Getting Home Is Hard: A Look at A Man Wants to Get to Germany

If you enjoy movies that feel like watching someone try to read a very dense history textbook while riding a bumpy train, then A Man Wants to Get to Germany is your dream come true. It’s for the history buffs who don't mind a lack of actual excitement. Everyone else? You’ll probably be checking your watch by the twenty-minute mark.

The whole thing is basically a glorified obstacle course. Our guy is in Latin America, he hears the Fatherland needs him, and he sets off. It’s a lot of boats, a lot of trains, and a lot of men in hats looking concerned at horizons. There is a strange, stiff quality to the whole production that makes it feel less like a film and more like a moral duty.

There’s this one scene where he’s trying to secure passage and the sheer amount of dialogue about travel permits is staggering. It makes the bureaucratic pacing of 13 Washington Square feel like a high-octane action flick by comparison. You can practically see the writers straining to make 'buying a ticket' feel like an epic struggle for the soul of a nation.

It’s not all bad, I guess. The costumes are actually quite sharp. There’s a specific attention to the way collars are pressed that honestly kept me distracted whenever the plot started to drag. And it drags a lot. The middle act feels like it was edited by someone who hates the concept of momentum.

Honestly, the film feels a bit like Der Läufer von Marathon in that it’s deeply obsessed with the internal drive of its lead, but it lacks that movie's sense of physical urgency. Here, the struggle is mostly just dealing with paperwork and bad weather. It's not exactly the stuff of legend.

Notes from the couch:

• The lighting in the shipping office is weirdly green, which is distracting.
• I swear the same background actor walks past the train station at least four times.
• The dialogue is so heavy on the 'duty' talk that it starts to sound like a weird lecture.
• Wait, was that a goat in the background of the port scene? Why was there a goat?

It’s a peculiar artifact. It wants you to feel the weight of history and the pull of home, but it mostly just makes you want to take a nap. If you have to watch something from this era, maybe stick to Sailors Don't Care for something a bit more lighthearted. This one just takes itself way too seriously to be much fun. 🚂