A young man slowly climbs a metal staircase. His face is pale and expressionless. He is accompanied by policemen. The final stop is an interrogation room. A voice from offstage plays the last lines of a farewell letter:
That night we will take revenge, revenge on the two people we love and who cheated us out of our love. Then we, Günther and I, will depart from life with a smile. That is the full truth.
This is the beginning of Achim von Borries' 2004 film Love in Thoughts about the Steglitz student tragedy that took place in Berlin on 28 June 1927 (more on the historical background here). Daniel Brühl and August Diehl play high school students Paul Krantz and Günther Scheller, who promise each other one summer night to leave life together if they no longer feel love. This vow is preceded by a weekend that the two friends spend at the Schellers' summer house in Mahlow. Unfulfilled love, jealousy, loneliness and feelings that boil up and cannot find an outlet lead to a tragic end. Günther shoots his sister's friend with whom he is unhappily in love, and then himself. Paul does not fulfil his part of the plan and finally has to answer to the court.
Making a film about such a delicate subject is no easy undertaking. Presumably in order to make the matter more comprehensible to an audience from the 2000s, Achim von Borries, known as one of the directors of the series Babylon Berlin, has opted for a modernised version of the 1920s, often deliberately foregoing authenticity. Some of the women shown wear long hair, some of the clothes cannot be credibly placed in the period and the party of the young people in the Schellers' summer house seems at times as if taken from an American college film (or the German version of it); drinking games in the best Majorca style and group dances reminiscent of Macarena times, plus anachronistic record scratching. What is supposed to be a lightening of the mood is more disturbing and irritating than it brings us closer to the subject matter. The viewer is taken out of the action because he constantly has the feeling that something is not right or has not been thought through to the end. The attempt to create a modern approach seems more like there was no money or time for the right costumes or props. Leaving that aside, Love in Thoughts is nevertheless a film worth watching, thanks largely to its two leads. The feelings and hardships of the two are atmospherically and believably portrayed in the film. The camera captures the initial light-heartedness of the friends on their way to the summer house. Two of them chase along a country road on a bicycle, the light is warm, upbeat jazz music plays in the background, they laugh, have taken off their jackets and loosened their ties. Quieter moments show the young people isolated in their rooms or together outside in the twilight philosophising about life and death, the light has turned cold, dark clouds are gathering in the summer sky.
The end of the film is as oppressive and suspenseful as a chamber play. The agony of Paul and Günther's souls and the final course of the crime do not leave the viewer untouched.
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