The Ordinaries – REVIEW

This is an incredibly inventive German film and an impressive debut as a feature director for Sophie Linnenbaum. Linnenbaum is also listed as a co-writer along with Michael Fetter Nathansky. Both have fairly sparse resumes with regard to significant film work, which makes The Ordinaries anything but ordinary. 

Although the conceit might seem simple, the rendering is a little complex and that may be a barrier for some viewers. The way to enjoy the film is to just let it wash over you and then think about the themes and analogies later. 

It is set in a hyper-real world, an abstract, self-reflexive film universe where the people are not quite movie characters, not quite actors, but something in between. Their society has a fierce hierarchy in which Main Characters are the elite class, followed by Supporting Characters (extras and aspiring main characters), then the Outtakes, who are disenfranchised, poor and live in a different part of the city, off limits to the other two classes. 

Paula Feinmann (Fine Sendel) is a supporting character who is attending Main Character School with her best friend, Hannah Cooper (Sira-Anna Faal) and many other hopefuls. The students all wear “heart-readers”, small monitoring devices wired to their hearts that detect emotion and translate it into music. 

Whenever they give a heartfelt soliloquy, orchestral strings swell   like a film score. 

Paula’s mother, Elisa (Julie Böwe) is also a Supporting Character but with much more limited range. She has phrases and sentiments that she repeats almost robotically. 

Paula’s father, she was always told, was a Main Character who was killed in the “great massacre”. Paula tries to find out more about him by visiting the Flashback library, and here she discovers her mother has been lying to her, and that there is a dark mystery surrounding the true identity of her father. 

Paula’s search for her father drives the narrative. Along the way there are plenty of tongue-in-cheek jokes, film puns, and subtle – sometimes not so subtle – references to historical, political, societal realities. 

The meta humour is very funny and includes visual and technical gags. There is a woman who is literally fading away and is desperate to be digitised; there are Outtakes who are black and white (the least of the low classes); there are sound effects in vials and a very hilarious cameo by a dog. 

Hannah’s family repeatedly burst into a clichéd musical routine. The family has an Outtake as their maid, referred to simply as Housemaid (Henning Peker). Though dressed in traditional maid’s uniform, the housemaid is male — a “miscast” as it turns out.  

Paula, who illegally visits the land of the Outtakes befriends a young man named Simon (Noah Tinwa) who is beset with glitches. His scenes are edited so that he is missing dialogue and suddenly appears in different spots in the frame. 

There are endless other characters and little punchlines like this. 

The film presents beautifully with an intelligence behind the design of the various sets and costumes. There is a lot to mull over at the end of it and it’s probably worth watching this with a friend, preferably a movie fan. 

The Ordinaries might be a little too much for some viewers, but for those who appreciate what Linnenbaum is doing, it’s a very rewarding cinematic experience. 

★★★★

Exclusively at Dendy Newtown from July 6

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