MovieChat Forums > Der ganz große Traum (2011) Discussion > Strange main character

Strange main character

posted 13 years ago by TomatoMan
3 replies | jump to latest

Well, Daniel Brühls Character is strange to me. It is as if beating children at school was something resented in great britain at the time. He always implies how different this was during his time in england.

But children were beaten all over the world for "educative purposes" during these times. This type of punishment was abolished in the UK in the 1980s.

I completely understand that Brühl's character shall be a kind of pioneer. But I would have found it far more believable if his motivation would mainly have been his own experiences with violent education instead of his experiences abroad where he will have seen the same methods.

[–] jerry4444 13 years ago

Maybe he was lying for the sake of his career, by trying to be bold and different as well?

[–] crittershoras 10 years ago

From Wikipedia:

"The real life Konrad Koch, a teacher for German, Ancient Greek and Latin in Braunschweig, wrote down the first German version of the rules of football and arguably organized the first ever match of football in Germany between pupils from his school Martino-Katharineum in 1874.[3][4] However, unlike in the film, Koch's original German version of the rules of football, published in 1875, still closely resembled Rugby football. Koch was also a conservative himself and did not get into trouble with the authorities".

The movie was made in 2011, they probably didn't want a main character that acted exactlylike the rest of the society, it wouldn't be likeable if he would beat kids also, he needed to be different. Not historicaly accurate, but likeable.

What you say in the third paragraph makes sense, but during the entire movie he shows how different is England, maybe that's why they went with that instead of talking about his experience as a student.

You probably don't even remember what you wrote by now because it was in 2011, but I watched the film recently ;})

[–] Angelus1980 10 years ago

He said something along the line of "Don't feel bad Mr. Hartung. The father always hits the hardest. My father was my teacher for 7 years." when he talks to Felix Hartung after he quit the teaching position and football was forbidden. This, to me, gives the impression, that he resented corporal punishment because of his own childhood experiences and not because it was handled different in the uk.