Berlin crime scene: Not another midlife crisis

A A wolf was seen and a corpse was found in Berlin’s Teufelsberg. The question is: does one have to do with the other? Just wait and see, says Inspector Karow (Mark Waschke), what the evidence says.

But that doesn’t happen, because shortly afterwards he and his colleague Bonard meet a crazy survival trainer (Anne Ratte-Polle) in the forest. How practical, because it’s the last episode with Corinna Harfouch as Inspector Bonard, and she’s supposed to take center stage a bit in her last case.

That’s why she quickly presses the pause button on the crime plot and takes us on a little self-discovery survival tour.

Ms. Bonard is in crisis because of her retirement. And nothing helps better than being on your own in nature. That’s why she leaves Karow behind (“I have to do this now!”) and follows the survival aunt into the West Berlin undergrowth.

Interchangeable midlife crisis

A lot is being said goodbye to German Sunday thrillers at the moment. Most recently, Commissioner Borowski in Kiel and public prosecutor Klemm in Münster stopped. Farewells will soon follow in Dortmund, Halle, Munich and Vienna.

It’s always elegant when the television commissioners take their hats off relatively quietly, as humble servants of crime entertainment. Unfortunately, more and more of them have main character syndrome and besiege the entire plot of their last film with some interchangeable midlife crisis.

Corinna Harfouch can’t help it that a midlife crisis farewell plot like that was written for her. She’s just a grande dame of television.

In any case, we don’t hear any more about the question of wolves and corpses; instead, there’s making fires with flint stones and catching fish with a pointed stick. Why? It slowly becomes clear that this “crime scene” is structured more thematically associatively than narratively.

Wolf, forest, danger

The theme is survival, crisis, and that “man’s man is wolf.” While Bonard is making a campfire in Grunewald, Karow is in the city fucking a tech bro-prepper (Nils Kahnwald) in his own luxury bunker. Wolf, forest, danger, survival, bunker, okay, chain of associations understood.

There’s nothing wrong with an associative script. But it’s quite difficult for a crime thriller fan to get along in a film that simply leaves aside all investigations, leads, suspicions and motives in favor of a bunch of isolated plots that only have a symbolic connection with each other.

Mind you, there is nothing wrong with sending a “crime scene” detective into the wilderness in search of herself. But in Berlin’s Teufelsberg, of all places? There you can hike, swim, picnic, do photo shoots for album covers and fly kites. What you can’t do there is shoot an atmospheric “crime scene”. On her “survival” trip, Inspector Bonard is always within earshot of the B 2 and A 115.

It’s a shame, above all, that this film, which makes a big deal about the crisis of trust of our time, ultimately has nothing to say about it. It shows a few archetypes sleeping in the forest and building bunkers for themselves. Look, there is such a thing, says this film – awesome, right? And then it stays that way.