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For many countries, the Germans are still a source of intense fascination. To the British, Germany is perhaps one of the most despised but also most envied countries in the world, while Austria and its more powerful brother are closely bound by their continuing love-hate relationship.
DRIVING GERMANY attempts to explore the complex enigma “Germany” in a focused way: via the car and the Germans’ love for it. The car functions here as an anthropological subject of study for examining a nation, an approach of the field of so-called material anthropology.
“The Germans are a people who lack the possibility of publicly showing and acting out their feelings. The only exception is the car and driving.” (quote: Dr. Klaus Atzwanger, anthropologist and behavioral biologist at the University of Vienna)
If this seemingly private and yet so public place, these few square meters of car, are where Germans can live out and show their emotions, this would appear to be the most fitting scene for this film.
In this sense, the film becomes a research trip that uses psychological, anthropological, and sociological approaches to explore fundamental aspects of the German soul: identity, love, desire, aggression, dreams. Our guides along the way are scientists as well as behavioral biologists, sociologists, psychologists, and philosophers. Nevertheless, these experts do not turn DRIVING GERMANY into an academic type of film, but instead the film’s style is maintained through its cinematic narrative.
Stations and Stages of Life
Furthermore, the car is also a rite that is strongly connected with the stages in a person’s life. What power does the car have over Germans that renders them willing to sacrifice certain things in its name and makes them the only European country to oppose a speed limit on the grounds that it compromises their freedom?
The second group of protagonists is thus the German drivers themselves. Together these individual protagonists, who represent the above-mentioned stages of life, constitute a composite picture of the archetypical German. |
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