Such a crap movie.
Not a line of dialogue seemed blessed with, well … verisimilitude. It was aimless and politically everywhere and represents the worst version of Spielberg. He excels at sharks and dinosaurs and big fuck-off boulders. This was just muddled and all rather pointless.
The writing is very weak and the whole father-son bonding thing here with Michael Lonsdale and Eric Bana was embarrassing to watch and is the most annoying part of a most annoying motion picture.
Rubbish.
I was a bit dubious of this because it’s a British production about WWII, which are typically dull, mannered, mawkish, and entirely made-for-TV fare. It saddens me to report that Munich is all of the above and worse. It’s fucking atrocious. I don’t know where the tendency came from to depict these world-historical events from the POVs of superfluous (and entirely made up) secondary characters, but it’s vexing. Maybe just make a movie involving the actual statesmen, nah? This pointless, drama school-level acted show even has its forgettable range of third-wheels hog the screen time.
The screenplay is annoying to the max, every line of dialogue straight out of an alleged quote stemming from an alleged secondary source. One accidental highlight: I was taken aback by a smug-as-fuck SS character who appeared to be doing a very bad impersonation of the August Diehl bad boy from Inglorious Basterds (2009) – he had his voice and mannerisms and looked like him a decade on. It’s a truly embarrassing copycat acting job. And then I realised it was actually him. It’s the only what-the-hell and almost interesting moment of a placid and pointless excursion into revisionism.
Trash. But even cruddier than your usual sort because the topic is important. I’ve read a few reviews and it’s highly regarded, with a whopping 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. What are these critics on?
Certainly ambitious in conception, but it all feels so rehashed and by the numbers, kind of half-baked and jaded by its own pretensions.
There are moments when you think it’s finally going to throw off the shackles and descend into proper depravity and capture the macabre, but it never does, like it’s constrained by committee. And there’s not enough of a portrait of Oktoberfest or Munich or … Germany in general, and those times were wicked times.
I was expecting a Bavarian Red Wedding. It never happened. Plenty of beer, but not enough blood.
Oh well, the intention was there.
Straubing.
Back in the Fatherland again for more lazy gallivanting, a week of Lidls, pubs, and killer insects. This is my seventh trip to Bavaria, so only a few new insights. I do quite like the place – it’s quiet (mostly), civilised (mostly), and people have manners (mostly).
Ice cubes.
All of these goodies and no ice cubes. Tragic.
Why the dearth of them in supermarkets? Is this some ‘German thing’ in which they’re too ashamed to purchase the cubes ready-made, that the locals would rather be all labour-intensive and concoct the beverage coolers at home? Irritating.
Lidl.
These convenience stores continue to be an experience. One can always unearth a wee treat in here, from cut-price protein bars to knock-off Jägermeister. I also admire the checkout staff; they don’t attempt to initiate pointless small talk when you’re more dishevelled than Jimmy McNulty during his peak Baltimore mishaps. They get on with it, which is how it should be done. British people suffer from an affliction: talking about the weather. It’s boring chat and you get no such gibberish from these Germans.
Mosquitos.
These fuckers need wiped out regardless of the wider ecological ramifications. They attack O negative blood like those choppers in Apocalypse Now (1979) taking down the village to Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. I’m a so-called ‘universal donor’ and this is how I’m rewarded – bites in double figures to my face, arms, legs, and arse. Charming. “Burn them all,” as Aerys Targaryen would have wailed.
Wheelchairs.
Where are the people in wheelchairs? In Straubing and Passau I didn’t see a single Ironside. Strange. Are they kept indoors or something?
Chernobyl connotations.
Lined up my midget e-cig with this and felt quite grateful I didn’t grow up anywhere near Ukraine circa 1986. I thought this snap quite the arty-farty creation; it will be doing the rounds on Instagram.
Overall, another cracking jaunt. I’ll be back next year for an Aldi blog.
Back to Salzburg and Munich again for a double-headed session. To think the birthplace of Mozart and Doppler was now the temporary milieu of beer-compromised attempts to retrieve a Snickers bar from a dilapidated vending machine at 4:16 a.m.
Salzburg is a place with many bars, sadly few ATMs (seeking a Geldautomat is depressing), and with a most varied supply of charming newsagents, which appears to my primary interest these days. Somewhere down the line vistas ceased to be of fascination. I couldn’t find a Lidl, though. Gutted.
The salient memory of Munich was feigning a limp in order to use a disabled toilet, and attempting to escape the city for the airport. There was “something wrong with the tracks,” they kept barking at me in the station. I don’t think I’ve ever been on so many trains to get to one destination, and so drained of vitamins throughout. I thought I was going to die on that plane home from an overdose of fatigue and amaretto. But I didn’t. Good times.
