Atomised [DVD] [2006]

I wasn't sure what to expect from this, but I doubted that there would be much happiness from uncomplicated love. OK, I like a good, realistic drama that is full of anguish, dashed hopes, and disillusionment, but there also has to be some growth, some meaning behind the tragedy - fortunately, that is at the center of this pessimistic, brutally cynical film.

The story is about 2 brothers and their separate lives. One of them (Bruno) appears normal, married with a child and working as a teacher while pursuing his writing. The other (Michael) appears the oddball, an intellectual who is haunted by memories and lives more or less like a monk in the temple of science. However, appearances deceive: the normal one is boiling with rage, lust, and a terrible isolation to the point that he screams at his mother on the death bed. The scientist has rich memories of an apparently unrequited childhood love, which he remembers with a nostalgia that yearns for a deeper commitment. In fact, both of them are profoundly alienated, so far unable to form healthy relationships and move on.

Their common issue is a narcissistic hippy mother, who gave them over to their respective grandmothers and didn't even tell one about the other until they were adolescents. As a boy, Bruno was taken to her commune, where she lived like a libertine with indiscriminate lovers and neglecting her duties as a mother. When Bruno meets Michael, it is extremely awkward, but they somehow form a bond that will be important for both of them. The mother then goes off with her latest lover, leaving them forever.

As adults, Michael is pursuing a vision that would revolutionize genetics, oddly to make sexless reproduction possible. He quits his business job to return to his mathematical research in another firm, but first he visits the house of his childhood love. Of course, an unlikely romance follows that, while tragic, is extremely beautiful and moving. The girl, it turns out, has reached her own impasse in life and opens herself to Michael with a wonderful ease. Meanwhile, Bruno's life disintegrates into a nervous breakdown; he loses everything - family and job - and desperately seeks a new relationship in a kind of hippy sex camp, where he meets a fellow libertine and they embark on an experimental relationship that involves going to sex clubs and plans to live together. This too ends in tragedy and an awful failure. Both of the women are extraordinary in their own ways and ultimately uplifting. I do not want to reveal spoilers, but the destinies of the brothers diverge horribly.

In the background, there is a serious philosophical look at modern society. The auteur despises capitalist materialism, which he seems to portray as responsible for the loss of values. His characters prefers things to meaning. That being said, this is by no means marxist. The auteur also despises hippies, who he sees as hedonists more interested in sex than love and as parasites on the modern economy. It is very bitter, even though the brothers seem to find places for themselves in the end. One highly functional, the other a disastrous psychotic.

Recommended with enthusiasm. This is a good one to own as it can be watched many times.

A good attempt to bring a difficult book onto the screen. It doesn't give rise to comfortable viewing, although I expect most people will have read `atomised' before coming to the film and therefore will know what to expect. Houellebecq excellence is in showing us how we really are, rather than glossing over the ugliness. He has given us a mirror to look at ourselves.

Modern society, with all its material progress has failed to provide stable relationships that most long for and the hope of 60's utopian ideals, have fallen by the wayside. The film doesn't have the scope or time to move beyond the central message of `atomised' and isn't as effective a medium at presenting the characters inner complexities. However there is still enough, to make it thoughtful and provocative.

It probably does too good a job, in representing the book. Where the book lacked tight structure and lyrical style, similarly the film lacks the images that would make it great. And like the novel it sometime falls into adolescent pretentiousness. Ultimately it overcomes these flaws as a film of ideas and a rare examination of a modern society which most people will sadly ignore in favour of escapism and entertainment.

The movie opens with a quote from Einstein: "One does not have to understand the world; one only has to find one's way in it." And in the film's first five minutes, we see the confluence of champagne and dead rats, followed not long after by sight of the death of a pet budgerigar and the sight of the grave of a dead grandmother. This film is replete with commentaries on modern values and every sentence spoken seems pregnant with debatable meanings. The plot is extremely contrived - sometimes laughably so - and yet it never loses its roots in a reality.

Michael and Bruno are half-brothers, but are the fraternal versions of chalk and cheese. Both are intelligent and both are somehow detached from the society in which they live. Michael accepts this and is happy to be the observer, to be quiet, chaste, and fearful of his own courage, but Bruno cannot cope with detachment and seeks to immerse himself in what life has to offer. However, he lacks - or thinks he lacks - the factors that would make him successful. The brothers are extremely well-acted by two of Germany's top actors, Moritz Bleibtreu (Bruno) and Christian Ulmen (Michael).

I have not read Houellebecq's novel, so I cannot comment on the film's loyalty (or lack of) to it. But Houellebecq comes with a reputation, more well-known on the continent than in the English-speaking world. From this angle, to me the film's plot appears constructed to express Houellebecq's manifest radical reactionism to modern-day values, the cheap lives that we live. Huxley's `Brave New World' receives a name-check. And yet romance, of a sort, wins out in the end, each brother having had enough of being unhappy.

Flashbacks to their formative years as teenagers appear in a gaudy psychedelic colour, befitting the 1960s period and accompanied by the free-love music of the time. (It is remarkable that no such popular-song soundtrack appears in scenes of the present. Instead we have a marvellous Philip Glass-like score provided by Martin Todsharow.) The film also has much humour, such as when Bruno visits a `new age' camp to pick up women. And there are moments too of true pathos, especially towards the end when we are subliminally asked to contemplate how much suffering we bring upon ourselves.

A word about the extras on my copy of the DVD. Firstly, there is a twenty-three minute `making of' featuring comments from the producer, director, and some of the actors. Here we see some scenes that did not make it to the final cut. The director, Oskar Roehler, states that he did not want a cynical ending, but wanted some hope instead. There are also full and interesting interviews with the main protagonists involved in the film - but alas, nothing from Monsieur Houellebecq.

In conclusion, the critical quotes that adorn the cover of this DVD are right this time: it is "witty and haunting, insightful and uplifting" and it also "pricks taboos with a wit that makes you gasp".