Undescribable Perfection

That was an excellent one.

Did you people see the same film I saw?

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Spielzeugland4 And A Half Out Of 5Spielzeugland is a plot driven short feature about a kid whose dream to visit an imaginative land and the catastrophe it breeds for the mother. The combination of fragile and destructive energy had never blended or compared to this extent, especially when it is fueled by the unseen force which is depicted metaphorically in multiple ways. It is rich on technical aspects like production design, editing and background score although the cinematography could have been a lot better, but it's a minor and a feasible flaw in this stunning masterpiece. The writing is smart, layered and adaptive that grows as it starts aging on screen and something that won't leave the audience even after the curtain drops; a though-provoking concept.The stunning camera work, morale conflicts, unfathomable intense drama and its eerie perspective are the high points of the features the helps elevate the momentum of the sequence. The screenplay by Bunners and Freydank is poetic with just the right amount of emotional touch that never overpowers the essential plot on screen and still manages to drive the whole feature with it. Jochen Alexander Freydank; the co-writer and director, has done an amazing work on executing the anticipated vision on screen whose impact leaves an endearing scar among the audience. It is scored majestically on the performance objective by Julia Jager whose portrayal helps convey the emotions out fluently. Spielzeugland is a maternal instinct gone wrong, projected at such a critical point, that no one possesses the potential to question it.

Usually, I don't watch short films but after seeing and reviewing about five feature films in three days, I needed to see a movie that could capture a gamut of emotions in few minutes and that is precisely what 'Toyland' does. It takes one of the most crucial periods in history - the holocaust and brings it down to the lives of two families and an incident that changes the course of their lives in the dark period.A mother finds her son Heinrich missing one day, after she tells him the previous day that their neighbors are moving to Toyland. The prospect of going to a place filled with toys titillates Heinrich and he gets too eager to go with the neighbors, which includes his best friend Paul. The first seven minutes oscillate between flashbacks of Heinrich's excitement and the mother's frantic search. This leads to an end that is so poignant, gripping, chilling and fascinating that it brought tears to my eyes. The fourteen minute film so effortlessly manages to touch the audiences that it truly deserves all the accolades that it has got. 8 out of 10.

I just saw Spielzeugland and recognized the whole plot almost from the beginning. I am positive I've seen it before, or read it. Does anyone else remember it? There was a Q&A with the writer and he didn't mention getting the plot from somewhere else. Anyone out there know this story from a maybe book or a t.v. show? That said, I did find it very moving and upsetting. The actress who played the mother did a fine job, as did the piano teacher. People may say holocaust-themed movies are overdone, but I don't think so; that era needs to be kept alive in peoples' minds so that it doesn't fade into oblivion as the final survivors die out. It's hard to believe the entire film is only l4 minutes long.

Today I went with three friends to a special showing of all the films nominated for the 2009 Oscar for Best Live Action Short. Oddly, the four of us were in pretty much agreement about the films. Our pick for best of the nominees was PIG ("Grisen"), though ON THE LINE ("Auf der Strecke") was a very good film and is nearly as deserving of the award. We predicted that TOYLAND ("Spielzeugland"), however, will win the award because it's the sort of the film the Academy tends to like AND because PIG might ruffle some feathers because it is not "politically correct". I'll update this review after the awards are given.TOYLAND is a film set during the Nazi era. A boy asks his mother about why all his neighbors (all Jews) are disappearing. She explains that everything is okay and that they have gone to "Toyland". Unfortunately, it sounds like such a nice place that the kid hopes to go there, too, and the film begins with him sneaking off with a shipment of Jews to the concentration camps because he wants to visit this magical place.Much of the film consists of the mother trying to find the boy and eventually the SS officers help her to try to locate the boy. This all ends in a marvelous twist that I won't reveal here, but this twist takes the film from the ordinary to the extraordinary.A lovely film that will probably win--in part, because the film is about an important subject that the Academy seems to like, the Holocaust (and highly reminiscent of LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL), and in part because it is so exceptionally well-crafted from start to finish. My only reservation is that the print was awfully dark--practically everything looked black at times. Perhaps it was just a bad print.UPDATE: It's official, TOYLAND is the winner. This didn't surprise me at all and it was well deserving of the award, though I was still pulling for PIG to take the honors.