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Munich (dpa) - In Bavaria, the way to heaven leads over the mountains - at least in the comedy "The Boandlkramer and Eternal Love".
The last film by filmmaker Joseph Vilsmaier, who died in 2020, is entertaining and pervaded by a slight melancholy.
Michael Bully Herbig is the personified death who falls in love with a woman on earth, played by Hannah Herzsprung. Also there are Hape Kerkeling as Teufel, Sebastian Bezzel and Götz Otto. Actually, the comedy should come to the cinema in December. The start was postponed several times due to the corona pandemic. It will now run from Friday (May 14) on the Amazon Prime streaming service. A bitter disappointment for so many cinema operators.
“The Boandlkramer and Eternal Love” is one of the most beautiful films by Vilsmaier (“Comedian Harmonists”), a farewell gift to his audience.
In the previous film, "The story of Kaspar from Brandner", a poacher wanted to knock out more years of his life with cunning and "Kerschgeist".
This time the Boandlkramer himself struggles with the fact that he has to promote people to heaven or hell, just as his boss wants it - God himself.
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Because when he is supposed to get little Maxl, he falls in love with Gefi, the boy's mother.
From then on he tries everything to thwart the divine plan and to conquer Gefi's heart.
So that he can go down to earth in human form, he even makes a pact with the devil.
In real life, heaven is in the Lower Bavarian Metten Monastery - a place of baroque splendor with a splendid monastery library, church and a rococo ballroom, where Rick Kavanian keeps watch as the sky porter.
An authority where the important people all speak Bavarian.
And where God, as the top boss, can also be in a bad mood and angry when the bookkeeping of the living and the dead gets mixed up.
Hell is completely different.
In the dazzling white ambience, Nadja Auermann watches over the gate as the devil.
Hell itself is a hall of mirrors, a show palace and the devil is a singing, dancing entertainer.
Kerkeling plays him as a seducer and flatterer, with a velvety voice, as he smells the business of his life when he offers death eternal, earthly life.
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The script by Herbig, Marcus H. Rosenmüller and Ulrich Limmer is funny and charming and offers wonderful dialogues and scenes. For example, when the Boandlkramer ponders his wildly pounding heart at the sight of Gefis. "It really flutters as if there were a lot of houseflies in there". Or when he prevents the marriage impostor Gumberger (Bezzel) in heaven from cleaning the church and asks him to teach him the art of seduction: "Anyone who makes a woman laugh has conquered her heart," advises Gumberger. But the joke of death is almost touchingly awkward and so the Boandlkramer discovers soberly: "Reigns, that is complicated with love!".
There's a lot to laugh about in this movie.
At the same time, there is also a lot of melancholy in it, perhaps also because Sepp Vilsmaier was seriously ill with cancer during the shoot and suspected that he would soon die.
A secret that few knew.
This melancholy becomes tangible, for example, when the Boandlkramer stands next to Gefi as if enchanted and admires her while she cannot even see him because he only becomes visible to people at the hour of their death.
A loving look from the outside - like that of a dying person looking at life around him, which will soon take place without him.
Close and yet already removed.
Sounds maudlin, it is - but only a little.
Vilsmaier stages these moments intimately and poignantly, but avoids any pomposity and loosens the mood a little later.
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The only downer is that the film is only streamed at first.
For cinemas with a corresponding focus it would have been important to be able to play “the cinematic legacy of Sepp”, criticized the cinema community in and around Munich.
After months of standstill due to the pandemic, the comedy starring prominently would have lured many viewers to the starving movie theaters.
Co-producer Herbig had also stated in winter, "The film has to go to the cinema because we simply owe it to Joseph".
In April he then campaigned for understanding for the Amazon launch and promised: "As soon as it is possible again, you will be able to see the film on the big screen."
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210513-99-582050 / 2
The Boandlkramer and eternal love
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