Fat World

As said in other reviews the film is watchable without knowing the book behind it also due to the performance of Jürgen Vogel.

However in Helmut Kraussers book "Fette Welt" Hagen is a deeply pessimistic, cynical but yet intelligent and highly sophisticated character. Despite all of his flaws. The film can't really express these complexity not to mention the complicated connection between Judith and the protagonist, his dark childhood or, without spoiling, the revelation of Herodes at the end.

Furthermore it isn't able to transform the sober poetics and slightly philosophical passages of the book into picture or to deliver the special aesthetics towards dirt and decay described sensitively in the text.

The question is, if this is possible at all. During a few scenes the movie at least tried.

I read the book "Fette Welt" by Helmut Krausser before having watched the movie.The book is so detailed and really shows you the way life on the street looks like.

The problem with the movie is that you expect something different when you know the book.The movie is an average love story,which only plays on the street.The director cut out some scenes that made the book for me very amusing,so there is nothing extraordinary about the movie anymore.Maybe he left out some of the disgusting scenes,because he thought that you can't show that in a movie,but some of these scenes make the book so macabre and sometimes funny.

Actually Jürgen Vogel does a good job and proofs once again that he is one of the most talented German actors.He plays the role of Hagen Trinker very convincing,but that alone doesn't make it a good movie in my opinion.Maybe the director hoped too much that Jürgen Vogel alone would make it a good movie,but that idea didn't work.You need more than only an excellent main-actor.Possibly I would have liked the movie better,if I had seen it before having read the book.

If you want to see a real good German movie,than you have to watch "23" , "Good bye Lenin" or "Die Apothekerin".

I give it 4/10,because of Jürgen Vogel and the fact that I could have liked it better without having known the book.