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A student (Pit Bukowski) rents a room (more of a spartan and windowless
basement cell) in a family home in the middle of nowhere, just so he can
finish his paper on quantum physics - but since he's a bit short on money,
the house owners (David Scheller, Oona von Maydell) offer him a post as
their 8 year old son Klaus's (Daniel Fripan) tutor. Now the student
reluctantly agrees, but soon finds out there are some things major league
wrong here: Basically, Klaus is apparently quite a LOT older than 8, and
while his parents believe him to be highly gifted and want him to be
groomed to become the president of the USA, the kid's actually not
especially bright, and the books he's to learn from are pretty hard stuff
even for grown-ups let alone for an (alledgedly) 8 year old with the
(actual) attention span of a 3 year old. Heck, Klaus is hardly able to
remember the capitals of the major countries of the world, despite the
student's best efforts ... until he, totally frustrated, beats the
capitals into the poor boy - which for some reason works wonders, and
suddenly dad opens his heart to the houseguest, mum seduces him, and the
student takes to the boy, and eventually teaches him, who has never been
out of the house, the joys of being a kid, including such basic things as
playing - much to the dismay of Klaus's father and mother, and especially
mum's leg who she thinks is inhabited by an alien called
"Heinrich" ... Der Bunker is one very unusual
and thus quite remarkable little film: The story most certainly leans
towards the absurd and one can sense traces of Franz Kafka in it, the
dialogue is at times rather on the heavy-handed side, which helps the
movie's overall feel 100%, the direction seems at first a bit on the
stagey and old-fashioned side, reminiscent of German cinema no later than
the 1970s, but cleverly builds up atmosphere in the background, and
accordingly the performances are very down-played and even unreal - which
helps the movie come to life. So in a way, this movie has no business to
work half as well as it does, but with all this weirdly "wrong"
elements welded together quite as cleverly, the film as such works like a
charm!
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