|
||||
|
|
||||
|
Anatomie (2000) Brilliant medical student Paula Haller (Franca Potente), encouraged by her bedridden specialist grandfather and gently dissuaded by her plodding GP father (Rudiger Vogler), is accepted into a prestigious Summer anatomy course at Heidelberg University and gradually comes to suspect that certain of her teachers and classmates are involved with the Antihippocratic League, a secret society which carries out unethical vivisection experiments on live human specimens, and has been active in the medical profession since the 16th Century with an especial peak during the Third Reich. The subject matter owes something to the medical thrillers of Robin Cook and Michael Crichton's film of Cook's Coma while the Euro-thriller style, which steps sideways from character study and peculiarly German teenage student hijinx, has a precedent in Ole Bornedal's Nightwatch, but director-writer Stefan Ruzowitsky plays distinctive and personal games as the conspiracy the heroine uncovers turns around and attacks not only her person but her ideals as she learns that her beloved grandparent was a sadistic Nazi and that her underappreciated father has a better grasp on the healing profession. Early scenes have a Scream and Scream Again-like gruesomeness as kidnapped specimens awake anaesthetised to the sound of easy listening music as masked students dissect them alive to create the impressive, grotesque and beautiful preserved cutaway specimens used in the anatomy classes. The actual plot gets into a messy student tangle as the clean-cut rejected
boyfriend (Benno Fürmann) of Paula's promiscuous but brilliant
blonde roommate (Anna Loos) turns out to be a renegade even by Antihippocratic
standards and keen to use the longstanding conspiracy to get away with
gruesome personal debt-settling. Potente, star of Run, Lola
Run, changes her image as the serious but passionate heroine,
and her character is affected by the revelations of the plot in a way
which deepens the movie beyond the terrific suspense mechanisms of its
lady-in-peril climax, in which Paula's medical knowledge and personal
grit enable her to fight back even though anaesthetised - a great moment
has her instruct her non-medical student boyfriend (Sebastian Blomberg)
how to administer a simple but crucial intraveinous injection to save
her life - and survive to reassess her values. A snippet during the
end credits, as two minor student characters discuss the continuing
Antihippocratic tradition, is a chilling reminder that some evils are
too vast to be rooted out by an action movie finale, no matter how satisfying. First published in this form here. Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
|
||||
