The “Ordinary” in Cinema: Ready for Close-up – Culture

Paula has big dreams: she wants to be a main character! There is no minor character like her mother, who rushes through the picture for a moment or faithfully recites a single sentence to her. She wants to be like her missing father. Every story revolves around him! In addition, Paula goes to school for the sake of the main characters, and is the best in her class at Screaming Panic. Other feelings haven’t quite worked out yet, as you can see from the fact that Paula is having problems creating the proper movie music with the device that’s been placed over her heart.

She doesn’t have any “highlights or cliffs” either, but she’s determined not to sit like her mom in a prefab in a colorless apartment and keep muttering the same sentences to herself. She sees how beautiful life is as the main character in the family of her best friend, who lives in a kind of baroque palace villa and has so many feelings that they almost only communicate with each other in short musical interludes, as in the old days. Disney movie.

looks strange? Sophie Lennenbaum might have thought the same thing when she was working on her first feature film, “The Ordinaries” at Film University Babelsberg. What if movie characters suddenly develop an awareness that they are movie characters—trapped in an unfair system of attention, screen time, close-ups, and lighting favored by very few? Shouldn’t there be a slap and stab at the status of the main character, and a deep resentment of those who were denied it? cinematic as an intense metaphor for existence, if you will.

First of all, this is a very cool idea. And indeed, it’s so obvious that one wonders why in the more than 100-year history of movies someone hasn’t gone in that direction so often – so spontaneously one thinks only of the characters in Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, who berate Annoyed, one of them jumps off the screen and the others are unable to continue playing. In any case, The Ordinaries is full of witty and funny ideas in which cinema tells about itself – and in the best moments also something about our, completely unfair, hierarchically recorded lives.

The “Asynchronous Elements” turned off badly, as the sound no longer fit the picture

So there are a lot of people in Paula’s movie world who are sorted. These fringe hues meet in a wood-panelled bar with a low ceiling—like “black and white,” “doubles” and “asynchronous,” where the sound no longer fits the picture. There is no longer any use for them in this miserable world. But they are still better off than those who no longer exist. They are not supposed to be in the afterlife or underground, but “between the pieces”.

This can be read as a political commentary on everything, not least on the traditions of Hollywood cinema, which has become so familiar to viewers with its hierarchical narrative style and limited range of emotions that for many other types of films are no longer imaginable. One notices one’s anger when, for example, Linnenbaum’s film makes the cuts really visible.

The police in their movie world don’t shoot bullets, but with cutscenes that briefly interrupt what’s happening. This is very annoying to the viewer, but it has an interesting effect. Because suddenly you pay attention again to what’s really going on when you cut movies. And by the way, the question arises whether films should always be funny, exciting, scary or beautiful. Why don’t you be annoying?

“The Ordinaries” asks questions like that – but then doesn’t chase it down. There is still much to be determined and confirmed. So, as Paula sets out to find her missing father, the film also has faith in the already entrenched patterns it critiques. Certainly, if the concept had been executed more consistently, “The Ordinaries” would have been an experimental film. By its concessions to a wide audience, the film undermines its own premise.

It’s also possible that some things could have been simplified during editing – the movie police seem to have gone too far in some scenes. And Paula, played by Fayne Sendell with the deepest teenage sadness, never believed in her problem. Constantly in the photo, always well lit, lots of close-ups – she should have noticed that something was happening to her that didn’t match up with the status of the supporting character.

OrdinaryGermany 2022 – Directed by: Sophie Lennenbaum. Writers: Lenenbaum, Michael Vetter Nathansky. Camera: Valentin Selmaki. With: Fine Sendell, Jolly Boy, Henning Baker. Port-au-Prince. 120 minutes. Theatrical release: March 30, 2023.