Heimkino fünf

And the German ride continues!  It's a good thing they're showing all the films on two days; even not having to spend a lot of time out of the house it's a lot of time to spend watching three or four movies a day.  Here we have Meine Ende, dein Anfang/Relativity, which I wasn't sure about since it looked so much like a cute little romance in the trailer for the festival.  It is not that, however.

SPOILERS

The movie starts with a bang, a couple getting together after the man's presentation of his doctoral work at the university, going to the bank, and being caught in a robbery.  The woman manages to sneak her phone out of her bag, but one of the robbers sees her and starts screaming and threatening her, causing the man to come between them, and get shot.  After this we watch a story being told in two directions, with scenes of the woman's grieving going chronologically forward mixed with scenes from her relationship with the man going backward.  The story of one of the thieves is also mixed in, from before and after the robbery.  It turns out he was only willing to rob a bank to pay for his daughter's medical treatment; she has some genetic marker that makes her a bad candidate for normal treatments, but an experimental one does exist - not covered by the normal health care system.  The robber loses his job after he gets caught stealing a bracelet for his daughter while he was supposed to be doing night security at a kind of big box store, and the family is left without private insurance.  He returns to the scene of the crime, feeling guilty about the murder, and happens to see the woman leaving a candle in front of the bank.  Then she turns to walk into the middle of a busy street and the robber rushes out to pull her back.  They begin a strange sort of friendship, with her looking to forget her pain a little bit and him trying to assuage his guilt, not only at his part in her partner's death, but also his betrayal of his family for losing his job, and possibly having an affair before the events of the movie.  The flashbacks show the woman feeling insecure at being the checkout girl girlfriend to the man, who comes from a well-off family, and apparently has never had a job at all while studying.  They manage to build a tight relationship, which lets the woman feel able to blow off her needy and manipulative mother.  Finally, the woman goes into the police station to give her statement about the robbery and the detective in charge of the case shows her the security footage in case she can give him more details about the robbers.  He has to talk to another cop for a moment and leaves the footage paused as one of the robbers reaches up to paint out the camera lens.  The woman sees a bracelet under the robber's glove and recognizes it as her new friend's.  She is furious, but doesn't tell him what she knows right away.  Instead she follows him to the hospital and sees him with his daughter in her room.  Flashing back again, we see the robber and his friend go to buy the guns for the robbery, and he buys blanks, not wanting to actually hurt anybody.  His friend, though, takes real bullets without him knowing.  This leads to the robber accidentally killing the woman's boyfriend.  Now the woman is aware of all of this and takes her new friend the robber out to a park to talk with him.  He suspects nothing amiss, but when they are alone she pulls a gun and demands an explanation.  After he tells her everything she pulls a piece of paper from her pocket and throws it at him before walking away.  The paper is actually the results of a compatibility test that show she could be a donor for his daughter (bone marrow, I think?).  She goes through with the donation and it looks like the little girl will make a recovery.  The last scene of the movie is the first thing that happens in the story, really.  The woman just misses the train in the U-Bahn and when the next one comes in she runs into a man who she feels an instant connection with.  He seems to feel the same, but they only have time to give each other their names - Nora, Aron.  My end is your beginning, he says.

A nice doppelbock ought to be good company to a head-scratcher kind of film.  Not too strong with the flavor, but a good kick of alcohol to keep you in your seat.  Schneider Weisse presents Hopfenweisse Tap 5.  Not quite what I expected, similar to the film.  Unfortunately, this time I was disappointed.  While there's a pleasant bit of spice, it's overridden by sort of a rubber taste that I found distracting and rather unpleasant.  Can't all be winners, I guess.