Noir. A genre of American filmmaking that came into its own during WW2 and the mid to late 1940s and gradually faded in the 1950s. The French were the first to identify it and give it a different name – noir in French means black. Generally, it signifies a specific style of filmmaking with specific rules and conventions. The main rule is no one is admirable / everyone has an ulterior motive. Most of the action/plot usually happens at night / in darkness.
If we take just these two rules, then The Dogs of Berlin can be classified as noir. A better title would have been Berlin Noir since none of the characters are admirable. No one is clean, and everyone has some personable demon or foible to overcome.
Kurt Grimmer (Felix Kramer) is a Berlin cop. He is with his mistress Sabine’ Bine’ Ludar (Anna Maria Muher) when he sees police vehicles in the seedy neighbourhood. He discovers the dead body of a famous Turkish-origin star football player. He urges the team to withhold the news as its political dynamite. Kurt’s partner is Erol Birkan (Fahri Yardim), who is gay and of Turkish origin. Kurt’s wife Paula (Katharina Schuttler) runs a curio shop. She starts an affair with the head of the neighbourhood protection racket, connected to the big-time Lebanese Underworld lord Hakim Tarik Amir(Sinan Farhangmehr). Hakim’s younger brother Kareem threatens an upcoming black football star Bou Penga to play poorly. Kurt’s mother, Eva and brother Ulf are part of a neo-Nazi gang that wants to take on the Muslim Underworld figures and clean Berlin. Kurt is a compulsive gambler who owes money to all the betting kings of Berlin, especially the Croat Kovac. He has crossed his mother and her gang of neo-Nazis. Erol looks out for Murad, an aspiring gangster rap star seduced by gangster life. There is a mysterious woman Trinity who seems to know everyone’s secret and blackmailing everyone, but who is she working for? There are rumblings of gang wars but who is against who ?
The 10-part serial is absolutely absorbing, but it is NOT an easy watch. The raw, gritty, violent serial shows the “other side” of Germany, especially Berlin. It probably took great courage on the creator Christian Alvart to make such a serial devoid of ANY nice dressing up of issues. It’s all very much in your face. (I watched it over a period of a month as each episode was quite overhwelming and “in-your-face”.)
As mentioned earlier, nothing is remotely attractive about any of the characters. If anything, one feels sorry for Erol, the gay cop, as he is caught between cultures. He can never be German enough or never be Turkish enough as he is despised by both mainstream cultures while his work colleagues just about tolerate him.
The good-cop-bad-cop trope so evident in many cop movies gets an entirely new twist. The lead character Grimmer is basically a selfish man who keeps jumping from the frying pan into the fire throughout the series – constantly hounded by his underworld debt collectors, by his mistress Bine and by the Police, who know that he is just an opportunist.
Working together on the murder of the football star, both Kurt and Erol discover that their way may not necessarily be the right way to tackle the issues. Grimmer’s rule book is “My way is the only way/” Erol discovers that his “by the rule book” is not giving the results. Each dislikes the other but soon finds a way to work together.
Bine finds a job – does she? Grimmer goes on the straight and narrow – does he? Erol soon takes a stand – does he? Everyone grows up? Or do they?
To give away more plot points would be a crime. Once again, this is not an easy watch. Befitting a European serial, there is lots of nudity, male and female. In this case, the ‘age-appropriate” warning is valid and should be taken seriously. There is no scene here that is NOT wince-worthy – one winces at the amount of onscreen violence, which is casual for the gangsters and all the characters. A season 2 is promised, but it still hasn’t seen the light of day after five years. We certainly want to know what happened to everyone, as there are many loose ends at the end of the final episode (though it looks as if everything is tidied up).
It’s on NetFlix
Script – 5 out of 5
Story – 5 out of 5
Direction – 5 out of 5
Photography – 4 out of 5
Overall: 4.8 out of 5
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