2024-10-06 09:55:54
Dagmar Manzel was Paula Ringelhahn, probably the most lifestyle-oriented of all the “Tatort” detectives. It was a true bulwark against the madness of the world. Now he is retiring with an almost archaic tragedy.
Why did God invent the filth, the madness of the world? Because we can better appreciate what is beautiful. Says the wisest of all television commissioners.
Her name is Paula Ringelhahn. And Dagmar Manzel plays her. Paula Ringelhahn, it is believed, looked into all the cracks of this present, saw all the filth. And he has not lost his calm, his faith in beauty, a sort of atheistic trust in God, the ability to be amazed.
Of this honey seller with a heart of gold, for example, who loves her colleague Felix Voss, who somehow always wanders through life, and of whom she says, on her way to the next dead man, to the next crime scene, what a gift a human being can be.
Paula Ringelhahn gives hope. We can use everything we can get, especially in dirty times like these. We will miss him. “However,” a title that can certainly be understood as resistant, is his tenth and final “crime scene.”
The story comes from Max Färberböck, who invented the Franconian Commissariat, and Stefan Betz and Danny Rosness translated it into images. It will not be disposed of explosively as our colleagues in Frankfurt did last week.
He leaves as he was, quietly and wisely. He sings another song, “Sound of Silence” by Paul Simon, this national anthem of solitude and silence. Fabian Hinrichs, aka Felix Voss, sheds another tear. Then it’s over.
A killer that everyone likes
But we didn’t want to tell you. But the legend of Lenni and what it caused in the world. Lenni is said to have killed his girlfriend. That’s why he’s in prison. At a certain point he can’t take it anymore. Because everyone likes it. Because no one believes he did what he was supposed to do. Lenni is melting.
And with that he is back in the world, in madness. “If you push the button, you can’t escape,” sings Barry McGuire at the beginning of “Nevertheless.” The song is called “Eve of Destruction”. Lenni’s suicide is the eve of destruction; it triggers a chain reaction, a dance of death from which no one can escape, from which there is no escape.
Don’t even look away. “Nevertheless” has an almost fatal effect from the first black and white images at the beginning, where we see someone being killed on the streets of Nuremberg, someone picking up a gun.
Since no one, not even the Nuremberg police chief, is convinced of Lenni’s guilt, since everyone feels guilty, Lenni’s file is reopened. The dead man’s lovers are questioned and their alibis checked. Lenni’s sisters extend their claws towards the inspectors, who approach them as if they were walking in heated rooms.
They persecute the young man with the flimsiest of all alibis. The son of an entrepreneur. His name is Stephan Dellmann. He falls from the railing of his balcony. Like a Greek tragedy, Färberböck’s Nocturne, this wicked nocturnal story, weaves together the lives of two families, driven by pain, anger and revenge.
Rally in disaster
Stephan’s father (Fritz Karl), an unprecedented rehabilitation success – in prison for murder, then building a business empire from nothing – sends Hans Drescher, who still owes him something since he left prison. Stephan’s mother (Ursina Lardi) observes everything in the cold bedroom of her wedding, as if she had a silent soul.
Lenni’s sisters (Mercedes Müller and Anne Haug) have not very bright friends. And then there are the other Dellmann children. In a sort of violent demonstration they run towards disaster. Sometimes you want to stop the action and gather everyone together for a family constellation at the “crime scene”. There would be less blood loss.
The Dellmanns and the Kranz attack each other. And everything goes wrong. One tile falls, then the other. Then there’s a bang on the streets of Nuremberg, as if Quentin Tarantino had briefly taken over the editorial team of “Tatort” at Bayerischer Rundfunk. Dead bodies are lying around. It’s not over yet.
There are many whispers in this story. A subtle symphonic texture carries the images. Despite the violent fireworks he sets off, Färberböck plays primarily with shadows. No “crime scene” uses the genre’s plot palette like Franconia. The colors change, the voices, the noises fade. Färberböck brakes and goes back.
And what you see always strikes you. Darkness grows and dirt. Let’s hope that when Fabian Hinrichs investigates on his own, the beauty and truthfulness that has always helped against all the madness of the world remains in Franconia.
#ARD #Tatort #Franconian #thermal #chamber #closes