Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32850 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-11-07
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: German
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 122 minutes

Amazon.com
Tom Tykwer, writer-director of the international hit Run Lola Run, shows a more pensive side with Winter Sleepers. The film examines the lives of five characters in the aftermath of an auto accident. As with Run Lola Run, Tykwer's main concern is with chance and coincidence, and the ways people unwittingly influence the course of each other's lives. Theo, a farmer, sets off to take his horse to the vet, unaware that his daughter is hidden in the trailer. Momentarily distracted, Theo swerves to avoid a sports car coming the other way and crashes into a mountain slope, critically injuring his daughter. The sports car is covered by snow, and René, the driver, digs his way out and leaves the scene. Meanwhile translator Rebecca negotiates a stormy-but-sexy relationship with loutish ski instructor Marco, both of them unaware that Marco's stolen car was involved in the crash, and Rebecca's roommate Laura nurses the young accident victim by day and begins a tentative relationship with René by night. While Winter Sleepers doesn't have the same manic pace as Lola, Tykwer's visual style is very much in evidence--he makes beautiful images of everything from the snow-covered Bavarian mountains to a cut finger. As it moves through a series of tiny but crucial events to a truly haunting ending, Winter Sleepers is in many ways reminiscent of Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter, both in its central plot device and in its melancholy atmosphere of fatal inevitability. --Ali Davis

From The New Yorker
Tom Tykwer wrote and directed this film before his hit "Run Lola Run," and it shares a similar obsession with chance happenings and coincidence. Rene, a young outcast who has lost his short-term memory, steals a sports coupe on a whim. Travelling up an icy mountain road, he swerves to avoid a farmer's station wagon, plunges off an embankment, and walks away from the scene, forgetting everything. The farmer is not so lucky; his daughter is gravely injured. Uncovering the identity of the "other driver" propels the film and eventually connects Rene with three other twentysomethings in the German alpine village: Marco, a blank, womanizing ski instructor; Rebecca, a blond temptress; and Laura, a local nurse. Tykwer displays mesmerizing skill with the camera-it zooms over mountaintops, slinks around corners, and spies from the ceiling. At surprising moments, the action spirals into an all-white screen, and whiteness becomes a recurring motif, a symbol of death and life. The stylistic brilliance is almost enough to distract you from the film's essential flatness. When played lightly, this kind of interconnected plot can build wonderful suspense, but when it's overplayed, as it is here, the story's greater resonance gets lost in all the machinations. In German. -Michael Agger
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Enigmatic and endearing, too
Many movies, most of them made in the wake of David Lynch's erratic career, are usually tagged as "mysterious" or "enigmatic" (think of some of Atom Egoyan's films). Tykwer's "Winter Sleepers", made just before "Run Lola Run", not only deserves the accolate but ennobles it. Set in the bleak, wintry German Alps, it intertwines several stories -- a failing farmer, a translator of romance novels, an amnesiac photographer -- in a story that shows how their lives intersected one day when a terrible accident befell two of them.

Tykwer takes his audience's intelligence for granted and does not spill all the beans at once. He lets us be participants in the puzzle instead of passive recipients, and the result is a movie that's rich, strange, and endearing all at the same time.

Twists of fate
Before Tom Tykwer created international hit "Run Lola Run" (or "Lola Rennt"), he created the ponderous "Winter Sleepers" (or "Winterschläfer"). Like Tykwer's later films, this one deals with fate, destiny, death, and love. It's an interesting execution, with a flawed climax and the occasional question of "where is this going?"

Laura (Marie-Lou Sellem) arrives at her little country cottage, where her pretty friend Rebecca (Floriane Daniel) lives. Things are complicated after the first evening: while handsome but loutish Marco (Heino Ferch) is in bed with Rebecca, a strange man (Ulrich Matthes) wanders over and takes Marco's car. But when he is driving, he causes an accident that puts a child in a life-threatening coma.

The child's father (Josef Bierbichler), stricken with grief, goes on the hunt for the man who accidently killed his daughter. That man, Rene, is now in love with Laura, but can't remember anything about the accident. Rene is also inadvertantly causing cracks in Laura and Marco's fragile, tempestuous relationship. One person will die -- two will find happiness -- and one will find freedom.

"Winter Sleepers" has a lot of the same themes and feel of Tykwer's later films, but more unpolished and loosely knit together. Though we know the fates of all these people are interconnected, much of the screen time is devoted to Laura and Rene's blossoming romance, or Marco and Rebecca's deteriorating one, and not to the central theme of the movie.

The cinematography is breathtaking, with a lot of Tykwer's signatures like a camera panning in a complete circle around Rene, and a character death never being shown except by a thud and darkness. As he often does, Tykwer filmed many scenes in a portentous manner, as if every tiny event could start off something important. Perhaps the biggest problem is the conclusion. While beautifully filmed, it seems out-of-character and a bit of an easy way out, as if Tykwer wasn't entirely sure how to end the various interconnected storylines.

One thing that Tykwer does well is give humanity in subtle ways to the characters, even the stupid, cheating Marco, who is genuinely miserable and guilt-stricken after his girlfriend falls off a ledge. Matthes is instantly sympathetic as the sensitive, memory-impaired Rene. Daniel and Sellem are quite nice in their roles as, respectively, the sexpot and the quiet wannabe-actress nurse.

"Winter Sleepers" lacks the tightness and focus of Tykwer's later films, though his good directing style is still present. However, those looking for an interesting philosophical drama/romance might want to check it out.

Not another Run Lola Run? You bet...
...much better. No question that Lola is a great movie, but turn off the soundtrack and it might get boring. This reminds me one of O'Henry's stories. Winter Sleepers takes it from a different angle. Not how the things might come if we miss by a minute the train or the bus, or if we take right or left. Winter Sleepers is deep. It tells you of what happens to us,is a reflection of how we behave in life itself...And we strugle to remember things we've done, to find explanation,no wonder!