North American Premiere, 163 min., Color, 35mm
AKA: Der Freie Wille
Country and Year: Germany (2006)
Director: Matthias Glasner
Starring: Jurgen Vogel, Sabine Timoteo

Review By: Charlie Prince
Rating: 4 out of 4 stars (great)

“I won’t tell you to enjoy the film,” director Glasner warned the audience before its first screening at the fest — hardly your standard marketing slogan. He also said he and the film’s star weren’t going to stick around for Q&A after the film because usually people weren’t in the mood to talk after it ended. Well, that certainly got the audience’s attention. Combined with the description in the Tribeca Film Festival program that it contained shocking, graphic violence, it wasn’t clear what we were getting into as the epic-in-length film kicked off to a half-full audience Wednesday night.

And it didn’t take long to see what the fuss was about, as a graphic on-screen rape dominates the first 20 minutes, for which the film’s star, Theo (played by Jurgen Vogel, who also shared a screenwriting credit) is sent to a psychiatric detention center in hopes of curing him of his sick impulse to attack women. The film fast-forwards to his release, nine years later, where he is being moved out to a half-way house in an attempt to start life anew, aware that what he did was wrong and, seemingly, sincerely desirous of leading a good, rape-free life from here on out. This presents a bit of an unusual dynamic — how are we in the audience supposed to connect with such a character as this star? And yet this ambitious film suggests that we do just that, put ourselves in Theo’s shoes, ask ourselves: what would we do to reintegrate into society if we were him, how would we go on dates or enter into normal romantic relationships?

Although a serious film to the core, the structure has an amazing effect. After we see what Theo is capable of in the opening scenes, and after we see that upon his release he’s still fighting the same violent urges, every moment of the film is an edge-of-your-seat thriller, as we nervously worry he’ll relapse at any moment. And the film plays into this fear: as he sits on a subway platform, walks home, or even orders food in a restaurant, he is almost always alone with an attractive woman (often next to an ironic poster of a nearly naked woman, a la a Calvin Klein underwear ad), and we in the audience worry, because it’s clear he is struggling to resist an urge to attack them, but it’s also clear that this struggle is not an easy one for him. And when he meets the boss’s daughter at the printing shop where he’s gotten a job, we worry more. The girl, Nettie, played by Sabine Timoteo, has serious issues of her own, having just moved out of her father’s house (at age 27) where she was clearly abused in some way that is not made clear, but probably sexual (a creepy scene at the end shows Nettie dancing with her father, where she is slack to the point that she looks like a rag doll being held up by the father — very creepy).

Theo and Nettie develop an intense relationship and Theo ends up following Nettie to her internship at a chocolate desert restaurant in Belgium, where (spoiler ahead) it is inevitable that Theo will lose in his struggle and Nettie will have to confront the truth behind the person she’s fallen in love with. Without giving away the ending, suffice it to say the resolution is down-beat and highly dramatic.

It’s unclear to me if the title of the film “The Free Will” is meant to be an open question or a sarcastic contradiction of what is presented on screen. We are clearly meant to sympathize with Theo, despite his heinous crimes, and that puts the audience in a strange position. The rapes seem to be connected to Theo’s intense anger, bordering on hatred, for women generally and the result is that he is truly a monster. But on the other hand, he is depicted as genuinely wanting to stop performing these attacks, and we watch him struggling bitterly, suffering even, against the “beast,” as he calls it, within him. What to make of such a conflict? Do we cheer on his semi-normal relationship with Nettie as a step in the right direction for him, or do we cheer against the relationship — or any relationship — in fear of what he might do to the women around him? And given the film’s title, one has to ask does he have “Free Will” to stop committing these acts? They are clearly pre-meditated and at one point he seems to give up in his struggle to fight the “beast,” but it is hard to believe the director intends to condemn the character for committing these horrible crimes of his own free will — to me it seemed like he was portrayed as up against a force within him that was beyond his control, a potentially controversial assertion. I think we’re meant to sympathize with the character, which puts those of us in the audience in a strange position indeed. I’d be interested to see if others who saw it found Theo’s struggle to be irresponsibly characterized for that reason, but I didn’t get that sense from anyone we talked to after the screening.

That thorny question aside, the natural suspense of the situation — as we wait for the “other shoe to drop” so to speak — keeps our attention glued to the screen, and the nearly 3-hours go by quickly. The dynamic between Nettie (a woman who has been abused) and Theo (a man who has abused women) creates some strangely funny scenes, such as a cathartic scene where Nettie has come to Theo’s karate class to learn self-defense (ironic already), and they take turns punching each other more-than-lightly in the stomach as part of the exercise. An earlier scene is also strangely funny, when she suggests they skip any conversation because she hates all men, and Theo responds that that works well for him because he doesn’t like women much either. Interestingly, after their strange relationship begins to blossom, several fantastic, romantic scenes ensue. At one point, Theo arranges to have the song Ave Maria, which he’d seen Nettie fall asleep to, sang for Nettie in an otherwise empty church. And a private moment when they are lazily resting together in a bathtub comes off as impressively natural, a testament to the high quality of the acting.

Clearly the movie is not for everyone, and at times it is hard to watch for anyone, but for those who know what they are getting into, this unusual love story is well worth the effort.

Related Links:
::: Official Site
::: Tribeca Film Festival Site

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© Charlie Prince