DER FREIE WILLE (THE FREE WILL)

Germany, 2006, 165 minutes, Colour.
Jurgen Vogel, Andre Hennicke.
Directed by Matthias Glasner.

The film opens with a man in his 20s gazing out to a cold sea on a bleak beach, wind blowing. Another of those European tales of existential angst. And this opening is not misleading. This is a 165 minutes close-up of a man who is minimally sympathetic, of his obsessions, his angers, his pathology, his attempts to come to terms with himself and his failure. The large philosophical question is: has this man free will for his actions and his moral decisions or is he programmed or is he continually impeded by his fragile and disturbed mental states. Can he be redeemed?

This being a German film, there are no obvious or, especially, happy answers.

Not everyone will be able to watch this film in all its detail. After a visceral scene of eruptive anger, Theo (Jurgen Vogel) rapes a woman on the beach, more viciously than we really would like to see. He is arrested and serves a gaol sentence. He has taken medication to control his libido and has been allowed to go off it. Is it possible for him to change his basic drives? Is it possible to control them?

Free Will keeps us in Theo’s company for almost three hours. He is certainly not a person we would like to be acquainted with. Yet, the film asks us to be with him, to understand as best we can, to wonder what can be done. As with paedophilia, is rage rape a drive that can be cured? Must we be realistic and pessimistic? And if so, what does society do? What do authorities do?

The other two characters at the centre of the film are a damaged man who serves as a companion/counsellor and Nettie, escaping from a dominating and possibly abusive father, who falls in love with Theo. At first repelled, she finds the good in him and hopes that she can help him.

The end is overwhelmingly downbeat, fatalistic.