Amnesia

2015

1h 36m

Drama

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for Amnesia: Trailer 1

List

77%

22 Reviews

Tomatometer

40%

50+ Ratings

Audience Score

A young composer moves from Berlin to the island of Ibiza and begins a friendship with an elderly woman whose painful past has caused her to reject everything to do with Germany, including her native language.

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In 1990, shortly after the reunification of East and West Germany, a young German deejay named Jo moves to live in Ibiza, hoping to find employment in the title nightclub there, along with his friends in the same business. He meets Martha, a mysterious elderly woman living alone in a house there, who turns out to have also be German, yet not willing to speak her native language or have any association with her native country. As a friendship between them develops, Martha finally admits her disdain for her former homeland came from seeing ugly secrets at the end of World War Two. Jo knows about them, but only through history classes and from recollections from his mother and grandfather. His career goals becoming achieved, his grandfather and mother come to visit for a dinner...but unsurprisingly conflict develops between them and Martha, and between Jo and his grandfather as he finally reveals his past. What will come of all this? Unfortunately the character development of the first part of the movie feels wasted. Martha and Joe and his relatives come across not as people, but different sides of "how should Germans react to their Nazi past" question. Everything else is anticlimactic after that scene, and the final scene of the movie only feels tacked-on rather than a resolution. The scenery is beautiful and the performances work, but the movie is still an overall letdown.

Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars

02/22/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Loved everything about this beautiful film.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

01/20/23

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Audience Member

On Netflix, love Keller. Sorry Bruno Ganz just died.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

01/21/23

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Audience Member

Huge themes, twists and ideas, BUT only adequately acted, unimaginatively written and filmed. Got lost in in itself.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

02/14/23

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Audience Member

whilst the topic concerning the conduct of a post-war germanic population, those who remained and those who fled, is an interesting subject, obviously it would be absurd to have it re-enacted in one episode of "the muppet show" yet what has been done here with "amnesia" feels not too far from that. a shallow skim across profound subject matter- poorly executed all round: a heavily german accented woman who shocks her fellow countrymen when they discover that she too is in-fact german (!?); a power-point presentation styled one-week love saga between young and old that confronts the problems of both themselves and the world in general in record time; a family visit and luncheon to force feed the viewers more ill-tasting plot; and a discotech success story that had me in uncomfortable squirms on the couch. the "amnesia" disco crowd summed up this movie perfectly for me: dressed in bad taste, terrible acting, many people packed into a small space of a large room to give the [failed] sense of popular success and the coming together of insubstantial elements to try and create an amazing [failed] song and conclude in happiness and resolve [also failed]. such subject matter should be thought out with a bit more sensitivity and nous before being excreted in front of a camera.

Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars

01/15/23

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Barbet Schroeder

Director

Marthe Keller

Martha Sagell

Max Riemelt

Jo Gellert

Bruno Ganz

Bruno

Corinna Kirchhoff

Elfriede

Fermi Reixach

Sabater

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Amnesia: Trailer 1

1:59

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Glenn Kenny

RogerEbert.com

The film has a personal tone that is not always detectable in his other movies. It enhances a film that's one of the most thoughtful in Schroeder's body of work.

Rated: 3.5/4

Jul 21, 2017

Full Review

Michael Rechtshaffen

Los Angeles Times

An affecting rumination on the moral weight of personal choices.

Jul 20, 2017

Full Review

Manohla Dargis

New York Times

Alas, Mr. Schroeder ... has tethered both his actress and this natural glory to an awkward, unpersuasive story, largely set in the early 1990s, that coalesces around the lingering effects of World War II on the German soul.

Jul 20, 2017

Full Review

Joanne Laurier

World Socialist Web Site

Amnesia is a very passive piece. The film legitimately expresses deep revulsion for fascism.

Aug 27, 2020

Full Review

Nicholas Bell

IONCINEMA.com

Through the use of music, mainly blending Jo's techno beat with Martha's classical influences, the underlying message seems to suggest it takes a blending of the past and present to move forward.

Rated: 3/5

Oct 10, 2019

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Brigid Presecky

FF2 Media

Despite any lulls, it will make viewers want to visit the world captured.

Rated: 3/5

Aug 16, 2019

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Synopsis

A young composer moves from Berlin to the island of Ibiza and begins a friendship with an elderly woman whose painful past has caused her to reject everything to do with Germany, including her native language.

Director: Barbet Schroeder
Producer: Jean-Marie Gindraux
Screenwriter: Emilie Bickerton, Barbet Schroeder, Peter F. Steinbach, Susan Hoffman
Production Co: Vega Films, arte France Cinéma, Les Films du Losange
Genre: Drama
Original Language: French (France)
Release Date (Streaming): Jul 27, 2017
Box Office (Gross USA): $8.0K
Runtime: 1h 36m

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