Product Description

Paula, an ambitious medical student, notices that several of her classmates are dying under unusual circumstances and investigates.
Genre: Foreign Film - German
Rating: R
Release Date: 7-JUN-2005
Media Type: DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45539 in DVD
• Brand: POTENTE,FRANKA
• Released on: 2001-04-03
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, German
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Georgian, Chinese, Thai
• Dubbed in: English, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 103 minutes

Amazon.com
The German thriller Anatomy is a Grand Guignol display of medical horror, dwelling on dissected flesh and body organs in jars. Paula (Franka Potente, the star of Run Lola Run) is a smart young medical student with a lot of family history: her grandfather is a celebrated surgeon and her father runs a low-income medical clinic. An award-winning essay gets her into a prestigious university, known for a strict but brilliant professor of anatomy. On the train to school, Paula saves the life of a punk rocker with a heart problem--only to find this same young man on her dissecting table a few weeks later in anatomy class. Her investigations into this coincidence lead her to discover an underground society of doctors who pursue medical research at all costs, and who sometimes give interesting medical specimens a little nudge on their way to death. Despite a clunky script, Anatomy has a slick look and some gruesome moments. Potente has an engaging presence and is surrounded by a good-looking young cast. This is pretty much a German version of movies like Final Destination, Urban Legend, and I Know What You Did Last Summer, and anyone who's a fan of those flicks will find much to enjoy here as well. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

Cuts like a knife and feels so right
Anatomy has a lot of good things to offers viewers: it's a horror film featuring red-hot German actress Franka Potente of Run, Lola, Run fame, and it quite ably delivers the goods. While not as groundbreaking as Run, Lola, Run, Potente's cinematic journey into the darker side of humanity is well-plotted and beautifully shot. Still being somewhat new to foreign films, I always find it fascinating to see how a foreign director molds and shapes a story. The look and feel of Anatomy is well-nigh perfect, and only a few minor issues with the plot and characterization keep it from earning five stars in my book. If you only familiarize yourself with one German actress, Potente is definitely the number one choice; she may be young, but she is a wonderfully developed actress who, I am sure, could carry the burden of a bad movie quite far on her own. Such an effort on her part is not needed in Anatomy, though, as this movie is quite good from start to finish, even turning out to be far less predictable than I was expecting.

Franka Potente plays Paula Henning, a young doctor-to-be who earns the right to study at a highly respected medical school in Heidelberg, the very school her proud, aging grandfather taught at years ago. She wants only to study and learn, but she ends up living with a fellow student from Munich named Gretchen (Anna Loos), who is quite a character in and of herself, and taking up with a strange fellow student named Caspar (Sebastian Blomberg) . The new students get an electrifying introduction to life at Heidelberg and soon begin their studies. When a young man whose life Paula had saved just days earlier turns up in the form of a cadaver on her lab table, she begins to grow uneasy. Convinced that the lad could not have died of his specific medical condition, she does a little research of her own and finds out that the guy was shot up with a substance that turns the blood into a rubbery substance. We the audience already know what happened to the poor guy; in fact, the opening scene of the movie takes us directly to a surgeon's table where a confused patient wakes up to find doctors basically turning his abdominal contents upside down. Such a scene might be a little disturbing to some, but the gore is, sadly, kept rather to a minimum throughout the entire movie.

A three-letter marking on her friend-turned-cadaver's body leads Paula into a realm of mystery, cruelty, and inherent danger. The Anti-Hippocratic Society, supposedly banned long ago, is apparently still operating under the noble auspices of Heidelberg's respected medical school; the members of this "secret lodge" don't let ethics or even common decency get in the way of their medical research, making a habit of dissecting human beings while these subjects are still alive. It's a pretty unpleasant business. To make matters worse, there is seemingly a rogue element of the Society at work, leading to several medical students themselves being killed not for dastardly research purposes but for emotional reasons. Yes, there is a madman somewhere out there, and Paula finds herself drawn farther and farther into his dangerous web. The genuine suspense that builds up over the last half of the film is energized further when Paula makes a shocking discovery that really hits her in the emotional gut.

The prominent bad guy sort of reveals himself a little early in the game, warning our heroine to stop nosing around, but his mysterious partner remains a mystery until the final moments. Bad Guy Number One, I think, goes a little overboard in his whole cool, calm, and collected closet psychotic behavior. I think he patterns much of his character's traits and behaviors on those of Herbert West of Reanimator fame, but these two characters are working at separate ends of the whole "life and death" spectrum and this guy is certainly no Jeffrey Combs. Still, it's fun to see a mad scientist-type villain take pride in his work.

Much of the gore involved in this subject matter presented on film is implied but not actually shown; while I personally would like to have been visually saturated in blood and guts, I think the lack of gore for gore's sake lends the movie a level of integrity that many a horror film cannot claim. The whole atmosphere of the film is palpable, the suspense builds up quite nicely, the ending comes with a potential little surprise, and Franka Potente is amazing. What's not to like? I should mention that this German film is dubbed in English, and while the dubbing isn't bad it necessarily denies us a complete sense of our characters' feelings at important moments. In the final analysis, this is quality dark entertainment that should please horror buffs as well as all Franka Potente fans in general.

A FUN HORROR FLICK WITH A FOREIGN TWIST
I saw this movie solely because it is one of the few movies you can get in America that stars Franka Potente, best known from "Run Lola Run," and it turned out to be a good movie too. Franka Potente is perfect in her role as the somewhat reserved heroine who uncovers an evil scheme in the prestigious medical university in Heidelburg. It was great seeing a foreign horror movie after seeing so many American ones. "Anatomy" is scary because it doesn't use a recycled plot and the movie really makes you wonder about medical science. It's not from Tom Tykwer, director of "Lola," and it doesn't have that post-modern feel, but it's still definitely worth seeing this good, solid horror flick.

brilliant, for a horror movie
Why is it that the best horror movies are foreign? Is it that they are more intelligent and less likely to follow the tired, used conventions of Hollywood? "Anatomie" is basically a somewhat subdued slasher film, but it has the bonus of starring the always fabulous Franka Potente. Unlike the majority of horror movies, this one is WELL MADE and doesn't look like it was filmed in someone's backyard with a camcorder. Though like the majority of horror films, it is set in a college (it's always college or high school), and deals with something psychologically uncomfortable for everyone- possible dissection! Not to mention, the whole good vs. bad convention: is it a bad thing to perform inhumane studies on human cadavers if the research can possibly save lives in the future?

P.S.- don't watch the sequel. ;)