Review of Radetzkymarsch

"Radetzkymarsch" is a co-production from Austria, Germany and France released in 1994, so this one has its 25th anniversary this year. The film is mostly in the German language and there are different versions out there. Probably somewhere they even edited into a full feature film, but it is a mini series in fact. The original included 3 episodes and ran for a total of almost 5 hours while the version listed here on imdb with 4 hours and 15 minutes is one that includes 2 episosdes I think. But I will not go any further into detail about this shorter version as I watched the almost 300-minute original. The first episode is the longest at over 2 hours. Episode 2 is rather short at under 80 minutes and the final chapter runs for almost 100 minutes again. So you can watch it in one sitting, but you really need patience and admittedly the subject won't make it too easy either. This is pretty disappointing though as the cast is not bad at all. Max von Sydow almost always delivers quality, not only in his Bergman collaborations and he really has a wlot of screen time here. Charlotte Rampling has less, but when she is seen, then she is captivating. These two are the big names here, most likely far more famous than Tilman Günther, who was still very young when this was made and he never really broke through the way you could imagine if he gets cast in a film like this playing a central character. The rest of the cast most people I don't know the names, but this does not mean they were bad or anything and they are probably very experienced actors with prolific careers in their own right. But yeah, I must give this mini series a thumbs-down overall just like I give each episode a thumbs-down. I will admit that this is certainly fairly biased, at least to some extent, as while I like political movies, the time and era depicted here has always been one that did not interest me too much. But maybe it is an achievement by the filmmakers here that the era looks as bleak and emotionless as it is decribed by many today. Hostorians I mean of course, not people living there, those are all gone. And sadly, when the action moves on to the time right before the beginning of World War I and there is a mention of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, then the film or I should say the mini-series is pretty much over. Such a shame. If you have a bigger interest in the Austrian/Hungarian empire, then this is one to watch for you. But if you don't beforehand, then this will not get you interested unfortunately. Not at all. On the contrary, it will drag on and on and once you've lost focus, it is also impossible to get in again. At least that's what it felt like for me. So as a whole my suggestion is to skip the watch here, even if there are som positive components like the costumes for example and with that I am mostly referring to the military uniforms. If you still want to give it a go and are uncertain, feel free to go ahead and decide after the first hour or the first episode if you want to keep watching because the quality pretty much stays the same and if you are not somebody like myself who always watches until the (bitter) end, then you can stop there if you aren't convinced yet. One thing that surprised me a bit here is the involvement by Gernot Roll. I know Axel Corti was the number 1 man in charge, but Roll is considered among Germany's top cinematographers of all time, maybe even the number 1, but every time he directed the outcomes was not good gently-speaking. Some may say this is a contender for his best directorial effort, but yeah, sadly he did not win me over here either, even if it probably nowhere near his weakest directorial efforts. All in all, this mini-series made for the small screen a quarter of a century ago is one that gets a thumbs-down from me. Watch something else instead.