The Edukators

Having made a splash at the box office in its native Germany, The Edukators hit American shores last weekend with surprisingly little buzz. However, in a summer packed with box office duds, there remains hope this unusual gem of a film will find an audience with the MTV crowd.

Although the film has been criticized in some quarters for lacking profundity in its political debates, it seems to me that writer-director Hans Weingartner has something else in mind. While it's ultimately apparent that his heart lies with the revolutionaries, The Edukators is less a political film than a film about political activism, content to observe the views of the protagonists and antagonist without commenting on them. By this measure, it fully succeeds.

The movie's main characters are three twenty-somethings: Jan (Daniel Brühl), Jule (Julia Jentsch), and Jule's boyfriend Peter (Stipe Erceg). Although they live in a city where the trappings of wealth are impossible to avoid, they've landed on the opposite side of the financial spectrum, saddled with debt and a strong impulse to right the wrongs they see before them. Although Jan and Peter are the true activists (to unsettle the rich, they break into their homes, rearrange their furniture, and leave menacing notes which read: "your days of plenty are numbered"), it is Jule who bears the heaviest burden. Having been involved in a car accident a few months prior, she owes 94,600 Euros to the owner of the Mercedes she wrecked. To pay off this exorbitant amount, she is forced to work a crummy waitressing job at an upscale restaurant, but even this can't prevent her from being evicted from her flat.

Shortly after moving into Jan and Peter's squalid apartment, Peter takes off for a trip to Barcelona, and she and Jan find themselves drawing closer. After being abruptly fired from her job, Jule channels her despair into mischief, convincing Jan to assist her in breaking into the home of the Mercedes owner. Although their visit initially goes smoothly, when they are forced to return a few days later to retrieve a missing mobile, the man of the house, a business executive named Hardenberg (Burghart Klaußner), returns unexpectedly, and things begin to spiral out of control.

From that point onwards, the movie fluctuates between romance, suspense, comedy, and political debate – a heady combo, but to his credit, Weingartner mostly pulls it off. He shows the consequences of the groups' actions but does not moralize, and allows an obstensibly predictable character like Hardenburg surprising dimension. Aside from the ill-advised use of Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" at the end (one presumes the director was unaware that song was also prominently – and, one might argue, more effectively – featured in Season One of The O.C. and a recent episode of The West Wing), the movie seems to have an uncanny handle on the lifestyle, politics, and mores of today's young activists, and the film crackles with an energy befitting this group of people.