Berlinale 2025: Shut It Off! Tom Tykwer’s ‘The Light’ is Strangely Dim
by Alex Billington
February 13, 2025
Someone needs to check the bulb – this light isn’t working right. The Berlin Film Festival continues its long-running streak of choosing really bad films as the Opening Night selection at the festival. For nearly 10 years running (so far), Berlinale makes a big show of its opening film being an exciting premiere, and yet they continue to be forgettable, excruciating, mediocre films no matter what. It’s a depressing way to start a film festival. Tom Tykwer’s new film Das Licht (aka The Light) maintains this pattern of mediocrity – taking us on a 2 hour, 42 minute journey around Berlin following an annoying German family. I wish it was better. I wish I could be raving about Tykwer’s return to cinema. But this is one giant mess. The classic cliche of “he bit off more than he could chew” works for this film, as it’s trying to address so many different topics about modern day German society and barely any of it works. It’s a story about a family, but no it’s a story about Germany, but no it’s a story about refugees, but no it’s a story about a Syrian woman living in Germany, but no it’s a about selfishness, but no it’s about Berlin. Is it about all of that? Or none of it? Does anyone know?
The Light (the title Das Licht translated from German) is both written and directed by German filmmaker Tom Tykwer, his first feature film since making A Hologram for the King in 2016. He has been directing on the TV series “Sense8” and “Babylon Berlin” for the past decade, but now he’s out trying his hand at cinema again. I’m a fan of Tykwer, at least his early work, though this feels like an outburst rather than a finely tuned film. It’s clear that Tykwer, who also lives in Berlin, is very angry at German society and much of the idiocy and carelessness and disconnect that has started to dominate many German lives. This film is a passionate expression of frustration, telling the story of a very dysfunctional German family living in Berlin. It’s trying to comment on Germany’s dysfunction as a modern society, along with a few other stories – one is about a Syrian refugee who becomes this family’s maid/caretaker. Along with additional commentary about how everyone needs therapy, Germany’s lack of actual compassion + underlying racism, and how alone and depressed everyone is in modern society (for various reasons he doesn’t really get into). It tries to talk about all of this and slap some sense into people, alas this film isn’t going to change anything or wake anyone up.
The German family at the center of The Light is made up of: Lars Eidinger as Tim, their outspoken father who works for a socially conscious ad agency; Nicolette Krebitz as Milena, their overworked mother who is trying to build a community theater in Africa with funds from the impetuous German government; Elke Biesendorfer and Julius Gause as their drifting, absent-minded teenage kids Frieda and Jon; and Elyas Eldridge as Dio, a young boy who Milena had with an African man years before and they watch over some weeks. It’s a very awkward family though that is the point – it’s revealed that Tykwer wants this family to be a metaphor for Deutschland in general, representing how all Germans are part of the “dysfunctional family” of German society. And that they really need to stop pretending they’re doing good for these other people and realize they have their own problems to solve, their own issues to address amongst each other. This is perhaps the only part of the film that does work – he really goes for broke trying to tell Germans they’ve got to look in the mirror and deal with their shit rather than pretend to be so great while getting involved with countries (like Syria or Kenya). Alas the rest of everything going on in this film is muddled and confusing and peculiar, taking away from the potential impact of this core of what he’s trying to say through cinema.
One other aspect of this unnecessarily nearly-3-hours-long film involves a Syrian woman, starring Tala Al-Deen as Farrah, who lives simply as a refugee in Berlin and begins working for the family in their flat. But she’s also some kind of wholesome psychotherapist who is fond of using these special strobe lights as part of hallucinogenic mental health therapy (which is real). She eventually convinces the whole family to try this light therapy, which seems like Tykwer just reiterating the classic cliche of “we all need therapy.” Which is true, we do. But is this helping? Hard to tell. This entire aspect of the film is a bit strange, and feels like a whole other film jammed into this one. Farrah’s storyline is also rather clunky and underdeveloped, leading up to a bombastic finale that makes no sense. So that is how he wants to end this film? Huh? If everyone is coming out of a film muttering “wait, what was with that ending?” that’s not a sign of a good film. I really do appreciate what Tykwer is trying to do, what he’s trying to say, how he’s trying to address modern German society (and make them realize it’s their own problems they need to deal with and not blame foreigners or refugees). Alas the film isn’t coherent enough to fully recommend nor will it actually change anyone’s mind.
Part of the reason it goes on and on for so long is because Tykwer stuffs in a bunch of random sequences and scenes that have no place in this particular film. There’s a couple of song & dance numbers, where groups of people break out into dance scenes on the streets of Berlin. Why? I don’t know. Does anyone know? Can anyone figure this out? Are they fantasy sequences? Examples of self-expression? I guess you could interpret them like that. They’re nicely choreographed and fun to watch (the “Bohemian Rhapsody” dance is the best) but feel so disconnected from the rest of the narrative. The story bouncing back & forth between Farrah and the family and other happenings is also quite jarring. There’s no cohesion, the mixed tones are confusing, the editing is problematic, and the storytelling is ineffective. The more time anyone spends thinking about it, the more they will realize “this doesn’t make sense, that doesn’t make sense” along with a few “what was this character doing anyway?” revelations. Tom Tykwer is a good filmmaker, but this is just not a good film.
Alex’s Berlinale 2024 Rating: 5 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing
 |