Und Morgen die ganze welt
“The Federal Republic of Germany is a democratic and social state.
All Germans have the right to resist anyone who seeks to abolish this constitutional order if no other remedy is available.
“Und Morgen die ganze welt” was Germany’s official entry at the Oscars this year.
Julia von Heinz weaves a powerful story that is both bristling in its current nature while remaining tethered to other eras at the same time. The film is essentially a deep dive into a student anti-fascist commune, told through the protagonist Luisa, a 20 year old, first year law student. What we get to witness in about an hour and 50 minutes is the increasing differences & splinters among the residents in the commune over how they should fight the rising Nazism based white supremacy.
The story is full of flawed men. The women, by contrast, are the tale’s true believers — and even though director Julia doesn’t make a deliberate effort to highlight that fact, we get that through the many streaks of the main characters.
The story is set in Mannheim, Germany, but it could be anywhere in the world. The way in which a new arrival such as Luisa, for all her baggage and privilege is shown to redirect the movement back to its older principles through many misteps, leaves the audience with many questions — and that may be the whole point.
As shown during one of the earlier scenes when Luisa is attending a lecture on German constitution, the class debates where the lines are drawn when it comes to allowing for pre-emptive action to be taken against non-democratic groups.
But who makes that call?
Who decides which group is which?
Should the argument really be based on which end of the telescope you’re looking down?
Is there such a thing as balanced view when it comes to fascism?
The movie doesn’t quite falter but it drifts quite a bit in the last 45 minutes or so — and as gripping as some of the scenes are, I wished there was a direction in which the script flowed with conviction.
Then again, that’s the whole point of this movie.
The struggle is endless and not easily winnable. Everybody is compromised.
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As I publish this on May 19, 2021, Republicans are trying to rewrite what happened on Jan 6, 2021 — the darkest day of American democracy. They want Americans to forget that there was a deliberate effort by a sitting President to abolish the democratic order in the country. More than 80% of the sitting Congressmen and women from GOP think that no one should be held accountable for what happened on Jan 6, 2021. When the day comes, and I hope that day comes sooner — I would want the American constitution to be amended too to specifically allow for peaceful protests against white supremacy, naziism, racism, and fascism — anything that is used by anyone to subvert democracy & abolish the core order of constitutional federal republic the country is.
