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54 out of 63 people found the following comment useful :-
"Requiem" in the US, 27 May 2006

Author: brianr54 from United States

Just saw the US premiere of the film at the Seattle International Film Festival. I have seen the American version of this story, but this is a far different film with a different goal.

While the US version concentrated on the more sensational parts of the story and the aftermath, this movie is much more interested in the drama of the situation and avoids the 'creeky door' effect of the US version. The filmmaker is very dispassionate about attempting to convince you one way or the other if it was a possession or a woman's psychological breakdown and I find that most appealing. (The US version also tried to ride the fence in a sense, but it was more obvious which "side" it picked as there were many horror movie moments, not present in this version.) The acting was universally GREAT and all actors were so very convincing in their roles. It will be interesting to see how American audiences that venture out to see this version accept it (It will NOT be the hit that "Emily Rose" was here as this will be considered an art film in America and I doubt will be widely released.) Look for it in the US and check it out!

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48 out of 56 people found the following comment useful :-
Requiem, 27 September 2006

Author: Jolien Hapers from Belgium

To me, Requiem was a very personal and intense movie. Unlike most religious movies, who treat the subject on a large scale and don't look at the people behind the horror, Requiem went further. The horror was there, but it was way more subtle and completely different than we are used to see.

The story begins and we are introduced to Michaela, a young girl, like there are so many, who was raised very strictly and overprotected. She is ready to start her real life at the university but there is one thing that stands in her way. Her epilepsy. So her father keeps quiet when she has an attack. And he keeps it quiet when it's getting worse. But you understand why, once you get to know her mother. She's overprotective and scared to death that something is going to happen to Michaela. But never does the director judge any of the characters, although we get to know many types of people who all want to help Michaela in a different way. In the end religion wins from reason. It was already clear throughout the whole movie that these two things were opposite. Maybe it's like that in real life too.

The film was built beautifully with subtle (and sometimes less subtle) references to the fact that it was going the wrong way with Michaela. This movie could never been this good if it wasn't for the great acting from all characters.

The theme that was brought up in the end, exorcism, happened without any form of sensation and was showed in a very realistic way. You can say, the way that it goes in real life and not in an ordinary American (or other country?) movie. The last scenes were very moving and were played so real that it felt like I was looking at a documentary.

I can't say I really enjoyed the movie, but I don't think that was the director's intention.

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36 out of 40 people found the following comment useful :-
One of the best German movies of 2005, 20 April 2006

Author: aileenT from Germany

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

*** mild spoilers***

Tuebingen, Germany, early 70s. Michaela Klingler leaves her strictly catholic home in order to study in Tuebingen. Together with her friend Hanna and a fellow student, Stefan, with whom she falls in love, she enjoys the first steps out into a world, that so far had been kept from her and his glad to leave her petty-bourgeois village behind her. But Michaela's past catches up with her: Despite her medications she struggles more and more with epileptic fits and hallucinations. She hears voices and believes she is possessed by demons. As these fits become stronger and more frequent she places herself in the care of a young priest and finally agrees to an exorcism.

A young woman torn between family and friends, religion and love of life. These feelings are revealed in at times painful and agonizing scenes. But before they become unbearable the camera moves away leaves distance between the viewer and what is happening. Director Hans-Christian Schmid is most interested in the reasons that brought about the nervous breakdown of his heroine. He asks himself what causes Michaela to tumble into this hell of mental agony: provincial narrow-mindedness, family problems and catholic insularity.

The main actress Sandra Hueller is amazing. At times timid and vulnerable, then charming and lively and then a sobbing wreck. Her absolutely convincing acting and the emotional harmony of this moving drama are to me of a rare brilliance.

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26 out of 32 people found the following comment useful :-
Sandra Huller, an exceptional talent, 3 January 2007

Author: shishaldin from United States

Requiem works for many reasons--an intelligent script, understated direction, a somewhat verite camera style--but most of all it works because of Sandra Huller. For all of Michaela's exceptionalism, at no point could I doubt this character. As a recovering Catholic myself, I'm sensitive to the role religion, especially Catholicism, plays in people's lives; and Huller, in my opinion, creates the real thing: implicit faith that needs neither to advertise nor to apologize. Michaela's faith isn't about doctrine or rules but the meaning of life--more specifically, about living the meaning of one's own life, including its less attractive implications. Her faith makes her vulnerable to the devil (or, if you prefer, to her imagination that the devil is messing with her), but her faith also endows her growing suffering (and her eventual death, which she clearly foresees; note her reference to "martyrdom" in one of the last scenes) with an abundance of the same meaning that has sustained her life. She is peaceful at the end ("I must walk my path to the end.") That may be hard for a non-religious person to understand, but to someone raised on stories of the great saints, as Michaela was, it makes perfect sense. It is even something to be grateful for.

