Though made for German television, The Dreileben Trilogy, or as I like to call it, “Six Degrees Of Nature Boy”, is definitely a cinematic event.  Three directors, each with their own visual voice, take turns guiding their narratives across the picturesque Forest of Dreileben.  All three films are set during the same time period, and all three films deal with a different protagonist who in some way is connected to Molesch, a local escaped convict.

What impressed me most about these three films was the multilevel depth to which each of these scripts reach.  There’s Christian Petzold‘s Beats Being Dead, a turbulent coming-of-age romantic tragedy, Dominik Graf‘s Don’t Follow Me Around; a chatty character study of a young couple, their detective friend/houseguest and the complex relationship between the three of them, and Christoph Hochhäusler‘s One Minute of Darkness, which I like to think of as the German version of the Coen Brothers‘ No Country For Old Men (in story alone, not visual style), where, when we’re not following the survival skills of coo-coo for co-co puffs killer, we’re following an old deaf dog of a detective.

Because each film follows the same time line, those who decide to see all three will be treated to seeing events take place from other character’s perspectives.  So, while it is not necessary, or even essential to watch these movies in succession, those who do will be glad they did, and not just because they have given into their completest tendencies. Read More…