Playoff (2011) User Reviews

Not bad, but not what we were led to expect

[Nozz · 6/10 · 7 December 2011]

Billed as a thinly fictionalized biography of Ralph Klein the basketball coach, this is a pretty different story that spends most of its time on fictional incidents that are evidently meant to externalize, and lend counterpoint to, the mixed emotions Klein must have felt as his career brought him back to the country the Nazis had driven him out of. You come out of the movie with an appreciation of how sorrow, guilt, and vindictiveness can spur a person on, or hold him back, while refusing to be easily distinguished from one another; but you don't learn a lot about basketball. Like the hero of Riklis' previous movie THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER, the Klein character, also estranged from his wife, goes on a journey through the European countryside-- also accompanied by fine music from Cyril Morin-- and finds that the end of the journey holds bigger answers than he or the audience expected.

Less about basketball than you expect, still good

[OJT · 7/10 · 7 June 2014]

A good film, but marketed as a sports movie, this is doomed to be getting worse grades than it deserves. I was also expecting a great sports movie, but don't mind seeing something unexpected. This is a German/French/Isreali-production where the theme is ghosts or demons of the war.

It's a true story about the German Jew and Israeli national hero Max Stoller after coaching Israelians to become European champions. Taking on a trainer job in Germany 39 years after fleeing the country as a Jew during the 2nd world war changes the story, but he's just as much there hunting old ghosts.

This is a human drama, and not so much a sports movie, though the sport is in the basics as well. Well played by Danny Huston and Max Riemelt, I found the film interesting, but quite slow.

Great photography, nice storytelling. Well worth a watch.

Pent up emotions in a suffocating German setting

[alexdeleonfilm · 7/10 · 13 December 2016]

image1.jpeg PLAYOFF, 2011, directed by Eran Riklis, also director of 'The Syrian Bride' and 'Lemon Tree' ,two of the highest profile Israeli festival films of the past dozen years. This latest Riklis effort, filmed entirely in Germany with non-Israeli actors, featured American actor Danny Huston as "Max Soller" a legendary Israeli basketball coach of German origin, who returns to the country he fled 39 years before, to coach a stumbling German basketball team. This is basically a pretext to look into the painfully unclear history of his Jewish family under Naziism and leads to unpleasant discoveries and a confrontation with an unreformed ex-Nazi colleague. He coaches this second rate team with something like a feeling of vengeance often referring to a book the cover of which we see several times -- significantly, the autobiography of legendary NBA Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach who was very definitely Jewish and made no bones about it. An important subplot is his antagonistic relationship with a young German player who rebels against Soller's stern coaching style. We see a few hardwood clips but not very much as the Playoff in this picture is more about his confrontation with his past than with the other teams. At the end we are informed that the team he was coaching came in at a not very rousing eighth place in the 1984 German basketball league playoffs. The film is beautifully lensed, especially in the countryside scenes but is not terribly gripping like Mr. Riklis' previous successes. A thread of romantic tension is supplied by a very attractive Turkish woman who is befriended by Soller and is having problems with her residence status. This turns into a real teaser when she strips and offers herself to him, but he has too much on his mind do accept her nearly unrefusable offer. The suffocation of pent up emotions or something like that. The woman incidentally is played my mixed Kurdish English ancestry actress Amira Casar, best known for her ravishing central role in Catherine Breillat's hardcore sex opus "The Anatomy of Hell", 2004. Mr. Huston, son of legendary Hollywood director John Huston and half-brother of Angelica Huston, is on screen most of the time and is given innumerable facial closeups to reveal his sensitivity and inner conflicts. Problem is that Huston, while he does turn in a reasonably sensitive performance, does not exactly have the kind of A-level actor face we want to spend that much time examining in intimate microscopic detail. Huston does seem to have a certain appeal to Israeli directors as he also had a fairly large part in Ari Folman's astounding sci-fi mystifier. "The Congress".

The only thing about this picture that was Israeli was the director, and the background fact that the central protagonist is based on a real life Israeli Sports celebrity, although portrayed by a non-Jewish actor in English. Overall, interesting to watch but nothing to write home about. Amira Casar with her exotic beauty, however, is worth writing home about. image2.jpeg

A guide through international relations during the postwar era

[alex_jalil · 9/10 · 11 March 2012]

Playoff is not a movie about basketball; it's a movie about Israeli politics. The whole movie is an allegory, using basketball to deliver a political pro-Israel message. When watching the movie you shouldn't regard the characters as being different personalities instead you should see them as different nationalities and non-state actors. Max Stoller for an example is Israel. In -84 Israel needed support from West Germany in the cold war, that's why Stoller is back in Germany trying to convince them to cooperate. This is a touchy subject for Germans who fought for the Nazis or had relations with them. This role is played by Thomas whose father fought on the eastern front. Thomas still carries the beliefs of Nazi Germany and is therefore reluctant to collaborate with Israel (Max Stoller, the coach). In a game Thomas deliberately misses his chances to score, only to demonstrate his power over the Israel-West Germany cooperation. Later in the game he makes a turnabout and shows his agreeability. Deniz, the Turkish immigrant, plays the role of the new secular Turkey. In the beginning she is not sure if she can split up with the conservative Muslim Turkey and the Arabic nations who supports Palestine, this role is played by her neighbors (metaphoric first class). Max Stoller persuades her to break up with the conservatives and the Islamic countries which is symbolized in the car scene where she throws away her vile (islamic symbol) and join the western alliance. In the same scene, her rebellious daughter Sema(portrays the Turkish anti-Israel and secular youth) wakes up to a collaboration between Israel and Turkey. She now understands that an Israel-Turkey collaboration is okay and it is much better now, this is shown in happy daughter-mother scenes like the one when the play in the ocean. In the scene when Deniz(Turkey) offers him an intimate relationship, Max(Israel) declines and now Deniz understands that he(Israel) just use her to gain more allies in the neighborhood. Playoff deals with the conspiracy theory that Jews cooperated with Germans to acquire the land of Israel. This is shown when Thomas tells Stoller that "he's just another excuse" and that holocaust survivors exist so the world wouldn't forget. And Stoller denies it and responds that criminals like Thomas father must get punished. When West Germany (Thomas) and Israel (Stoller) at the end cooperate they defeat Italy (basketball team from Italy) and this shows how West Germany changes from being Nazis to Israel friendly and therefore they breaks up with their history and Italy. Italy is known for their fascism but in -84 they are ruled by a communist party and the movies message is that when Israel and West Germany collaborate they will fight and win against communism. Even though I don't agree with Eran Riklis(director)and despise how he portrays all Muslims as radicals, which is by the way understandable regarding his Israeli background, I enjoyed the movie because it made me reflect and analyze international relationships during the postwar era. It is in fact a very slanted movie but a movie that brings up political and historical issues to the table is mostly very good films.