The Edukators

Earnestness may often represent stupidity gone to college, but heaven knows, it’s hard to be anything other than stern and rather dull when valiantly struggling against the monolithic might of the bourgeoisie. Situationists, however, are the pie-throwing loveable clowns of Revolutionary Marxism and in Hans Weingartner’s oddly enthralling entertainment, they make for endearingly passionate protagonists despite the dogma. Of course it helps that there’s mounting sexual tensions and a suspenseful kidnap drama in between the rants about sweat-shop labour and the blood of the proletariat.
Flatmates Jan (Daniel Bruhl) and Peter (Stipe Erceg) are placard-wielding street-corner socialists by day and merry prankster anarchists at night. Operating under cover of darkness, they break into the salubrious dwellings of local yacht club members, creatively rearrange the bourgeois extravagances (stereo in the refrigerator, porcelain down the toilet), and leave appropriately chastening slogans – “Your days of plenty are numbered” – inscribed with the legend, ‘The Edukators’.
Jan’s girlfriend Jules (Julia Jentsch – a teutonic Chloe Sevigny, with an even more prepossessing nose) remains unaware of the boys’ nocturnal activities, until she gets romantically entangled with Peter, who confides all in a weakened moment. This is merely the first of a series of rash actions that result in the trio taking ingratiating, though not unpleasant, businessman Herr Hardenberg (Klaussner) hostage in a mountain cabin. He, it transpires, is a former fellow traveller and “veteran of '68”, a perfect spanner to throw into their political machine. Suffice it to say, the ensuing commotion is rife with sexual complications, Stockholm Syndrome, crises of conscience, cunning mind games, compelling twists and dialectics.
The casting of the elfin Bruhl and Klaussner and the political subtexts immediately recall the sublime Good Bye Lenin, and Herr Weingrater’s work is warm and witty and arch enough to weather the comparison. Like Wolfgang Becker’s film, The Edukators harbours romantic notions that somewhere out there, canny leftist types are holding the dream and keeping the revolution alive. It’s only a teenage fantasy, but I’ll take it.

Running Time 126mins. Cert IFI members. Opens April 15th.