Film: Christian Baron: Pride and Prejudice

Two women, probably social workers or teachers, are talking on the train. The point is that when a mother was asked to speak recently, you wouldn’t have been able to tell what kind of area she came from (Berlin-Lichtenberg, the shady part). Just a short snippet of conversation, but it sums up Christian Baron’s life’s work (he’s only 39) quite well. Baron published the novel “A Man of His Class” in 2020, in which he wrote about his childhood and youth and growing up with little money, but all the more pride and prejudice. At “nd” he had been a theater editor, political author and colleague for years. And if there’s one thing you’ve learned from him, it’s that it’s okay if the academic middle class and everyone for whom it feels good to step down has the Schantall jokes at the end of his articles stuck in their throats (of course his work is much more important than that).

In any case, the novel was a great success and an audio book and theater version were created from it. It is almost logical in terms of exploitation logic to make a film out of “A Man of His Class”.

The father drinks and hits, but it was important to Baron in the book not to let him look like a brutalized drunk.

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Four years after reading the book, this disgusting feeling of fear becomes reality again when you hear the dull bangs against the wall of the next room from the children’s perspective. It’s the mother’s head banging against the concrete. Next it’s their turn. You don’t even have to have experienced such scenes yourself and you can (briefly) feel the paralysis that Christian Baron knows so well.

The film, which will be shown on television (ARD) on October 2nd and will be available in the media library from September 27th, only covers the summer of the year, in contrast to the book, which covers a much larger time frame 1994 in the life of the Baron family. A year that is crucial for the protagonist Christian (Camille Loup Moltzen) because he is about to move from elementary school to high school, which his mother Mira (Mercedes Müller) is happy about, and his father Ottes (Leonard Kunz, great, how he does it). The burden of packing furniture translated into his hunched position) is met with rejection.

In general, this father figure, which already takes up a significant part of the book, is also overpowering here, in the truest sense, even when he is not in the picture. The father drinks and hits, but it was important to Baron in the book not to let him be the image of the brutalized drunk, and so the film also shows him as a man who wants to be good, but fails painfully because he doesn’t stand up the idea comes how. In good times he takes the children to the amusement park, in bad times he punches them because a glass tips over.

Looking at the father, the “Taz” author Doris Akrap has it in her review As already described, the book has its weaknesses. The father figure is sacrosanct, despite all his faults. The only fault is the system that mauled him and left him alone. This view is understandable from the inside, but not from the outside.

The film avoids this colored perception of the son and is more careful and merciless in its judgment of the father because it can be more dramatic. It simply shows where Ottes failed (and thus provides an explanation for the physical violence as an expression of helplessness and excessive demands even more clearly than the book). Aunt Juli (Svenja Jung) then says the decisive sentence: “Christian, you are just like your mother.” And by this he means his benevolent and warm view of his father, despite all the violence and humiliation he has done to the family.

The film focuses heavily on Christian’s point of view, which sometimes even emancipates itself from the book. A clever decision by the script (Nicole Armbruster and Marc Brummund), because the novel, which largely denies the inside view of the other protagonists, would not have offered anything else. Armbruster and Brummund have gracefully avoided the danger of becoming maudlin poverty porn. It could have gotten this far, because in German films you always have to expect the worst.

Instead, in the film adaptation, as in the book, everyone retains their dignity. It would have been nice if they had also used the broad Palatinate dialect mercilessly. And sometimes there is even a flash of subtle humor when the power goes out at Barons and the constantly blaring television suddenly turns off and you immediately get the feeling that the living room has just become less comfortable.

“A Man of His Class”, Germany 2024. Director and screenplay: Marc Brummund. With: Camille Moltzen, Leonard Kunz, Mercedes Müller. 91 minutes. Available in the ARD media library or on October 2nd, 8:15 p.m. (ARD)