Documentary about Element of Crime: Romance? Not us!

Back then, Element of Crime didn’t want to have anything to do with romance – today the band’s battle cry. Every full chord is suspected of being a hit, as is singing German lyrics. The archive snippets briefly but effectively tell how the group emerged from this dogma bit by bit. The moment when Rainer during the song Blue light and dual light, played on the TV show Bio’s train station, “I love you” sung in a completely nefarious way can be seen as a liberation.

What director Hübner doesn’t show: audience. It’s a good thing, because you’ve seen the people’s blissful smiles, their mutual indulgence, their half-open mouths often enough in other concert films. In return, the musicians from the opening act get their moments, which is extraordinary because they never actually appear in the stories about great rock bands. The documentary shows that Maike Rosa Vogel, Florian Horwath and Tobias Bamborschke from the group Isolation Berlin are not only friends of the band, but that Regener greatly admires the music of these people. Because they have each found their own way to sing in German about the fact that happiness and unhappiness belong together. Maike Rosa Vogel brings this into the film with her song Five minutes very nicely to the point: “For five minutes I wasn’t afraid of anything. Who can say that?”