The Edukators (Hans Weingartner, 2005) B-

My first semester of college, I had to read this book called Looking Backwards for my Literature class and it primarily consisted of characters sitting around discussing politics, social justice and all that jazz for nearly 200 pages. There was very little attempt at story, just philosophical mumbo jumbo. Why do I mention this? At certain points during The Edukators, it felt like everything in the film just stopped for five minutes while Jan (Daniel Bruhl) could rant and rave about how capitalism is the downfall of Germany, that capitalists are pigs and that young people are lazy and should unite and fight for something. Thankfully, these preachings come and go rather quickly and the rest of the film is pretty good. After breaking in to the house of one of the "irresponsible" rich they hate, the owner comes home and Jan, Jule (Julia Jentsch) and Peter (Stripe Ecreg) are forced to kidnap him and go into hiding. While locked away from the world the rich man and the youth come to sort of an understanding after the rich man tells them he used to be like them when he was young. It's very interesting to see this rich man (played by Burghart Klaubner) sort of relive his lost youth through these three revolutionaries. What I loved most about The Edukators is the fact that even though Jan, Jule and Peter think they are right about everything, Weingartner is smart enough to show that they're still fucking morons about the real world. They don't think their breaking into houses will have consequences and they don't really believe that the rich man has any justification to not spreading his wealth around.