A good first sentence for a series that turns the audience into accomplices and competitors at the same time: “I want it to be about me.” A lot of people want that.
There are more every day.
The world of the affluent West, its circumstances, its older (not the very old!) And its new books, its machines - all whisper it to us in a similar way: Get up.
Make yourself big
Don't forget you
You can never win.
But have everything.
Axel Weidemann
Editor in the features section.
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Tom Schilling plays a middle-aged man with fear of commitment. “17 relationships, 108 sexual partners, 38 best friends, 14 groups of friends, 9 employers, 20 telephone numbers.” The most interesting things about him are his name, “Tristan”, his shirts and his television world upper class environment. Julia (Katharina Schüttler) is pregnant by him. He shares a secret with Franziska (Mavie Hörbiger). Sister Isolde (Sarah Viktoria Frick) - Wagner allusions largely serve as a code for penis boobing and the joy of hollow dominance gestures with traditional content - is a painter and can hardly stand herself. His parents, whom he calls Elvira (Sophie Rois) and Kurt (Martin Wuttke), are the caricature of a couple who have long since drowned in their self-centeredness and tore the whole family down with them.But one of the most beautiful roles is reserved for the inevitable Lars Eidinger. He plays Tristan's boss, Mr. Brandt, who glides through his company called “42!” On a two-wheeled hoverboard as if on a mobile pedestal, or walks barefoot through his sand-filled office.
Genital frontal allure, castration and penetration fantasies
At the beginning of every episode that deals with individual days in Tristan’s life, there is a wish that will shape the relationship between those around him and him. To do this, however, he has to tell a friendly taxi driver (Ramin Yazdani) who waits for Tristan every day to take him to the desired destination. In this miracle lamp simulation, wishes are always born from the excessive demands that have triggered previous wishes. Thus “everyone should know everything about me” becomes “everyone should tell the truth”. Desires are unpredictable, even if they often seem logical once they manifest. This is also what makes this series so appealing, although it is exhausting, but also a bit disturbing for the faint of heart because of all the genital frontal allures, castration and penetration fantasiesbut is unpredictable in a highly entertaining way.
In addition, there is the ensemble steeped in theater experience. This experience is necessary because it needs capable speakers to intercept and fire back the force of the absurdity of the text (directed and screenplay David Schalko), which turns the entire range of human meanness, injuries and misunderstandings into deadly projectiles. Eidinger is allowed to speak the most beautiful sentences as Mr. Brandt, somewhere between total inner and outer emptiness: "Love is something for the unemployed" or "You have enchanted me, you voodooist". Such jewels are probably the most beautifulbecause the viewer can laugh more freely at them than at the in many ways pornographically exaggerated dysfunctionality in Tristan's family - even if young companies have recently been increasingly fond of families and messed up their employees.
The team around David Schalko also uses the different forms of desires and their consequences to vary the cinematic form: chamber plays, end-time scenarios, musical elements, the choirs of ancient theater. Here the series, located in the field of tension between one's own self-deception and that of others, also plays with one of its premises. That, according to which the human ability to love depends on the change and on the integrity of the secret of the respective partner.
Anyone who, as a viewer, can ignore the unconditional will to shake this rapid test arrangement, looks at an ensemble of wounded and undead figures, who can be seen to be the ultimate exhaustion that the capitalization of love seems to trigger in many people in this decade. Tristan has to ask himself: "Why can I only love the world when it is sleeping?" Schubert (Michael Maertens), Tristan's therapist. She has stopped speaking because she believes (her) words are a deadly virus that spreads as soon as she opens her mouth. Accordingly, the really threatening pandemic would have broken out at the moment when people charged human sounds with meaning.
But when the course of this story is now directed at us and our destructive self-talk, the viewer is left with the shrill warning of the therapist: "Lower the gun, if someone dies, it is no longer an art!"
Me and the others
starts today at 8:15 p.m. on Sky Atlantic.