Snowflake (Schneeflöckchen)

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Snowflake follows a couple of outlaws, Tan and Javid, as they hunt down the man who is responsible for their families’ deaths. Fate has some other plans for them as they find themselves bound to an outlandish screenplay written by a bored dentist in his spare time. Allow me to clarify. These poor bastards and a handful of others are acting out exactly what the screenplay says and the writer isn’t big on happy funtime sunshine stories.

It’s hard to track exactly when the shit hits the fan in this film. It is presented like an early Tarantino film: many stories, told out of order, that come together to make some sort of sense in the end. I’ve seen this tactic fail more often than not but Snowflake does Tarantino damn near as well as the man himself.  If you take two parts Pulp Fiction, one part Reservoir Dogs, a cup of John Dies at the End, and a dash of Dogma, bake it all in a dystopian future oven at 420 degrees for two hours the finished product would be Snowflake. Needless to say, it was one hell of a ride.

The writing in this film is incredible. The plot is layered and meta as fuck; it’s not exactly hard to follow but it is definitely one you’ll want to pay attention to. I know I’ve already made the Tarantino comparison but this movie is pretty much what would happen if he wrote dark, modern, German fairy tales. The performances in this movie really bring the writing to life. The cast is perfectly balanced and everyone brought their A-game to the table.

This is not for viewers with short attention spans. In an age where a movie is considered long when it reaches the ninety minute mark, a full two hour runtime may be off-putting to some viewers. When you add subtitles to the mix (unless you speak German) some people might decide to skip this one. Those people would be fucking up in a big way. I hate when boring shit is thrown into a film just to bulk up the runtime but there is none of that in Snowflake. There is little to no filler in this film and you get all the exposition you need blended with action, dark humor, an engrossing plot, and some really solid visuals so there’s never really a lull. If you invest the time and attention, it pays off many times over. This might just be the most interesting and rewatchable movie you see this season.

All in all, would I recommend this film? Yes, especially if you’re a fan of Tarantino’s style of storytelling and dark fantasy. This is another winner brought to American viewers courtesy of the good folks over at Artsploitation Films. These guys are bringing some really great foreign films to the American masses and have been responsible for broadening my horizons. You can pick up this dark modern German fairytale when Snowflake falls on Blu-ray, DVD, and VOD December 4th.

3 thoughts on “Snowflake (Schneeflöckchen)

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