This Crazy Heart

A film set in Germany. Lenny is twenty-four. The son of a rich heart surgeon. He does not work. He throws parties, drives cars, and spends his father's money. One night he causes an incident. His father has had enough. He makes a decision: the money stops. He sets a condition. Lenny will look after a patient. David is fifteen. He has a congenital heart condition and does not have much time. From there the film is a story of caring. Lenny does not want it. The boy talks constantly. Obsessed with rules, obsessed with facts, and he never stops. He has a list. Things he wants to do before he dies. The list is odd. Some of it small, some impossible. Lenny starts working through it. From there the film becomes a road story. The two of them get in a car. There is the sea, a campsite, a nightclub and a girl on the way. David wants to meet a girl. What the narrative is interested in is not illness but time: its idea is that both of them are wasting theirs, and that one having a great deal and the other having none does not change it. David's mother does not know about the trip. She is protecting her child and the narrative allows her to be right. His condition worsens on the road. The ending is predictable and the narrative does not hide it. The tone is light. It sits between comedy and drama and plays too safe in its emotional moments. The structure is a known shape. Such narratives have been made many times in both German and American cinema. The source is Lars Amend's book; he genuinely spent time with a boy named Daniel and the book came out of that. Elyas M'Barek was among the biggest German draws of the period. Marc Rothemund directed. Elyas M'Barek, Philip Noah Schwarz and Nadine Wrietz are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes emotional road films and mainstream German cinema. Who it is not for: anyone looking for novelty; the narrative applies every step of the genre in turn.