Germany: A Summer's Fairytale (2006)

Wow! Such a good movie.

ridiculous rating

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

In the course of four weeks (June 9 until July 9, 2006) Germany was nothing but a huge party. Celebrating the fantastic achievements of our national soccer team.Sönke Wortmann, the director of this documentation, accompanied the team during this time. "Deutschland - Ein Sommermärchen" gives us a glance behind the curtain.The beginning is at the same time the most tragical moment. The defeat against Italy along with the grieving players and coaches.Afterwards the movie chronologically goes the way from the training camp until the semi - final. We are able to see the players in their training sessions, tactical discussions among the coaching staff, and lots of fooling around from the young players like Bastian Schweinsteiger and Lukas Podolski. We can see that a team was growing. We can see the intense sense of community and solidarity among them.The documentation doesn't focus on the soccer scenes alone. However, it doesn't neglect them. We see the goals again, the enthusiastic fans, the hilarious atmosphere which infected the whole country.I'm glad we also see a lot of what happened apart from the football ground. It's interesting to see what happened in the dressing room while we (the fans watching on TV) were fetching another drink or going to the toilet or whatever we did during the breaks.Altogether I can recommend this documentation to everyone who had fun in the great summer 2006. And I recommend it to everyone who considers the Germans to be some non-smiling accurate work-robots.It was a unique experience. A whole nation was backing up its soccer team. National flags were waving from every car, every house. It was, as if Germany had completely changed over night. That's why we call it a summer fairy-tale - "Ein Sommermärchen".

I saw this movie on Friday and I found it to be very amusing and interesting. I consider myself as a huge fan so I was thrilled to see a halftime speak of the coach during a game or how the team management successfully created a brilliant team spirit. Meanwhile people in the cinema cheered when Germany scored or Lehmann saved a penalty, it was a little bit like during the world cup. Wortmann did a great job in silently observing the German team, so you really felt as you were a part of this whole great event. Finally I'd like to say that everybody that enjoy the world cup as much as I did and who took part in the whole public viewing thing should go and watch this movie. It brings back the feelings and memories of the wonderful (soccer) summer. It was really a summer-fairy tail.

I think this documentary is very typical of Germans in particular and of people in general. Now, we have all seen the national team play the World Cup and we were very satisfied with the outcome of the tournament (funnily enough, when Germany made runner's up in 2002, people weren't as frantic about Germany and the German team as they are now, after the World Cup 2006 IN Germany). And when I watched the matches, I observed the unaggressive and unobtrusive birth of what news magazines called the NEW NATIONALISM. I didn't really take part in this, but I didn't mind it either (I just thought: Oh, O.K. why not, after fifty years of forbidden patriotism, let the baby have his bottle).But this documentary is overdoing it a bit. First of all, I didn't like Sönke Wortmanns DAS WUNDER VON BERN, because it was way too corny as a movie and it didn't discuss the controversial link between German soccer and German nationalism shortly after WWII at all (For example, it didn't mention how Peco Bauwens, the head of the German soccer association, held a speech just after Germany won the World Cup in 1954, talking about the connection between physical education and nationalism in a way you'd probably only expect it from someone like Hitler).And now this: A film that takes us on a trip into the locker room for the one and only reason to satisfy our curiosity. We don't really learn anything new about the strategy of coach Jürgen Klinsmann or about the physical part of soccer. This documentary quenches nothing but our thirst for the invasion of privacy. In a way, it is not very different from Big Brother: We do not satisfy ourselves any longer with seeing our soccer players on the field, no, we have to follow them everywhere: into the locker rooms, into the hallways of the stadiums' catacombs, everywhere! I still don't understand why the soccer players let Wortmann invade their privacy to such an extent. I can only think of two reasons: money and vanity! And Wortmann is a copycat, too. He knew that a French director had had an incredible success doing a documentary on the French team in 1998, when the French won the World Cup. He knew that a lot of money was to be made on such a documentary, and that this was an opportunity he couldn't miss.Now, I know that people are going to say: If you are so against it, why did you go and see it. The reason is: I am like everyone else. Sometimes when I go shopping I look at all these magazines such as GALA, BUNTE and so on (For the non-German readers: these are magazines that solely discuss the private life of celebrities or wannabe celebrities), and I catch myself reading or leafing through one or two of them. It's the same mechanism that comes into play when you witness a car accident: You look! You watch the ambulance, the casualties, the police, because you are so unbelievably curious. And this very same mechanism made me watch this documentary. I watched it out of pure curiosity, but I didn't really learn anything watching it. And, on me,it had the same effect as a car accident: I felt ashamed of my curiosity!

Wortmann's "Deutschland. Ein Sommermärchen" does not really contain anything you would've missed watching the World Cup on TV (in Germany), it does not contribute additional in-depth information about tactics or any other part of the German team's methods - yet it does a good job at summing up an event millions won't forget. Its arguably strongest scene is right at the beginning, showing the team crushed in the dressing room right after losing the semi-finals to Italy. Other than that it follows the German team throughout the 2006 World Cup, showing many nice anecdotes and avoiding any criticism of the team itself, true to Klinsmann's spirit.