REVIEW:

Mux ­ alias Jan Henrik Stahlberg, screenwriter and actor ­ was the season&squo;s discovery. He’s the go-getter in Marcus Mittermeier’s Muxmäuschenstill, awarded the Max Ophüls Prize at Saarbrücken and the hit of the Perspektive Deutsches Kino under the aegis of Alfred Holighaus at the Berlinale. At first glance Mux appears to the »nice boy next door,« that well-behaved young man every mother would like to have as a son-in-law. But Mux can get terribly angry whenever he encounters a reckless and irresponsible Fritz Jedermann (the typical German) in blunt violation of the common code. For haven't we always been told that we should take a stand, and not just gape and gawk, when we see that an injustice has been done. Does Mux ever take a stand! He stops racers on the highway. He catches free-riders on the city trains. He is a sworn enemy of graffiti-sprayers. Each time he nabs an offender, he lectures and scolds and punishes. All this, before a running camera!

For Mux has hired an assistant, Gerd (Fritz Roth, splendid as his dense sidekick), who shoots everything with a handy camrecorder à la dogme. Gerd, a novice at the trade with a reassuring sandwich always stuffed in his mouth, »learns by doing.« His camera wiggles like a yoyo, and often he manages to get only a slice of the action in the cassette. But it’s more than enough. He’s even recorded on tape swimming-pool-pinklers and exhibitionists, as Mux digs deeper into the moral quagmire of social turpitude. What’s more, the offenders pay a willing recompense for their exposed vices and promise to walk the straight and narrow. A lady even has to clean up after her dog had done its duty in public! But then the laughter in the audience begins to fade. It’s no longer funny when the righteous do-gooder Mux resorts to his fist to even the score with a rapist or a child-molester, when the lone vigilante sprays paint in the eyes of a graffiti-goofy and leaves him to walk blindly into an oncoming train. This fascinating, irritating spoof on self-justice leans on the Tucholsky dictum, »everything’s allowed in satire.« And what the obedient, dull headed Gerd has shot almost makes up for his wiggling camera.

Marcus Mittermeier’s Muxmäuschenstill bears a thematic resemblance to Hans Weingartner’s Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei (The Edukators). In both films the young revolutionaries are naive and sympathetic ­ they don’t intentionally endanger the lives of others, they only want to vex the rich and pique the establishment. In the case of Mux, he also terrorizes the little guy, people like you and me. Great ­ for who isn’t against dog poop! On the other hand, Mux evolves into a murderer! And when all is said and done, he, too, is »still as a mouse,« to quote the title. Shot in 25 days for a minuscule Euro 40,000, without a subsidy cent, Muxmäuschenstill is, indeed, a sensation. At the Lola Awards Sarah Clara Weber was honored as Best Film Editor. But there’s more to the story than just that. As critic Al Milgrom stated in KINO 81, Muxmäuschenstill is a guaranteed festival hit. Surely we will be hearing more of Marcus Mittermeier and Jan Henrik Stahlberg in the future.

Dorothea Moritz