Requiem pulls off a bit of cinematic legerdemain in making Michaela a relatively open, non-fanatical, non-prudish woman in spite of the depth of her faith. Her real-life original, Anneliese Michel, wasn't much like that. She was a very conservative Catholic deeply opposed to the liberalization then occurring in the Catholic church after the Vatican Council. Her death and the subsequent trial of her parents and the exorcists forced a kind of confrontation, at least in Germany, between Catholic traditionalism, which has an entirely literal belief in spiritual realities and regards demonic possession and exorcism as established facts, and ecclesiastical modernism, which is embarrassed by such medieval notions and therefore preferred to take the position that Michel was "merely" mentally disturbed. (And if she were, did she suffer any the less? Was her faith any less meaningful to her?) Traditionalists regard Michel, her parents, and the exorcists as martyrs to a modernist church disloyal to its Christian past, and Michel's grave is today a pilgrimage site primarily for conservative Catholics. You'd never guess any of this from Requiem's very sympathetic treatment of her story.

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21 out of 27 people found the following comment useful :-
Unbelievable - Watch this film, 25 September 2007

Author: njjones-3 from United Kingdom

Phew this is hard to put into words.

At first I thought the cinematography was stunning, beautifully shot and the period was captured perfectly - I felt like I was watching a film shot in 1972 and it brought back early memories of the 70s.

The script was wonderfully subtle, there was absolutely no judgements about the characters. It would have been very easy to show the mother as a cruel an twisted woman but instead you could empathise with her, she thought she was doing the best for her daughter and that made the whole thing more tragic but also more real and beautiful.

To me the central message of the film was that life, however short is something to celebrate. The girl makes references to St Katarina who only lived a short time but did many wonderful things. She may not have escaped her strict and cruel mother for long but at least she did it and had a wonderful time for a while.

I kept having to tell myself they were actors. The depiction of the girl's first kiss at college was unlike any other I've seen. They captured the clumsiness and true feeling of the situation perfectly.

And finally the soundtrack - you'd think that deep purple wrote 'Anthem' for this film. Earlier we see her dancing ecstatically to the track when she's finally free at college and then we later see the relevance when it's used to play out at the end of the film.

I'm not sure I'll ever see a better film that this and I recommend it to anyone who occasionally likes to be moved by a movie.

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22 out of 32 people found the following comment useful :-
I found this 'true story' quite moving and rather sad., 8 November 2006

Author: Morgan Peline from United Kingdom

To be frank I completely disagree with the above critique. I found this film quite moving and very sad - I still can't stop thinking about.

I thought the way it was shot moved it along fairly nicely and was thankfully fairly anti- Hollywood which was a nice relief. Of course most Americans will probably not enjoy it because it's too subtle, nothing explodes and they actually have to think for a change rather than being told how to feel. If Hollywood had done this film it would have been all moody lighting, scary music and SFX - it would have been just another badly done version of The Exorcist (which I think is also a great film).

I think what I found the most interesting was that because this film was done in such an understated manner, you could actually understand what Michaella was going through in a much more realistic, believable manner.

There is a beautiful scene where near the end of the film Michaella's boyfriend takes her to her parents house because she is in such a bad state. She is soon surrounded by her parents and two priest all praying and chanting at her trying to exorcise her demons - her boyfriend steps away as he really doesn't know where to put himself or what to do as he watches the chanting - he looks like he is witnessing the dark ages of superstition; all completely anachronistic to the time he lives in.

Documentary style was a great choice - there were no true good or bad guys. And Michaella truly believed that she was possessed. So in a really strange way it was more an analysis of faith and belief. At the end of the day she, her family and the creepy priest all absolutely believed that she was possessed therefore she was.

Was that a good or bad thing, considering that nowadays most people barely believe anything at all?

Maybe she did fight an epic battle against demons for our souls like Saint Margarita - can anyone prove otherwise?

