German cinema has recently made an impactful return to the international circuit; but despite the success of films such as Head-On, Downfall, and The Edukators, Tony McKibbin detects a certain intellectual interness at work.

Two recent German films would seem to have little in common. One is an almost classically told tale of Hitler's downfall; the other a punkish look at three kids taking on the establishment through re-arranging the plush furniture in posh people's homes. The former, Downfall (Der Untergang, 2004), is the sort of film, for all its presentation of graphic horror, you would take your grandparents to see. The latter, The Edukators (Die Fetten Jahre sind vorbei, 2004), might be a film you wouldn't want your kids to watch – it might just give them a few too many ideas.

But let us suggest that, ultimately, these two films have more in common with each other than with the films that preceded them a generation earlier: the films of Fassbinder, Wenders, Herzog, the Straubs – even Schlöndorff and von Trotta. There is little sense that the new films are working with an anti-aesthetic, that they're working against an established notion of film form. Even if we accept that Downfall presents its material more classically than The Edukators, both films are interested in conforming to notions of audience friendliness rather than rejecting them. We don't feel the directors in each instance believe in Fassbinder's idea that 'in my films there shouldn't be feelings that people have already digested or absorbed: the films should create new ones instead'. Nor for that matter would we expect the filmmakers to offer the Straubs' belief that 'we should also make films for minorities, because one can hope that they will be, as Lenin said, the majorities of the future'.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 107.