Munich.
The airport is a micro city, something you’d design back in the day on The Sims when you’d be sat in your jammies before the PC thinking yourself a Svengali creator. The airport design is pants, though, and the online maps a shambles, too. Why have low-resolution JPEGs all over the web airport guides? Even the official site is lacking in detail and shoddily put together. For someone as obsessed with airport preparation (I like to escape them upon arrival and not waltz/shuffle around like a penguin on Valium) as I am, a detailed exit plan is desired. Anyway, I tell myself it’s just an airport.
Straubing, Regensburg, and the Autobahn.
Upon arrival I think of Richard Wagner and mad King Ludwig in that period when Bavaria, under the Hohenzollern yoke, somehow in a rapidly modernising new Germany managed to bridge a link to a romantic past of myth and folklore. I think of Visconti’s Ludwig (1973) especially, this a half-baked banality of a movie.
I have a vision these days of a latter-day Julie Andrews doing her hills-are-alive thing, but only this time it’s now tainted with the image of a dreadlocked lady in a trackie clutching an alcopop in one hand and a boombox in the other. The Sound of Music (1965) scene was of course shot a fair bit away at Obersalzberg, but one can be forgiven for thinking this encapsulated all of Bavaria before time caught up with it.
I was expecting ‘Old Bavaria’ here – tradition, peace and quiet, a conservative(ish) enclave. It was this to an extent but such things are now fantasy. It’s this globalisation virus again – granted, the same virus which enabled me to stroll off a cheap easyJet flight for the price of two bottles of Jack Daniel’s. Every city feels the same for me, and I even reckon Venice will be anonymous by the end of the decade. Nevertheless, the bantz was top quality and taxi drivers aside (they refused to stop on countless occasions) I thought it a cracking wee adventure.
Booze?
Oh aye, the ethanol intake was high. This I figure is the reason mosquitos were nibbling me to smithereens in my sleep – I was a free drinking session.
Guten Morgen.
Arriving in Munich, we wander around the Hauptbahnhof before our 17:54 Salzburg departure, stumbling into an assortment of ghetto eateries (for the booze). What is it about train stations and their surrounding streets that attracts the oddballs and the riff-raff? I’ve never felt entirely safe sparking up a ciggy near a railway. One is invariably sniffed by the local hyenas wishing to devour their carcass of tobacco. We escape a verbose gentleman in green dungarees and find our seats on the train. When I finally conduct my Trans-Siberian Express jaunt, I wish it to be just like this, but with several suitcases filled to the brim with liquor.
Salzburg.
The delights of Salzburg. They have some cracking pubs – notably Alchimiste Belge – and a fag machine. And a SPAR selling Bacardi Breezers. What more could one want in a city? Oh, and a born-again Christian outside a nightclub gave me a book about God and things. I endowed it to the hotel for a lucky person to devour.
The wee Sunday market left the most memorable impression. Tiptoeing from stall to stall with a beer in each pocket, I got the sense that I was somehow intruding upon this idyllic community gathering. They all appeared so happy and thoughtful, like this was the day to take stock of the week’s events and indulge in a little R&R. There’s an ersatz ‘German Market’ back home in Edinburgh – it mostly consists of teenagers in tracksuits being very loud. No comparison, really.
Morning entertainment.
A spot of Apocalypse: The Second World War (2009) and a Jägermeister chaser performed their noble role as Room 304’s pre-eminent hangover cure. The hotel were showing The Sound of Music (1965) on a loop, but it’s just not graphic enough for my sensibilities. Julie Andrews doesn’t do it for me; I need proper carnage.
To Obersalzberg.
Driving to Hitler’s notorious crib above Berchtesgaden and peering up awestruck at its twin delights of the Berghof and the Eagle’s Nest and all the tumultuous, tragic history that was made here, left me with a sense of being quite insignificant. The overwhelming splendour of the milieu merely magnified the feeling that I was an ant ripe for a trampling.
Munich (again).
By the time we reach Munich and go our separate ways after a few more drinky-poos, I’m content to conk out on my bed as Richard Wagner emanates from a tacky Bluetooth speaker. I wake up in darkness and feel my way around the room, realising I’m in Munich and not a lucid dream three minutes into this escapade. I crawl to the shower, then luxuriate in another cheeky nap, and depart at the first sound of a cleaning lady (I presume) patrolling the corridor. In the railway station I get visions of an anthropomorphic dog in a leg-cast playing Daft Punk’s “Da Funk” from a boombox. I don’t know why.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 