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19 out of 27 people found the following comment useful :-
well done, 21 December 2006

Author: from London

This movie doesn't have a clear message. Instead the title "requiem" really shows what this is about: looking at a person's life in every aspect of it. So the storytelling has to be much more from a distant viewpoint. Some may call this documentary-style as it seems to show a real social case study. Personally it reminded me a little bit of the early Scorseses style of movie-making (e.g. taxi driver): neutral viewpoint, but still subtle messages within, and finally the big clash in the ending, when all strings of the story developed throughout the movie come together.

For me, this is the best way of doing such a movie. First everything feels so normal as you watch the movie. In the end extreme situations begin to develop. Because you know the context, even it is a really extreme situation, it seems to be not at all inexplicable but very real, which it actually was. I could personally feel the helplessness with this situation, because I could not blame anybody in the movie, there was not a side who did anything wrong on purpose. All are just human beings, who are presented perfectly and believable through very good acting. The final shot of the girl's face with background organ music expresses many feelings I have about the movie.

All in all it is a very good movie, but of course it still does not feel as great as some of the best movies of the time. 9 stars

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9 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Better than Exorcism of Emily Rose, 21 April 2008

Author: crappydoo from New Zealand

I've seen both The Exorcism of Emily Rose and this one and found Requiem to be far better and realistic than the other. Emily Rose, in my opinion, was supposed to be commercial Hollywood film. It lulled me to sleep whereas Requiem kept me interested during its entirety. The chief reason for this being the phenomenal performance by the lead actress.

The direction of the film is great as well, since it clearly allows the viewers to form their own decision whether the girl is possessed or schizophrenic. Viewers make their decisions based on which side of the faith they lie. It runs a bit slow but is an excellent psycho-drama devoid of any gratuitous scary scenes.

So overall, in case you like scary stuff, watch Emily Rose; which is not such a great scary movie either. However, if you like psychological dramas and do not wish to watch movies that make you jump out of your seat, watch this one.

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
A sad, and true, tale., 28 February 2009

Author: jase-18 from Carlisle, England

A sad tale of a young girl's aspirations disastrously ruined by her and her family's inability to separate her religion from her mental illness.

The script is commendably non-judgemental, despite the subject matter, and the the movie's early seventies setting is re-created so convincingly (with muted colours and almost dogme-like camera work) that one might forget that the film was shot only three years ago.

Some may find that the film ends before the story does, but this is merely a refreshing refusal to pander to sensationalism that is completely in keeping with the naturalistic realism of the film as a whole.

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Aching, compelling character study, 5 December 2007

Author: abbywts from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I had heard nothing of the true story on which this was based beforehand, but the opening lines indicate that this is really not a strict presentation, but a jumping off point. That's fine, because movies, in general, are very poor at rendering true events. It is really a character study, using events as a springboard.

Note: this has spoilers coming up. The movie is presented in a stark, almost documentary style. It presents us with a young woman who is torn between two worlds-the one she has known and its obligations and restrictions and comforts, and the world she is about to know, with its freedoms, and excitement and scariness. She leaves the small town for life as a young adult in a university. We see her starting out and wonder if she can cope. She gets made fun of somewhat on the first day of class, for example. But, she does cope and starts to really come into her own. Doing well in class, having friends, and a first love. But her illness comes into the fore once again, and eventually, kills any hope of independence.

Personally, I'm not religious and that may color my take, but this film seems to strongly suggest religion as folly. It doesn't beat you over the head with it, but it's there. She suffers from epilepsy, and the film mentions the prospect of psychogenic psychosis as being the cause of her delusions. The same physical abnormalities in the brain that cause epilepsy, can also cause damage to the part that senses reality, and sense of self. Someone raised in a strict religious household can easily interpret this as signs of God or the Devil or whatever. At the time, medications were pretty much hit or miss, and so it seemed cruelly hopeless to sufferers who kept getting a 'miss'. It wasn't as clearly understood then, either.

The film succeeds in showing what well meaning but clueless people can do when they yield to superstition. The main character's best friend (a beautiful friendship!) really represents the opposing view. She keeps trying to take her to a hospital and tells her these visions are due to another cause, but, alas, religion has an answer to every rational impulse. It's also interesting that her episodes occur in times of greater stress, especially her parents visiting, or being scolded by her mother.

The casting for this movie is fantastic. Every actor large and small played their role perfectly, a rare feat. From the virtuoso performance of Sandra Huller, to every side character like her character's sister. The only thing keeping this from a ten, the ending was unsettled. Too abrupt, seemed unnatural somehow.

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