Die Mitte der Welt (Centre of My World)

Die Mitte der Welt (Centre of My World): 2016

Cast: Louis Hofmann (Phil), Jannik Schümann (Nicholas), Sabine Timoteo (Glass), Svenja Jung (Kat)

IMDB: 7.2

The movie takes place in the countryside of Germany. It starts by introducing the characters through Phil's point of view. Phil has a routine in his life which includes his mom, sister and best friend Kat. His routine is broken when he returns from the language camp. He finds his mom and sister not speaking to each other for a reason and he falls for a new guy. It's about the complications of relationships and the non-ideal bonds that people form.

Personal Thoughts: The movie was great even if it was about a clishé subject like relationships. The characterisations were really interesting and detailed especially of Glass and Kat. I just really like that his mother's name was Glass which somehow suited her fragile character. It was sort of mysterious what had caused for the relationship of his mother and sister to fall apart and even though his sister had done something horrible, the storytelling of the scene was authentic. I thought the parts where Phil was telling about his childhood were one of the most fascinating parts of the movie. Also, most of the movies are about how people fall in love and everything in their lives become perfect but the fact that all the relationships in this movie were imperfect was what made it undeniably realistic. I think the atmosphere and how people and events were so integrated with nature were also pretty interesting. For example, when Phil first arrived, he found out that a storm had wrecked the whole town just before he realised nothing is perfect anymore in his household which does bring a metaphorical meaning to the storm itself. I also enjoyed the fact that his sister was able to connect to animals which made everything even more supernatural yet not even a bit unrealistic. Similarly, the problem between his mother and his sister was connected to nature. I later on realised that nature symbolised problematic events in their lives. One more thing to add is that Germany was a pretty setting for the scenes since everything was so green and almost disconnected from the rest of the world. Overall, I really liked the symbolism and characterisations in the movie which definitely makes it worth watching.