00 Schneider - Jagd auf Nihil Baxter

Helge Schneider's 1994 German comedy hands the detective form entirely over to nonsense. The clown Bratislav Metulskie is found dead at the Apollo circus and the retired inspector 00 Schneider is called in to take the case. Schneider and his elderly sidekick Körschgen set about finding the killer, but the investigation never proceeds properly, every scene drifts off the subject and the characters talk at length about nothing relevant. That is exactly where the comedy comes from: a man placed inside a genre who has no interest in it. Schneider is also a musician and works with a logic close to jazz improvisation, moving elsewhere before a scene has finished. It acquired a cult audience in Germany. Who it's for: viewers who like absurdist comedy and films that dismantle narrative form. Who it's not for: anyone who would rather not watch a film whose jokes rest on German wordplay and largely vanish in translation.