Tausend Ozeane (2008) Reviews

• Too fictitious to make an impact

  Horst_In_Translation2016-04-08

  "Tausend Ozeane" or "A Thousand Oceans" is a Swiss, German-language film from almost 10 years ago written and directed by Luki Frieden and seeing this one here I can somewhat understand that his career has not been too well since this was made. The film runs between 80 and 90 minutes and tells us the story of a PVS patient and his family. The problem here is that probably 80% of the film are not real. They show us the patient walking around and interacting with his dear ones on fictitious sequences. This was Frieden's attempt to elaborate on the physical and mental state of the patient, but also his family's and the way they deal with what happened. Also basically almost the entire first half of the film is fictitious and we do not know that yet at this point. I kinda liked that idea, but in retrospective, when we find out, we (or at least I as the viewer) long for some practical, something real, but there is just so little of it. I know it's tough to create a story in the real world when the main character is not there and the parents are grieving, but it should be possible if the writer is talented enough. Instead, the film loses itself in one fantasy sequence after the other, which is why I can also only see this as a fantasy film, not a drama. All in all, I think this film had good potential, the cast also has a couple names that are very well-known today, but it just isn't elaborated on properly and this is certainly not a defining movie in terms of PVS. I cannot recommend it.

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