Dominik Graf

[nrh]

Have been watching a lot of his movies lately, and finding him a very interesting figure. So I guess a thread to put stuff in and maybe interest anyone else who is curious.

SCFZ Graf poll - https://scfzforum.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=604

A long helpful interview with Graf in English - https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2010/fea ... 2%80%9D-2/

Brief career overview by Olaf Moller - https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/dominik ... -the-times

Letterboxd ranking from WBA - https://letterboxd.com/wba/list/dominik-graf-ranked/

[wba]

great idea!

I tried this on our old forum and did a collection of some internet articles and stuff there:

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/the_aut ... -t580.html

[rischka]

yay looking forward to the cat

[nrh]

cold spring/kalter fruhling (2004)

found myself struggling with this one, not because i don't think it's great (it is!) or immediately enjoyable, but that i think it's the first time in awhile i find it difficult to articulate what graf is really doing here, what the exact approach is.



it's a violent film (not in terms of the plot, which is a series of grand melodrama gestures in a vile world of capital) but in terms of the attack, which seems to be the right word here; graf is usually a very strong editor, in some ways editing increasingly seems to be his writing method, but here the cuts are starting, disruptive.

[thoxans]

ty for the thread, nrh. for a while now, i've kept confusing dominik graf and andrew dominik. i'll see one and say to myself, 'oh cool that's that director i've been meaning to check out,' then i'll see the other and say, 'oh yeah that's that guy who made the movie about jesse james with the really long title,' and then i forget which is which. long story short: i watched killing them softly recently cuz i thought 'oh cool a movie by that director i've been meaning to check out,' and i was let down in more ways than one...

[nrh]

ty for the thread, nrh. for a while now, i've kept confusing dominik graf and andrew dominik. i'll see one and say to myself, 'oh cool that's that director i've been meaning to check out,' then i'll see the other and say, 'oh yeah that's that guy who made the movie about jesse james with the really long title,' and then i forget which is which. long story short: i watched killing them softly recently cuz i thought 'oh cool a movie by that director i've been meaning to check out,' and i was let down in more ways than one...

it's funny you say that because i keep thinking of andrew dominik as the anti graf, a dude who takes what should be termite art and makes it this turgid middle brow mess, the little bits of political or historical context in killing me softly are some of the dumbest gestures i think i've ever seen in a movie, like if you took the nixon on tv stuff in shampoo and grafted it onto a crime movie. jesse james is dumb for even more irritating reasons but at least brad pitt and sam shepard are great in it.

[john ryan]

Started The Cat today. Had less time than expected, so I'll restart it tomorrow.

Recently watched and enjoyed The Invincibles.

[nrh]

[kanafani]

I recently watched Polizeiruf 110: Cassandras Warnung, an episode of a detective TV series, directed by Graf. I had previously seen 2 nice episodes directed by Petzold. I was in the mood for a straightforward police procedural, but Graf had other plans. Once I resigned myself to reality, I started really enjoying this: this is very baroque, almost avant-garde TV with an unusual rhythm and flights of fancy.

[nrh]

i really wish i had spent some time reading up on the history of the end of baader-meinhof and stammheim before watching tatort: der rotte schatten, because the open wound of that period and that day is the heart of this film. the police investigations and the genre elements are wonderful to watch and very convincing even if i'm not sure the plot all adds up, but the film basically stops in its tracks in the last third to offer in great detail two conflicting views of what could have happened on stammheim death night, portrayed as stylized recreations. the sense of history as something unsettled and unsolved, everyone living in its wake, is very beautiful and troubling even if i don't find it one of his most succesful films.

[niminy-piminy]

baader-meinhof ... tatort: der rotte schatten

then, i am gonna watch even DG's Kommissarfilm!
(if there is the RAF in spotlights i can withstand even some cops messing around.)

[nrh]

der skorpion from 1997 just got subs last month but i haven't seen too many people logging it, which is a shame - i'm not sure if it's one of graf's best, but it is one of the films where his more aggressive/disorienting formal instincts match up with a relatively approachable narrative.

it's also one where the policier and domestic melodrama elements take almost equal weight - a career policeman on the verge of a drug bust has to deal with his wife getting run over by a car and thrown into a coma once someone puts psychotropic drugs in her restaurant food; their son, given a revolver to protect himself, goes on an amphetamine bender when he runs away from home with a much older sex worker abandoned by her immigrant parents when she was a child.

the policier stuff really seems to be a window into a way work worms its way into every facet of blue collar life in this point in germany - there is a great joke where the family's tiny dog is kept around because she is used to sniff drugs in police busts.



formally this one is really disorienting, all blown out 16mm and strange audio/visiual transitions between scenes, even before you get to the multiple drug trip sequences.

did i mention it is also a kind of giallo with "the skorpion" stinging victims with a distinctive taser mark before murdering them?

maybe not a top tier graf for me but in some ways i'd say this is the one i'd recommend to someone who had seen die katze and die sieger and wanted to see more.