"The Edukators": Big dreams, free love and the spirit of Seattle, alive in old Europe
Enthralling, energetic and willfully naive, German director Hans Weingartner's "The Edukators" might be the first feature film made by and for the post-Seattle generation of anti-globalization leftists. It's a movie that dares to ask big questions and dream big dreams without resorting to smirk or snark. Just as important, it's also an engaging entertainment that packages its thought-provoking ideas in a combination of political thriller, comic adventure and romantic triangle.

Berlin buddies Jan (Daniel Brühl of "Goodbye Lenin") and Peter (Stipe Erceg) are shaggy 20-something radical-squatter types, a bit too sure of their ideas but basically likable. Their contribution to the future of the human race is to break into rich people's houses and rearrange the furniture in absurd combinations, leaving only cryptic notes behind: "You have too much money" or "Your days of plenty are numbered." (The latter phrase, more or less, is the film's German title.)

Peter's girlfriend, Jule (Julia Jentsch), a severe, downcast girl who gradually starts to look beautiful the more you see of her, doesn't share their political fervor. But she slaves as a waitress to pay off the 90,000 euros she owes to an executive whose Mercedes she rear-ended on the autobahn when her insurance was expired. At first Jule doesn't like Jan, who's the real ideologue of the Edukator duo. But when Peter heads off to Barcelona, Spain, for the weekend, one thing leads to another, and Jule persuades Jan to break into the suburban villa belonging to Hardenberg (Burghart Klaussner), the evil Mercedes owner. Illicit snogging in the indoor pool ensues, but Jule wants to trash the house -- and things go wrong pretty fast and pretty dramatically.

I won't give away the plot thereafter, except to say that all three of our not-quite-committed revolutionaries wind up in a mountain cabin, with Hardenberg along as a half-inadvertent kidnap victim. Jan, Peter and Jule have to decide if they're just postmodern vandals or a latter-day incarnation of the Baader-Meinhof gang. Not only that, they have to figure out who's sleeping with whom, where to score some decent pot in the middle of nowhere, and how to deal with the fact that zillionaire corporate manager Hardenberg is more complicated than they suspected. (Hint: He wants to get stoned as much as they do.)

"The Edukators" was made on a low budget and shot on digital video with only natural light. I'm sure it would have looked more polished on celluloid, but its rough-edged aesthetic matches its mood and its themes. All four of the major actors are terrific, and it's a brash and challenging work. This is a movie that will either make you happy or make you angry, but it's never cheap or cowardly. If it asks broad-brush questions about why the world is the way it is, it also refuses to be hemmed in by them.

I spoke to Weingartner on the phone from Berlin, where he lived as a squatter for several years in his 20s. (He's now 35 and living, he admits, a more bourgeois existence.) He never did anything as adventurous as Jan and Peter, he says, but "there's a personal background behind the film. I was always politically interested; I always wanted to ask questions: Is it still possible to change the world, or should we give up?"

Young Europeans like Jan and Peter, he suggests, want "to ask questions that may sound naive, but they haven't been asked in many years. Why do some people get rich and then richer, while other people get poorer? Before 1989, you were called a Communist if you dared to ask these questions. Now communism is over, and we can start to rethink the economic system we live in. Right now it's just pure neoliberal capitalism, and it's not going to work out."

In America, I suggested to him, we perceive Western Europe as generally harmonious societies that mostly lack the extremes of rich and poor we see at home. In that sense, "The Edukators" depicts a more divided Europe that has arisen since '89.

"In Germany, we have 10 percent unemployment now," Weingartner says. "Last year Deutsche Bank made the biggest profit in its history, and on the same day they announced they would fire 6,500 people. That's what's happening in Europe. These harmonized societies with democratic rules and social systems -- they're about to break up."

But "The Edukators" isn't meant, he says, to be "a film about the negative effects of globalization. It's asking the question: Why is it important to rebel when you're young? I believe it's your job when you're young -- you resist the power of your parents, and then the power of society. It's healthy and it leads to change. Those in power want everything to stay the way it is; young people come along and want to change everything. The result is evolution.

"This is a natural dynamic that has worked for hundreds of years. But I think it has come to a stop. Nowadays revolution is sold to us as a product. Buy a record by Pink or Avril Lavigne, and you're a rebel. It's a lie. I hope that people don't buy a ticket to this movie and think they are revolutionaries."

In Germany "The Edukators" has already become a hit, and more than that, Weingartner says, "it has triggered a fundamental discussion about capitalism. Groups of activists have started to copycat the Edukators. In Hamburg, 40 activists stormed into the most expensive restaurant wearing carnival masks, with T-shirts saying 'Your days of plenty are numbered.' They took all the expensive food off the buffet and handed out leaflets explaining that the employees work for minimum wage. It made the front page all over Germany. It was nonviolent and it also had a sense of humor. I was very happy."

The dark cloud that hangs over this mostly cheerful film is the threat of violence, both by the police and by the young activists themselves. They don't mean to kidnap Hardenberg, but once they do, the question of what to do with him becomes ever more troublesome. Peter, the most hotheaded of the three, raises the idea of killing him. "In the '70s, we had left-wing activists who became, step by step, terrorists," Weingartner says. "I, as well as the characters in my movie, have learned from history. I think it's morally wrong to use violence for political means, and it also doesn't function. It only makes the system stronger, gives the system an excuse to increase police power, increase surveillance, increase repression."

One of the film's biggest surprises is the character of Hardenberg, wonderfully played by Klaussner as a former '60s rebel who has become exactly the kind of suit-wearing executive he once battled against. Genuinely terrified and angry at being kidnapped, he is gradually seduced by the Edukators' romantic idealism -- and slowly but surely becomes an important force in their bucolic household.

"One theme of the movie is that it was easy to be a revolutionary in '68," Weingartner says. "You had long hair and you smoked dope; your parents shouted at you. Sexual morality was very rigid. In Germany the old Nazis were still in power. Now the enemy is not there, or not so obvious. The system is hiding behind a friendly mask.

"Hardenberg is a human being, and human beings are very complicated. He has two hearts in his chest -- his revolutionary heart is still there; he has repressed it for 20 years. But even today, as a top manager, he is not evil. It's not the people who are evil. Bill Gates is not the reason why the system is unfair; he's not evil. That's a Hollywood attitude, or a George Bush attitude -- we have to kill the bad guys, and then we'll have peace on earth. Mostly I want people to laugh. I hope the movie is fun. If you laugh at Darth Vader, you're not afraid of him anymore."

"The Edukators" opens July 22 in New York, July 29 in Los Angeles and Aug. 5 in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco (and the Bay Area), Seattle and Washington, with many other cities to follow.

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