run”. Instead of the 20-something punk characters from the latter, we have Hanna (Sophie Rois) and Simon (Sebastian Schipper), both 40-somethings in a long-term relationship – she’s an arts journalist and he’s an engineer for large-scale installations. The two embark on separate affairs with the same man, a situation that was absent in “Run Lola Run”. Berlin, in this film, has undergone a transformation from its gritty past to a more polished and clinical appearance. Conversations about love and destiny have been replaced by discussions on sexual identity and genetic determinism. Over time, Berlin has transitioned from being a symbol of cool to becoming a cultural hub, a part of the establishment.

Between the number 3 and The Light, Tykwer has remained deeply captivated by his chosen city. He meticulously recreated Weimar-era Berlin, with all its grandeur and disgrace, for Babylon Berlin – a television series he co-wrote and co-directed alongside Henk Handloegten and Achim von Borries. The show, Babylon Berlin, premiered in 2017 and is currently filming its fifth and final season.

According to Tykwer, the final season centers around the disintegration of the Weimar Republic. It spans the pivotal five weeks from when Hitler became chancellor in January 1933, up until the March elections, where the Nazis gained absolute power. During this period, stormtroopers transformed into the police force, and concentration camps were established. Tykwer challenges the common perception that Germans eagerly embraced Nazism. Instead, he portrays a society in turmoil, with hundreds of thousands of people protesting daily before Hitler’s election.

After immersing myself in the tumultuous times of my grandparents’ era through the lens of “Babylon”, Tykwer expressed a longing to revisit contemporary Berlin and weave a tale that resonates more intimately with me, here and now as a gamer.

The movie, titled “The Light,” centers around a commonplace Berlin family, the Engels – parents Milena and Tim (played by Nicolette Krebitz and Lars Eidinger), 17-year-old twins Frieda and Jon (Elke Biesendorfer and Julius Gause), and their 8-year-old brother Dio (Elyas Eldridge) – who are all grappling with individual struggles. The family’s life takes an unexpected turn when a new housekeeper, Farrah, a Syrian immigrant played by Tala Al-Deen, joins them, bringing about changes and giving their existence fresh purpose.

Tykwer explains that the construct is quite straightforward, resembling films like Pasolini’s “Teorema” or “Mrs. Doubtfire,” with elements of absurdity and humor. However, it delves into issues he believes are crucial for his generation and those following. Young people often ask him, “What have you been doing in the last 20 years?” His honest response is that they, along with his generation, became complacent after creating a liberal, open-minded, democratic society. They believed they had reached their destination and could relax. Unfortunately, they failed to notice that by releasing digitalization at the turn of the millennium, they disrupted an economic system and the society connected to it. Essentially, they were not vigilant. Instead of passing down a treasure trove of tools for the next generation, they left behind a pile of debris.

Berlin-native Tom Tykwer doesn’t anticipate receiving any hometown bias at the world premiere of “The Light.” He believes that the city’s self-proclaimed film critics will be poised and ready with criticism if his portrayal of Berlin fails to meet their standards.

As a gamer, I’d put it like this: “I’d be quick to point out that the Berlin portrayed in this film doesn’t match my experience or emotions about the city. It’s far from perfect, just like Berlin itself. This city is constantly under construction, always evolving, never truly complete. Some folks find that unsettling, but I see it as a source of inspiration. This blend of chaos and beauty, this tense energy – it’s exactly what I crave in my gaming worlds: the unexpected, the disorder, and the stunning visuals.

Read More

2025-02-13 08:58