If you get dizzy at the sight of blood and syringes, you were well advised to change the channel at the current “crime scene” from Frankfurt am Main. The filmmakers really got into it and left out almost nothing that makes a good horror trip! In the ARD at 8.15 p.m.!! First dribbles of drugs in the bubbly, then endless lines of coke, syringes penetrating the skin, a screwdriver in the throat, a nail in the foot, and finally a giant penis of a blue whale exhibited as a demonstration object has to serve as a weapon to pierce the abdomen like a stake to pierce a murderer! Okay, where’s the booze? As a viewer you have to digest that first, as long as you persevered.
The film “Leben. Tod. Ekstasy” is about Adrian Goser, a psychoanalyst who carries out special psychoanalysis with psychedelic drugs. Absolute self-knowledge is promised. But after a group session, all participants are dead – except Goser. The inspectors Anna Janneke (Margarita Broich) and Paul Brix (Wolfram Koch) try to reconstruct what happened and lead Goser to the scene of the crime in order to give his memory a boost. In the process, they themselves come under fire.
A substance that inspectors probably rarely have to deal with in reality. So it’s not a “crime scene” for fans of realistic crime thrillers. If you can accept that, this over-the-top horror can be classified as quite exciting entertainment. The resolution is quite banal for the fuss and flickered umpteen times on screens in a similar way. But that doesn’t detract much from the entertainment. Especially since this film scores with the characters.
There is actor Martin Wuttke, who was once a “Tatort” commissioner in Leipzig and is now the Dr. Goser mimes. (By the way: In real life, Wuttke and Broich, who plays inspector Janneke here, were a couple for a long time.) Wuttke, who is considered an excellent theater actor, can let off steam here in the role of a savior called to higher things, who is sometimes submissive, sometimes bored, but can also really rage. Great theater on the TV screen! Captivating to watch. But it’s also good that this over-the-top character faces investigators Brix and Janneke, whom the viewer can almost always hold on to and breathe deeply.
Brix and Janneke are ordinary people in the best sense of the word – without excessive quirks and with a very down-to-earth look. Don’t get me wrong: All the “crime scene” inspectors who are more off track have their justification, they make the “crime scene” cosmos so dazzling. But sometimes straight-forward investigators are needed, especially Paul Brix puts the aloof Dr. Goser responded with stone-dry comments that pulverized every spell put on about the doctor.
At the end, in a pub, Brix and Janneke decide to call each other first – Paul and Anna, life can sometimes be that simple.