Rad Education
Neo-rebels needle the rich in 'Edukators'

Does revolutionary fervor belong only to the young? Are we doomed to outgrow our ideals like an old pair of jeans once we've packed on the added girth of job, family, and middle-class comforts? Austrian-born filmmaker Hans Weingartner probes into these and other questions involving age, politics, class, and social justice in his sharp and always surprising drama The Edukators. Part edgy thriller, part irreverent class-war comedy, part homage to Truffaut's classic Jules et Jim, Weingartner stakes out his own territory in this compelling tale of dueling values.

At the center of the story is Jule (Julia Jentsch), a young Berlin waitress struggling under the burden of a 94,000 euro debt in damages owed to a wealthy man after she accidentally rear-ended his Mercedes. Kicked out of her flat, Jule accepts the invitation to move in with her boyfriend, Peter (Stipe Erceg), who stays out most nights with his moody flat-mate, Jan (Daniel Bruhl, who, after Goodbye, Lenin, is becoming the poster-boy for new German cinema). Jule assumes they're out putting up posters for the various environmental and humanitarian causes they support.

But when Peter goes out of town for a few days, and Jule starts getting to know the enigmatic Jan, she learns otherwise. Jan and Peter are latter-day revolutionaries who've come up with a wry, postmodern version of good old-fashioned civil disobedience: late at night, they break into wealthy homes whose owners are on vacation, rearrange the furniture into towers of consumerism, maybe stash the stereo in the refrigerator, leaving behind not vandalism but absurdity. They never steal anything, and leave behind notes that read "Your Days of Plenty Are Numbered," or "You Have Too Much Money," signing themselves "The Edukators." As Jan explains, "They expect burglars. This really scares them."

Far from being frightened off, Jule embraces their guerilla tactics with gusto, urging them on to more "spontaneous" and "risky" enterprises. Until the day things go badly awry, and they're caught in the act by middle-aged homeowner Hardenberg (Burghart Klaussner). Killing the witness would be the obvious solution for B&E pros, but it won't wash for these high-minded middle-class kids. (Jan has berated Peter for stealing an expensive watch during a previous break-in, as if they were "common criminals.") In a panic, they make a hostage of him instead, bundling him off to a remote mountain cabin while they try to decide what to do with him.

It's almost a disservice to the film to mention the debates these characters have about values, class-consciousness, and justice while holed up in their mountain retreat. It makes the film sound boring and didactic, when in fact, it percolates along as a thriller, a love story, and a ticking time bomb waiting to go off—we're just never sure when or why or how the explosion will come. Jule and Jan, who have fallen in love, attempt to hide their feelings from Peter. Hardenberg probes for the weakest link among his captors while attempting to disarm them with his cooperation, apologizing for his class and—apparently—developing a belated conscience. To the shock of the others, one of the reluctant kidnappers produces a gun. Will any of the four be hot-headed enough to use it?

Weingartner deftly weaves in all these undercurrents, along with a few wild cards. In one of the cleverest, Hardenberg professes to have been an eager young radical himself, back in the '60s. He wistfully tells Jan that losing one's idealism happens so gradually, "you don't even notice." One acquires a job, a house, a car, a family, until one day, in the polling place, "you surprise yourself and vote conservative."

Of course nothing is quite that simple, in life or, thankfully, in this smart and finally exhilarating movie. Weingartner's activists are hip enough to punctuate their own pomposity with humor, and young enough to believe in all earnestness that the world is still worth straightening out. It's refreshing to see social idealism portrayed not as nostalgia or comedy, but as a vital, even laudable response to these complacent times.

THE EDUKATORS With Daniel Bruhl, Julia Jentsch, and Stipe Erceg. Written and directed by Hans Weingartner An IFC Films release. Rated R. 126 minutes. (***1/2)
Review published in Good Times, August 25, 2005