Marathon champion can’t stop his thieving ways in THE ROBBER
DER RAÜBER (THE ROBBER) (Benjamin Heisenberg, 2010)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, November 24, 2:00, and Friday, November 29, 7:00
Series runs November 20 – December 6
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.kinolorber.com
Director Benjamin Heisenberg and star Andreas Lust take viewers on a breathless thrill ride in The Robber. Adapted from Martin Prinz’s novel about real-life 1980s Austrian marathon champion and bank robber Johann Kastenberger, The Robber focuses on Johann Rettenberger (Lust), a grim, ultra-serious man who has just been released from prison after serving six years for armed robbery. Although he tells his parole officer (Markus Schleinzer) that his thieving days are over, Rettenberger seems unable to stop grabbing his shotgun, donning his trademark facemask, and stealing cars and robbing banks. But his motives remain unclear, as he merely stashes the cash under his bed, not using it for himself or giving it away. He initially does not appear prone to violence either, but his cold-blooded stares and inability to really connect with others signal a man threatening to explode at any moment. When not robbing banks, Rettenberger is either training for or running in marathons, a skill that also helps him avoid the police. Despite Rettenberger’s intensely secretive personality, a social worker named Erika (Franziska Weisz) falls for him, putting him up in her house while she imagines he is looking for work and trying to get his life back together. But not even love can warm the frigid heart of this stone-cold thief.
German drama is part of “Berlin School” series at MoMA
The Robber features several exciting, stunningly shot and edited chase scenes (courtesy of cinematographer Reinhold Vorschneider and Heisenberg, who also served as editor and cowrote the screenplay with Prinz) with Rettenberger on foot, especially the long finale, evoking such films as Marathon Man and The Bourne Ultimatum. (Bonus fact: Kastenberger’s story also inspired Kathleen Bigelow’s Point Break.) Lust turns Rettenberger into a complex antihero; even though there is nothing likable about the character, audiences will not be able to stop rooting for him to get away with it all. The Robber is screening on November 24 at 2:00 and November 29 at 7:00 as part of the MoMA series “The Berlin School: Films from the Berliner Schule,” with Heisenberg and Vorschneider on hand for a discussion following the November 24 show. The series continues through December 6 with such other works by directors associated with the Berlin School as Valeska Grisebach’s Longing, Maria Speth’s Madonnen, and Angela Schanelec’s Orly.
Stanley Kubrick’s harrowing Paths of Glory, based on the novel by Humphrey Cobb, is quite simply the best English-language antiwar film ever made. Kirk Douglas stars as Colonel Dax, a French military man who disagrees with his superiors’ insistence on sending his men into certain annihilation in order to take a worthless hill during World War I. Dax’s verbal battles with Generals Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) and Mireau (George Macready) are unforgettable, as are the final scenes, in which three random men are chosen to pay the price for what the generals call cowardice. Filmed in stunning black and white, Paths of Glory puts you right on the front lines of the folly of war. Kubrick, who wrote the unrelenting script with Calder Willingham and Jim Thompson, also made the best film about the cold war (Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb), the Roman slave revolt (Spartacus), and, arguably, the Vietnam War (Full Metal Jacket). One of the most emotional, powerful stories ever put on celluloid, Paths of Glory is screening for free on November 22 at 7:00 as part of the New-York Historical Society’s Bernard and Irene Schwartz Classic Film Series and will be introduced by author Michael Korda (Ike: An American Hero, With Wings Like Eagles: A History of the Battle of Britain) with a focus on “WWI and Its Legacy in Film.” 
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Special effects master Douglas Trumbull, who worked on such sci-fi classics as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Blade Runner, made his feature directorial debut with the environmentally prescient Silent Running. Bruce Dern stars as Freeman Lowell, one of four men stationed on the space terrarium Valley Forge, which is charged with protecting forests that can no longer grow on Earth. While it’s just another assignment for John Keenan (Cliff Potts), Marty Barker (Ron Rifkin), and Andy Wolf (Jesse Vint), it’s become an obsession for Lowell, who sleeps under a “Conservation Pledge” on the wall next to his bed and only eats food from his massive garden. But when the captain of the Berkshire (voiced by Joseph Campanella) informs them that the forests must be destroyed and they are to return home, Lowell takes matters into his own hands, fighting to protect what he has helped create. Soon he is alone on the Valley Forge, tending to the forest with drones Huey (Cheryl Sparks) and Dewey (Mark Persons), as Louie (Steven Brown) is no longer with them. At first Lowell thinks he is in his own private paradise, but extreme loneliness awaits him, along with some other shocks. Written by Deric Washburn and Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter) and Steven Bochco (Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law), the low-budget Silent Running is a deserving cult classic, a worthy influence on such films and television shows as WALL-E, Moon, Mystery Science Theater 3000, and Red Dwarf. Emerging from the late-1960s Flower Power movement, the film’s ecological theme is boosted by environmentally friendly folk songs sung by Joan Baez, with overly melodramatic music by Peter Schickele. Dern gives a beautifully nuanced performance as Lowell, going from calm and meditative to distressed and angry in a heartbeat, and his paternal relationship with Huey and Dewey is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. A film that could only be made in the 1970s, with bright, bold colors and cheesy futuristic sets, Silent Running is screening on November 21 as part of the BAMcinématek series “Hot Dern!” which pays tribute to the seventy-seven-year-old Dern, the father of Laura Dern and former husband of Diane Ladd, on the occasion of the U.S. theatrical release of Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, for which Dern was named Best Actor at Cannes. The series continues through November 27 with such other wide-ranging Dern films as Psych-Out, Wild Bill, The Laughing Policeman, and Smile. In addition, Dern will be at BAM on December 4 for “An Evening with Bruce Dern,” which will include a screening of Nebraska followed by an extended Q&A with the actor.