THE MOVING PICTURE BOY ARCHIVE

JUNGES LICHT

Title: Junges Licht
English translation of title: Young Light
Year of Release: 2016
Director: Adolf Winkelmann
Principal Boy: Oscar Brose plays Julian Collien
Genre: Coming-of-age
Country of Production: Germany
Length: 2 hours, 2 minutes
Language: German
Availability: A blu-ray is available. An English subtitle file is available from opensubtitles.org, albeit a rather poor quality one.

Synopsis
Lederhosened 12 year old Julian lives in a flat in the Ruhr region of Germany in the early 1960s, with his coal-mining father, his mother, and his younger sister. This is very much a coming-of-age movie, as Julian learns the fallibilities of the adults around him, leading to a rebellion against his mother as he finally asserts himself.

The film alternates between colour and black and white, as well as between different aspect ratios. These constant alterations no doubt have some significance or other, but whatever significance they have is lost on the Editor. The film's cinematography is, however, undeniably beautiful.

One of the characters in the movie, Konrad Gorny, the Collien family's landlord, is portrayed as a boysexual man, who pursues Julian; but Julian shows increasing unease at Gorny and by the end is desperate to avoid him. Why this should be the case is obscure, since Gorny's pursuit has only been by way of friendliness towards the boy. Surely, in the early 1960s, a 12 year old boy would not have seen such friendliness on the part of a man as a sexual threat, or as any kind of threat.

Julian seems to have no school friends, and his interaction with the local boys seems confined to a desire to join a local 'gang' of three boys with a somewhat vicious leader. At one point, he rescues a dog from the gang whom the gang have doused with petrol with the sadistic intention of setting it alight.

Source material
The film is based on the 2004 novel of the same name by German author Ralf Rothmann (born 1953), who himself lived for part of his childhood in the Ruhr where his father worked as a coal miner. An English translation of the novel, under the title Young Light, was published in 2010. The novel (with which the Editor is familiar) offers nothing in the way of further psychological insight into the actions of the characters, since, although it is told in the first person from the point of view of Julian, the author never describes his protagonist's feelings or internal states, as opposed to his outward speech and actions.

Production photos

Below: Peter Lohmeyer (left) as Konrad Gorny with Oscar Brose as Julian

Screencaps

Behind the scenes shots

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