March 31 (Sunday, 4 PM)
Winter Sleepers (Germany, 1997)
Jewish Educational Alliance (5111 Abercorn St.)
tickets: $10  (cash only)  

Box office opens at 3:30.  The film will start promptly at 4. 

Set in a small snowbound Alpine resort  between Christmas and New Year, the film traces the relationships among five characters whose circumstances and actions set in motion a riveting meditation on fate and chance, memory and identity, and life's ironies that (ironically) only we (and not the characters) can see.  In German with English subtitles. 120 minutes. 

"Winter Sleepers  isn't a breezy, pop-art confection like Run Lola Run,  which played out a frantic action scenario in three successive versions, but rather a low-key meditation on destiny and its sly, unrelenting power. Like Krzysztof Kieslowski, the late Polish director whose films were immersed in notions of destiny and spiritual connection, Tykwer (whose Heaven was originally  a Kieslowski project) embraces the idea that we're all linked to one another. Life and happenstance, he suggests, are a series of interdependent chain reactions: none of us is ever alone, no matter how fiercely we might deny that fact. But there's another factor at work here. Unlike Kieslowski, Tykwer is a complete movie animal: a filmmaker, like Spielberg or Lucas, so thoroughly submerged in cinema, and so knowledgeable of past films and directors, that his work is in constant dialogue with the traditions and idioms he reflects....
For Tykwer, the love of film is a way of grasping onto time and trying to make it stand still. There's a wistful nostalgia, a loneliness in that effort ...."  He's a fine visual stylist as well. Tykwer uses color thematically -- each of the characters has a signature color that helps define them -- and lets the snowbound winter landscape suggest the strange power of nature and destiny. This is a movie by a man who adores film and relishes its potential." San Francisco Chronicle

"The film has terrific vitality, from its astute ensemble performances to Frank Griebe's dynamic, expressive camera work with striking use of color to establish mood. "  LA Times

"Kinetic, sexy and full of meaningful coincidences and intertwined fates"   New York Daily News

"Angst-ridden, yet graceful, stylish, and optimistic allegory about swerving off one road and finding your way back via another."  The Boston Globe

"From its ominous opening to its spectacular climactic stunt, the hypnotic precursor to director Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run is a quieter but creepier affair." TV Guide