Coffee in Berlin
A Coffee in Berlin doesn’t hide its influences. Easy comparisons abound: The light cynicism of Noah Baumbach, the woozy, grayscale introspection of Jim Jarmusch, the ironic surrealism of Woody Allen, the city-spanning day-in-the-life myths of Berlin: Symphony of a Great City or Lonesome.
But though A Coffee in Berlin shares some of the sweeping, wide-eyed cinematography of those latter films, it also turns a critical eye on its titular city, eschewing easy, misty romanticism for a more grounded, occasionally bleak take on the daily travails of modern urban life.
Niko Fischer (Tom Schilling, Ludwig II) is a law school dropout and part-time alcoholic floating through life in downtown Berlin; he’s left his girlfriend, lost his driver’s license and was just cut off by his wealthy father. The film follows Niko as he goes about a typical day: bumming around with an out-of-work actor, casually resenting his father, stealing rides on the train. All he really wants is a simple cup of coffee.
Niko’s Berlin is beautiful, but it’s a challenge at every turn. Every aspect of the city — the cash machine, his depressed neighbor, the train — is a chore, an obstacle that can only be relieved with a surreptitious pull from a cigarette or a stiff vodka.
But then, what can you expect when it’s really a city at war with itself, torn between burger-chomping actors dressed up like Hunter S. Thompson and those still donning SS uniforms, between a futuristic technoscape and pithy anti-authoritarian graffiti?
Niko is always running — from responsibility, from commitment, from women. He is Berlin, desperate to move forward while always, somehow, managing to keep one foot in the past. He runs, the trains run, but he and his city are both frustrated inertia embodied, personified.
Beautiful and sad-eyed, Schilling plays Niko as a void in the center of his own story, a passive bystander posing as James Dean. He’s soulful, even when he’s caught in generic introspective hip-guy malaise; likable, even when the script strains to make his pissy floater into a stoic everyman.
The same can be said of the movie around him: A Coffee in Berlin seems to want to serve as both a light trifle and a profound reflection on the state of modern Germany. Its slacker-chic aesthetic is comfortable and fun, until a few abrupt detours into melodrama suddenly remind you that this film has ambition with a capital “A.”
As a film, Coffee in Berlin is often engaging and occasionally affecting; unfortunately, it’s nothing you haven’t tasted before.
