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Anatomie
Anatomy
Germany 2000
produced by Jakob Claussen, Andrea Willson, Thomas Wöbke, Norbert Preuss (executive) for Claussen & Wöbke Filmproduktion, Columbia (Deutsche Columbia)
directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky
starring Franka Potente, Benno Fürmann, Anna Loos, Sebastian Blomberg, Holger Speckhahn, Traugott Buhre, Oliver Wnuk, Arndt Schwering-Sohnrey, Andreas Günther, Antonia Cäcilia Holfelder, Rüdiger Vogler, Barbara M.Ahren, Werner Dissel, Gennadi Vengerov, Thomas Meinhardt, Simon Schwarz, Alexander Liegl, Martin Pölcher, Christoph Hagen Dittmann, Berrin Alganer-Lenz, Angelika Sedlmeier, Ulrich Matschoss, Gerald Alexander Held, Karl Fridrich, Susanne Gräbe, Anna Brüggemann, Axel Weusten
written by Stefan Ruzowitzky, music by Marius Ruhland, special effects by Georg Feuchter, models and makeup effects by Joachim Grüninger, Birger Laube, visual effects by Stefanie Stalf, Thomas Zauner, digital effects by CA Scanline Production
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
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Paula (Franka Pontente), a young medical student, has just been
accepted to a summer seminar at the prestigious university of Heidelberg,
when she discovers an acquaintance of hers (Arndt Schwering-Sohnrey) among
the corpses the students are working on, and examining his body, she finds
a weird fluid that is injected into (live) animals before preservation - a
fluid that will slowly paralyze and kill any human, but make his body the
perfect specimen, like those the students have marveled at when being led
through the medical tract of the university. Paula wants to discuss her
findings with Grombeck (Traugott Buhre), her professor, but he only tells
her to let go of the whole thing ... so she starts investigating on her
own, and soon learns about the Anti-Hippocratic Society, an
association of doctors that puts science above the individual and secretly
experiments on humans. The more research Paula does, the more disturbing
everything gets, as it turns out that Hein (Benno Fürmann), Paula's
roommate Gretchen's (Anna Loos) ex, is a member of the society, and
actually he was responsible for most of the human specimens at the
university, and Gretchen is gone (Paula will find out only later that she
has been killed), and even professor Grombeck is a member of the
association (though he belongs to the group's more moderate wing) ... and
on top of that, Paula's beloved grandfather (Werner Dissel) was the
society's founding father and had his hands in Nazi crimes. In the
finale, Grombeck, who has been overcome by his conscience is killed, Paula
is injected with the preservation fluid but saved by her boyfriend Caspar
(Sebastian Blomberg), using nothing more spectacular than a sodium
chloride (= cooking salt) solution, and after the usual fighting and
chasing, Paula manages to kill Hein, the main villain of the film. With
Hein's death and the ensuing invetigations, the Anti-Hippocratic Society
is dissolved ... but only in Heidelberg, its members are now taking its
ideals to wherever they go ...
Anatomy tries very hard
to be an intelligent film, by dropping (supposedly correct) medical terms
left and right, by basing its story on scientific facts and in rooting it
into history (German war atrocities to be precise). All this can't hide
the fact though that Anatomy is actually little more than a slasher
movie, and not even an all too good one at that. In fact, with the
inclusion of too much (unnecessary) science, the pacing of the film is
seriously off, the actual villain of the piece seems to be introduced at a
rather deliberate moment in the film, the finale totally lacks
inventiveness, and in the whole film, there is hardly any scene of
suspense or tension, in fact, though Paula the leading lady drops
accusations left and right while surrounded by the enemy, she
hardly faces any threat until the finale. What remains are some
fascinating human specimens, that are definitely worth a look, but
that would be much more interesting without the whole film around them. Not
worth your time and money.
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