One coffee to go, please. To go, right? Yes, to go. Alright, we have two offers: coffee arabica or columbia morning. Which of these two resembles normal coffee the most? I like both. Ok, … I take the columbia one. Milk or sugar? No. Soy milk? Hell, no! €3.40, please. €3.40?! Yeah, that’s the columbia…
– Coffee dialogue
Direction: Jan-Ole Gerster
Main roles: Tom Schilling, Marc Hosemann, Friederike Kempter
“Oh Boy” That’s not only a sentence you say when something is totally going wrong. It’s also the title of a movie which shows how the life of the protagonist is totally going crazy. The movie is set in Berlin and shows one day and one night of Niko Fischer who’s in his late twenties and how he is ruining his life.
“Oh Boy” doesn’t really have a real beginning, no climax and no ending. It only shows a dawning new day, like in real life. The movie reveals many facets of Berlin, showing the overpriced coffee in the center of the Swabians over the young drug dealers to the “theater art” and the so called “Assis” which is the German equivalent of “crummies” – a giant microcosm.
The movie mixes melancholy with the feeling of feeling embarrassed for somebody else and a great sense of black humor. The movie is held in black-and-white and also very minimalistic, but this makes it special. Still, it’s no pure art movie. It rather shows the numerous amazing German actors.
It could be that everyone who watches “Oh Boy” is going to see a reflection of his/her own in the story. Whether one has just dropped out of college or is just realizing that he/she is absolutely unable to have relationships, whether daddy is cuffing off your money supply or if you’re just looking for you real “me” – “Oh Boy” is an episode of our lives.
Image source: http://www.fluxfm.de/feature/stadt-land-flux-mit-tom-schilling-und-jan-ole-gerster-zu-ihrem-neuen-film-oh-boy/
