“Hilde’s legacy”: The German-Polish police call has been reorganized and is off to a promising start.
Is it because Adam Raczek was overshadowed by Olga Lenski? Is it because Lucas Gregorowicz seems different when you finally see “The Passport” (Gregorowicz as a pushy tabloid reporter), also recently “Murder in the Family” (Gregorowicz as the most suppressed son) and have seen overall that he is a multi-faceted actor ? In the first German-Polish rbb police call of the new era, he is quite interesting, aged by years and not quite as sleepless as Al Pacino in “Insomnia”, but almost.
His deplorable state is fueled on the one hand, and mitigated on the other, by Vincent Ross’s prospective detective, André Kaczmarczyk, a real match aside from the hairdo and the first distinctively gender-fluid detective in a Sunday night crime thriller.
Gender fluid isn’t his word, he doesn’t intend to explain himself, he is who he is, wears a skirt or pants, puts on his eyes discreetly in the 80s look, dances gracefully, drives the car very carefully – the chief inspector meanwhile drives like a singed sow – and hugs other people if he wants to. “Don’t fight back, come on.” He is self-confident, quick and cheeky, and, like many snobby people, easily offended. He studied psychology, but he doesn’t hold back on that. He likes to tell you where to go, big and small. “How do you channel all that pain?” he says to Raczek. “Huh?” says Raczek. And when the chief commissioner says “Indians” and “Quick”, the commissioner candidate says: You say “Indigenous” or “First Nations” and “unresolved trauma”.
There’s no denying that Vincent Ross is up to speed and Raczek is not. But Raczek keeps his cool and also learns to appreciate him. And if he didn’t fold it up after all, you could see the two of them riding into the sunset together. That’s better.
The most refreshing thing about the first German-Polish crime scene of the new era, however, is that Anika Wangard and Eoin Moore, who also directs, tell a good story in their book, despite the obligatory toddling at the beginning. Vincent Ross first appears as a witness, only his voice can be heard in flashbacks, original. His new neighbor, a hedonistic-looking student, has been murdered – anyone who hasn’t informed himself beforehand stumbles into the situation. Who is important, who is dead anyway?
Vincent Ross wanted to bring his removal van back to Berlin, but now he should be involved in the investigation. The small transporter occurs several times, motorized at all. An older mobile home crashes into a paddling pool, a senior citizen’s scooter overturns a motorcycle, the chief inspector sails into the field in his car. Unbalanced people behind the wheel are a danger to themselves and others.
But let’s get down to business. At the center of “Hilde’s legacy” are not the cheeky Voss and the overtired Raczek, but the Grutzkes. A study from the hell of family life, more of a genre picture than a realistic depiction of the milieu, brilliantly acted.
The heroine of the title is the grandmother, Tatja Seibt, who is wide awake and freezing cold waiting for death in her wrecked house with oxygen and porcelain (possibly valuable). The dead man was her grandson, whose sister Emma is played by Ada Philine Stappenbeck as a deeply sad lost person. She’s so lost that you don’t necessarily notice it at first. The fact that she doesn’t have a quirk, but an unresolved trauma, is then also obvious beyond the choice of words. The father Ulf, Lars Rudolph, appears later, people have now imagined him differently. You can see in Raczek’s face that he too had imagined him differently. Showing something without explaining it: a trust in the image and in the audience’s ability to think along with you, which is a rarity on a Sunday evening.
Meanwhile, the clever nurse Sandra, Isabel Schosnig with a great dose of dialect, gets to the point of what it’s actually (perhaps) about. “As soon as the clock starts ticking for the elderly, the relatives show up, they suck up to each other and then they start fighting about the inheritance. That’s macabre, but that’s the way it is.” You believe her immediately, the greed, logical. After that, things are no longer so clear.
Some things are obvious from a criminalistic point of view, others are not. Here’s a logic problem that Vincent Ross notices, because it’s a delightfully chilling twist. That is very fine and very terrible. In the final image, one wonders whether it’s actually that easy officially, but above all one shudders at the brutal sadness. And about how the shamelessly short life can then also put people off.
“Police call 110: Hildes Erbe”, ARD, Sun., 8:15 p.m.
