The Princess and the Warrior
The Princess and the Warrior is a 2000 German film directed by Tom Tykwer, the director behind Run Lola Run. The German title for the film is Der Krieger und die Kaiserin. The film is a lot like Run Lola Run, in that it contains many of the same thematic elements and places a great emphasis on the importance of escape and fate. Along with having the same director and similar themes, The Princess and the Warrior also shares a lead actress with Run Lola Run, with German actress Franka Potente as the story’s protagonist.
The Princess and the Warrior follows the life of Sissi (Potente), a psychiatric hospital nurse. She has dedicated most of her life to the hospital and the patients there feel a strong attachment to her in various ways. For the most part, the life of a nurse is the only life Sissi has ever known. She is used to being needed and used to being torn in multiple directions at once. Sissi knows little about the rest of the world. As we meet Sissi, we find that she is asking for help in wrapping up the affairs of a friend’s dead mother. She eventually runs into Bodo, played by Benno Furmann. Bodo is a former soldier living under a tremendous emotional burden. He has recently turned to a life of crime and, with the help of his brother, is planning a heist. Bodo and Sissi become involved with one another in a variety of ways as the film’s countless plots spiral towards one another.
The performances within Tykwer’s work are good enough, I suppose. Potente is engaging as Sissi and she brings a certain humanity to the role that allows for various identifiable aspects. Unfortunately, however, the spiraling and overwrought plot quickly strips that common ground away and leaves behind a residue of a character that really deserved a lot better. Furmann’s Bodo suffers a similar fate, as Tykwer simply attempts to conduct far too much energy here and loses any real meat in the characterizations in the process. The Princess and the Warrior suffers from a lack of real identity and a lack of potent pacing.
The film, clocking in at 135 minutes, could have easily been divided into two or three films as a result of the sheer separation of the subject matter. Sequences develop slowly within Sissi’s life in the hospital, outside of the hospital, and back into the hospital. The film plays out more like a soap opera that has been glued together and less like a cohesive unit. It is scattered and often suffers from the weight of its own undivided attention, losing the audience in the process and running the ship aground with problematic results. The outcome from such a directorial choice is that the film easily becomes bland and very tepid in nature. The Princess and the Warrior, which could have been a captivating film about redemption and found love, ends up being a wandering beast of a film that loses each important theme just as the audience is able to grasp it.
Tykwer over-directs the living hell of this film, to put it bluntly. Scenes unfold with slo-mo captures, lots of colour (to the point of being unnatural) and gaudy looking set-ups between its performers and the environment they’re in. The slow-motion leap from the building in the murky green water near the end of the film is a prime example of this mode of direction and it diminishes the quality of the scene and damns it straight to campy hell instead. The results of such over-direction are not pretty, as everything in the film suffers. Tykwer uses looping and a constant musical score to drive this film because the plot and the characters are not deemed important enough.
The Princess and the Warrior is a film that is sadly tepid and bland. It begins with elements of promise, but is quickly derailed by its own motivation and its own pretentious love with itself. The performances are good enough, although nothing is truly captivating, and the central plot (minus the many trappings of distraction) is good enough for a look, but the film overall suffers too much to be a recommended piece of art. Instead, The Princess and the Warrior is merely a forgettable attempt at something substantial from Tykwer. There are far better and far more interesting pieces of German cinema out there to explore, indeed.
Trailer:
