The middle years of the somehow two-term Bush presidency were a peak moment for politically engaged cinema. There are many reasons for this. The Boomers, who had burned draft cards, dropped acid at Woodstock and marched with Dr. King, were still an important demographic for the movie studios to appeal to. They also had not been utterly poisoned by braindead 24-hour cable news yet. A second reason was that young people were particularly politically engaged in these years, awakened by a combination of the 1999 Seattle protests, anti-sweatshop mobilizations at campuses across the country and the Supreme Court-decided 2000 Presidential elections. Add in that the largest protest in the history of the world (at the time) took place in March 2003 to hopefully stop Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq, and there were certainly all the elements for a proliferation of political thrillers in the film industry.
The Edukators, released in 2004, right in the eye of the hurricane of abounding political films, is a paradigmatic example. The film follows three young activists who passionately pursue the causes of the Bush-years global left: stopping sweatshop exploitation, challenging capitalism and opposing the security state, which had massively expanded in the wake of 9/11, as well as in response to the anti-globalization protests in Seattle and the radical turn of the global environmental movement.
The eponymous “Edukators” are Jan and Peter, two friends who break into the houses of the rich while they are away on holiday. They do not steal their stuff, but rather re-arrange all of their furniture and leave a note saying, “Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei,” which loosely translates to “Your days of plenty are numbered.” They want to destabilize the comfort and sense of security of those at the top of the global socioeconomic ladder. If people want to engage in high mass consumption, they should not get to feel serene about it.
Things go wrong when they select a target for personal reasons: the guy — named Hardenburg — who financially ruined Peter’s girlfriend, Jule. Jule also comes along and messes things up, leading to the whole gang being caught in the act by Hardenburg. The three young activists panic, kidnap Hardenburg and drive out to a safe house in the countryside. At this point, the film transforms from a political thriller to a relationship drama, as it turns out both Jan and Peter are in love with Jule. The trio also learns that Hardenburg had been an ardent protestor back when he was their age, participating in the uprisings of 1968.
What makes The Edukators resonate today is two-fold. First, it’s the depth of the film’s political analysis. In a decade of political films as diverse as plain action thrillers like Shooter, faux-profound procedurals including Lions for Lambs and outright farces, such as the inimitable Burn after Reading, The Edukators engages in big ideas delicately and thoroughly. The legacy of history, particularly the teenage rebellion of West Germans in the ‘60s — whose parents had been actual Nazis — is particularly poignantly discussed.
The second reason The Edukators still deserves to be seen by cinephiles today is how well it serves as both an ode and a contribution to German cinematic history. The film refers back to the great German domestic political thrillers of the Cold War, particularly the incredible The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum. A decade of reunification that had failed to address growing grievances related to economic justice and globalization called for a return to the cinema of the ‘70s, when young activists blew up television studios and kidnapped bankers to get their message across. The Edukators morphs, at least for a time, into a European road movie as well, as an ode to Wim Wenders (and several European New Wave filmmakers from the ‘60s, all of whom seemed to be obsessed with road movies). Subsequent German cinema, especially the works of Christian Petzold, which are full of the melancholic yearning called Ostalgie, have continued The Edukators’ allusions to the Cold War period as a political lens for the present.
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