This is a "full-body" movie. Get ready to be affected from head to toe.
This movie was recommended by my psychopathology professor when we studied Oppositional defiant disorder to observe the case and how difficult it was to watch the pain of Benni and everyone around her. This film invites us to be in her shoes, a child who has been through so much, who still wants her mother's love and care, who has no control over her own destiny within the system. Putting ourselves in the shoes of the mother who doesn't feel she has the means and resources to deal with her daughter's difficult case and in place of the workers of the system who dedicate their lives to helping these children, who suffer with the difficulties of their work and with purely human pains and whom I admire infinitely. It is difficult, raw, painful to watch how difficult, raw and painful it is to know that cases like this exist in real life and that the system, despite the efforts of its workers, is not prepared to deal with it.
I watched this the first time at Film Fest Ghent in 2019. This movie is extremely emotionally intense so be prepared! Performances were amazing, especially Helena Zengel. This movie always stayed in my thoughts as well, highly recommend.
There is noise in this film, but it is necessary. The system unable to control a girl's emotional rebellion. Helena Zengel, curiously, expresses more when she is silent, when her gaze exposes her inner fire. There are creative decisions of the script that are debatable (the stay in the forest). But it has interesting readings on the impotence of educators and their failure, even if the maternal fault is too obvious. Running away is the easiest exit, but where to?
Intense drama with an open end, leaving the viewer thinking
Shout by Saint PaulyBlockedParent2020-06-10T22:56:36Z
Watching Systemsprenger / System Crasher is like watching a monkey play with a box of live hand grenades in a maternity ward. You know what's going to happen, it's just a question of time.
System Crasher is aptly named because 1) it's about an 8-year-old girl with trauma who acts out so violently the German health care network has no place for her and 2) we, the viewer, hate her for her behavior yet can't hate her because of the abuse that caused it so our own systems crash.
The film's not an easy watch, but that's because it's so well made and because the child actor Helena Zengel is a tour de force in the role of Benni.
The biggest misstep is that System Crasher starts out at an intensity of 11, so it has nowhere to go but straight, which, tragically, flattens the narrative arc.