The Tower - DVD

Film: The renowned surgeon Richard Hoffmann (Jan Josef Liefers) leads a seemingly harmonious life with his family in Dresden's tower district. But behind the facade it crumbles violently. Richard, who hopes to succeed the outgoing head of the clinic, is secretly having an affair with secretary Josta Fischer (Nadja Uhl), with whom he even has an illegitimate daughter. So far, he has been able to hide his double life from his wife Anne (Claudia Michelsen) and his son Christian (Sebastian Urzendowsky). But a bad decision from Richard's past catches up with him and his carefully built double life now seems to be his undoing.

Christian, meanwhile, plans to follow in his father's footsteps professionally. But to get a place at medical school, he must volunteer for service with the NVA. But the boy can not withstand the pressure that prevails in the People's Army, and so he ends up after some time even in military prison. His uncle Meno (Götz Schubert), who works as an editor for a publishing house in Dresden, also plays with his freedom. In principle, his job is nothing more than enforcing state censorship. When he meets the system-critical writer Judith Schevola (Valery Cheplanova) and sees the consequences of his work, he develops a form of civil courage that could become very dangerous for him...

Christian Schwochow (The Invisible) has taken on the extremely difficult task of adapting Uwe Tellkamp's celebrated bestseller The Tower into a film. For his elaborate adaptation, he not only had a top-class ensemble of actors at his disposal. With just under three hours, he also had plenty of time to tell the almost 1000-page story. Admittedly, some of the novel's plot lines had to be shortened or omitted altogether, and not all of the characters are as carefully fleshed out as they are in the book. Nevertheless, Schwochow's film adaptation can be described as absolutely successful.

This is primarily due to the very good screenplay, which manages very well to compress the enormous complexity of the novel and condense it into a rousing family drama. This proves to be much more accessible than the novel, which can be quite unwieldy at times. Thomas Kirchner, who is responsible for the adaptation, has understood very well that a (television) film has to speak a completely different language than the book. While the reader can reflect directly on individual sentences and their deeper meaning, there is little time for this when watching a film. Therefore, the adaptation had to be simpler, which did not detract from the dramatic strength of the story.

In addition to the good implementation of the story, the first-class cast is another great strength of the two-parter. Although Jan Josef Liefers has the biggest and also the most central role in the film, the whole thing is a real ensemble piece in which even smaller roles are of enormous importance. So also supporting actors like Nadja Uhl, Valery Tscheplanowa or Josephin Busch can really shine. The most lasting impression among the main characters is left by Götz Schubert (Tage die bleiben) as Meno Rohde. The scene in which he tries to bring a manuscript to the West for Judith Schevola is one of the more intense moments of this drama, thanks to his convincing portrayal.

Der Turm is a gripping family story, a convincing literary adaptation and sophisticated television entertainment that is dramaturgically and visually far superior to many German cinema productions. For those who missed the two-parter on TV or would like to see it again, this DVD can be warmly recommended. Absolutely worth seeing!

Picture + Sound: Since only a data-reduced press sample was available for testing, no rating can be given here about the final picture and sound quality.

Extras: Unfortunately, the DVD has no bonus material to offer.

Conclusion: The Tower is a very successful film adaptation of the bestseller of the same name by Uwe Tellkamp, which manages to compensate for the complex story to a rousing family drama, which can convince with a coherent set, a dense dramaturgy and especially with good actors. The fact that the technically well-produced DVD has no bonus material to offer is hardly a negative factor. For friends of sophisticated TV entertainment from Germany absolutely recommendable!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp