"3 ½ hours" (ARD): train to nowhere on the day the wall was built

In the successful mixture of tragedy, romance and historical drama, the passengers of the interzone train have to decide whether to get off or continue.

Frankfurt – The constellation of this ensemble film is reminiscent of the several times filmed Agatha Christie classic “Murder on the Orient Express”: a train, various passengers; and an event that divides the group as much as it welds them together.

The basic idea of “3½ hours” is as original as it is immediately convincing: On a summer Sunday, a long-distance train to Berlin sets off from Munich Central Station. All sorts of people are on board: a man and a woman on their way to the wedding, a family of four, an old couple, a supposed mother with a child, a group of four musicians, a detective inspector.

“3 ½ hours” (ARD): The story takes place on August 13, 1961

It will be a journey that none of those involved will ever forget, because the story takes place on August 13, 1961, which went down in German-German history as the day the Wall was built. The travelers are on their way to their native GDR.

When the news of the so-called border security measures spread thanks to a transistor radio on the train, you have three and a half hours to make a decision that will change your life: exit to freedom or return home, from now on at least from a western perspective will be like a prison? The discussion divides friends, couples, and family.

Love, pain, revenge and betrayal are ingredients of “3½ hours” (ARD)

The script was written by Robert Krause, whose grandparents were also on a train from west to east that day, and Beate Fraunholz. He is an East German and was among other things co-author of “Our wonderful years” (ARD 2020). The three-part television film based on the economic miracle novel by Peter Prange told an epic story of love, pain, revenge and betrayal; these are exactly the ingredients for “3 ½ hours”.

Co-author Fraunholz is West German and has mainly written Sunday films on ZDF; that also fits, because some levels are equally romantic as melodramatic. The biggest challenge for the script duo and director Ed Herzog was probably to squeeze the complex plot into the framework of a ninety minute without overly narrowing the individual threads, which should not have been so easy in view of a good dozen main characters. Nevertheless, it was possible not to reduce the characters to clichés.

Perhaps even more respectable, Herzog accomplished the editing (Simon Blasi): With so many protagonists, there is a great risk that the film will jump from one level to the next without creating a real flow of action. Thanks to the unity of time and space, Herzog was able to leave the elegant connection of the individual strands to Ngo The Chau, whose camera wanders from one passenger to another. It begins on the platform with the elaborately designed introduction of some figures. The recordings are also bathed in a light that conveys a sense of time that is typical of historical productions of this kind right from the start.

“3 ½ hours” (ARD): Alli Neumann is a discovery for the general public

Another quality feature of this film, which should have been able to last 120 minutes, is the selection of the actors. The only star, Uwe Kockisch, only plays a guest role as the people’s policeman responsible for monitoring the border closure; the construction work takes place, among other things, directly in front of his office window. Many other roles are occupied by well-known and proven TV actors, above all Martin Feifel as a commissioner, Jördis Triebel as the trainer of a child-like gymnast, Peter Schneider as the man who carries an old debt with him, and Susanne Bormann and Jan Krauter as parents completely different expectations of life.

However, others are responsible for the surprises in terms of performance. A real discovery for the general public, for example, is Alli Neumann (one of the two protagonists from “Wach”) as the singer of the band, who performs her own songs that were written especially for the film. Luisa-Céline Gaffron is no less worth seeing, but has already proven her skills in several crime novels, above all as the actress in the female title character in the “Nord bei Nordwest” episode “Conny & Maik”. In “3 ½ hours” she embodies an East German locomotive driver who will take over the train at the border with her steam locomotive. A young Defa reporter (Vincent Redetzki) is supposed to make a film about the young woman and promptly falls in love with her sunny disposition.

For the director, “3½ hours” (ARD) is a rather unusual subject

Except for a few small moments when some of the performers put on all too telling looks, Herzog’s work with the ensemble is excellent. For the director, “3 ½ hours” is a rather unusual subject: after various TV thrillers, most of which are well worth seeing, he recently devoted his professional life to the cheerful Eberhofer thrillers with Sebastian Bezzel; the seventh episode, “Kaiserschmarrndrama”, is currently running in the cinema.

Most of the shooting took place in the track hall of the German Steam Locomotive Museum (Neuenmarkt, Bavaria). The fact that the camera on the train catches the “modern” door handles, which are attached much later, is bad luck for the artists. The fact that Herzog let his actress get away with modernisms such as “everything is good” or “gladly” (instead of, if you please) may be a trifle, but it is all the more noticeable in view of the other care taken. Afterwards, the documentary “We Children of the Wall” (9:50 pm) introduces people in whose lives the division of the two German states has left deep marks. (Tilmann P. Gangloff)