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Go For ZuckerWho would think that a film about a man who is up to his ears in debt, cheating on his wife, and deceiving his family about many things would be funny? Add in a brother who he has not spoken to for decades on the occasion of their mother’s funeral and you hardly have the most hilarious situation. Except in this tightly written madcap adventure which makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time.
Dani Levy's controversial and highly entertaining contemporary farce "Go for Zucker!" -is one of the most talked-about films in Europe this year and the winner in July of Germany's top film prize.The cultural phenomenon is said to be the first German-Jewish comedy made in Germany since World War II. "Go for Zucker!" ("Alles auf Zucker!") dominated this year's German Film Prizes, earning best picture, best actor (for Henry Hübchen), best direction and best screenplay honors among its six wins. Zucker! has been released in Germany; Israel; Austria and Switzerland, the film has generated substantial interest not only because of its unique pedigree as a film about a comically dysfunctional Jewish family made by Germans in Germany, but because the film's story about two brother's separated for decades by the Berlin Wall has proved to be a powerful metaphor for the cultural and social estrangement Jews and Germans have been grappling with since the Holocaust.
Written and directed by Dani Levy (a founder of X-Filme), "Go for Zucker!" has already surpassed one million admissions, making it the highest-grossing German-ethnic film to date. Mixing slapstick humor with a jaundiced eye for sharply drawn social satire, not to mention a disarming dose of political incorrectness, the film stars Henry Hübchen and Udo Samel as the two estranged brothers -- one a hard-living former East German celebrity sportscaster (Hübchen) now very much down-on-his luck, and the other (Samel), his quasi-Orthodox brother from the West. The two are awkwardly reunited when they learn that in order to share their mother's inheritance they will need to reconcile before burying her according to Jewish custom in her native East Germany. In a March trend story the New York Times asserted that "Go for Zucker!" in depicting German Jews with take-off-the-gloves candor and a comedy style absent from the culture since the Holocaust, was proving to be "an unconventional form of therapy for the strained relations between Jews and gentiles in Germany." The president of the Central Committee of Jews in Germany, Paul Spiegel, even encouraged all Germans to see the film, saying "it helps bring Jews and non-Jews back on track to normality." Produced by X-Filme, the company responsible for such blockbusters as "Good Bye, Lenin!" and "Run, Lola, Run." Edited by Madelyn Miller |
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TM
And you don’t have to be Jewish to love the film. (although
Jaeckie Zucker is Jewish, he happily left everything Jewish behind him decades
ago, when his mother and brother fled to the West just before the Berlin Wall
was built.)
I was in Berlin for the first time since the wall came down
just a few weeks before I saw this film. I could still feel the separate sides
of the city that now claims to be one. The difficult truce between the two
brothers in this film is similar to the situation in Germany. The two have grown
apart, even though they have some basic ties that will always bind.