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Dystopia made in Germany - damn yeah!

Finally came around to watch «Paradise» on Netflix, a dystopia with a somewhat similar concept as Time’s Out, in that poor people can spend years of their life time in exchange for money, and rich people gain life time in exchange for money.

German actor Kostja Ullmann plays the main character, who works as a salesman for the time exchange company Aeon, but finds himself on the other side as his wife is forced to "donate" fourty years of her life.

First of all: Americans will never understand just how exciting and in a sense freeing it is to see their country represented in genre media. This is, without joking, the first dystopian movie I ever saw that took place in Germany. It is such a cool feeling to see this futuristic city, but the signs are in German, not English. It is somehow a completely different kind of immersion.

(And remember, Germany is still part of the global west and an industrial nation, for people from the global south this must be even much much worse)

Also, I was somewhat worried for the upcoming Uglies movie (=relatively old Young Adult Dystopia about a seemingly Utopian world in which differences between all humans are obliterated by a mandatory beauty surgery) if Netflix could pull off the CGI and practical effects for this utterly futuristic world, and judging by this movie, they luckily could. The buildings look real, the interior design looks real. It is, to be honest, not quite as far as it would need to be for Uglies, but it works.

IMO it takes the allegory of how capitalism quite literally steals lifetime from the poor a bit further than Time’s Out, as here this procedure isn’t mandatory in most cases, but poor people still do it, because that just is how the fucked up capitalist system forces them to do.

Some of the names are a bit corny, like “Adam” for the resistance group, or “Lazarus” for the secret cemetery, but damn, I absolutely love the leader of the resistance movement being called Lillith.

It is only relatively understated, but I do like that this movie dares to go into criticizing how Europe, especially Europes borders, treat refugees. Europeans always have this air of being the most moral and just, and I consider myself guilty of that too, sometimes – but we’re not. Absolutely not.

I like the music though. Dark electronic tunes, mixed with more contemporary pop or rock occasionally. It is not outstanding, but it is good and it underlines the emotions and themes.

Spoilers under the cut:

I really love that the main characters wife, upon feeling on her own body just how draconic this “donation” process is, refuses to force someone else to experience this, even if it’s a rich person who took the donations dozenths of time already, and only complies because there are no other possibilities.

The boss henchwoman of Aeon (haven’t caught her name) has such an amazing charisma and totally commands every scene she is in. Doesn’t help that she also has a fairly unique face. I really hope for her that she gets big; that she becomes Germanys next big action heroine or something.

The short scenery with the wind turbines and the sea and the ship, wow. That looked so futuristic and alien totally set the scenes. The atmosphere of that!

The conflict with the young women they captured possibly being the CEOs daughter instead of the CEO herself is quite the interesting idea. No matter how it will end up, what will be true, it definitely is an good story choice.

Ooh, and now the dystopian resistance movement enters the scene. I love how the no nonsense scarred resistance leader is a woman here. A white woman, and its pretty, thin line scars, but still.

I love how claustrophobic and chaotic the scene with the main character trying to navigate through the battle Aeon vs rebels is. Other than him not getting seriously injured it feels very realistic and raw.

The music of the escape scene gave me goosebumps. There is just something so raw and eerie and sad and loss of innocence about it.

The moment of violence between the CEOs daughter after she tries to blackmail the main character and Helena, and Helena was refreshing in a way. Can’t even fully say why, but I guess its because in most movies, eruptions of brutality between previously peaceful characters only happen between two men.

Didn’t expect that Helena would loose her morality and panic in the end. Not quite sure if I believe it yet.

Damn yeah the moment where the cool henchwoman (Kaya) finally grows some morals and leaves!

At the end, and now I can definitely say that I don’t like the twist with Helena. Especially for the sake of a pregnancy of all things. Might just be happily childfree queer me, but I think I will never understand how people are willing to risk absolutely everything for that. It is also pretty gross to say a woman wishes that so much that she looses her morality.

But I do like that this has an unhappy end, like Fahrenheit 451 or Brave New World, and the fight of the normal people against cooperations seems almost impossible, but yet they still have to try, because it’s the moral thing to do

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