A Coffee In Berlin

Cinema blasé at its most cliched and heavy handed in its absurdism. It's entertaining in spite of itself, though. The black and white cinematography sets the mood early on for a dreary, colorless story about caricatures of people going through their daily lives doing their thing, a trope of minimalist cinema we've already seen done much more subtle and effective. The main character is about the closest thing to a snot-nosed movie-equivalent Camus I can think of. He's a protagonist that is so lacking in personality that he actually compliments the tone of the film by being just as unaffected and aloof as the plot is. He goes about his day and nothing is urgent or striking, in spite of the fact that he seems to be at a crossroads of sorts. He shows little concern over his father cutting him off. Soon he'll have to get a job. He doesn't sweat it, not even a bit. This attitude of 'meh' leads to every encounter, regardless of how potentially engaging, resulting in little more than a vignette. This slack dramatic gravitas doesn't hold our attention. More so, it allows our minds to wander in and out of the picture, which isn't a terrible quality; certain audiences are known to relish this disaffected approach. There are moments of smirk-worthy humor and there aren't any overt errors, but it's just so unambitious that A Coffee in Berlin fails to leave a substantial emotional impact of any kind. Not a bad Sunday morning when you're lounging in your PJ's sipping Earl Gray and watching the rain fall outside. In fact, that sounds quite nice.