Like a lost relic from the French New Wave, A Coffee in Berlin dazzles with its melancholic black-and-white imagery and a jazzy soundtrack in line with Woody Allen’s New York ballads, following law school dropout Niko Fischer (Tom Schilling) as he hops from one peculiar encounter to another across the city he’s been stumbling through all his life. The film swept the German Oscars last year, and with it now finding U.S. distribution, we’re finally treated to its modest pleasures.

In his debut picture, Jan Ole Gerster tells an absorbing day-in-the-life story of a young man adrift in a sea of Generation Y wooziness. The film opens with scruffy Niko and his short-haired girlfriend breaking up in her bedroom. She asks him out to coffee, but he declines, claiming to have “a million things to do.” He’s barely trying. He’s got nothing to do. She knows it, he knows it, we know it. The scene ends, and Niko’s fatal flaw is revealed: he’s got no energy to commit to anything, even a beautiful girl shooting him flirty smiles in an unmade bed. He’s a sleepy fellow who believes he’s got nothing to offer the world.

The scene aesthetically recalls Breathless, but Niko is no Michel. He’s got no vigor, no drive to take what he wants, when he wants it. His license is taken away due to drunk driving, his daddy cuts off his allowance (which he’s been living on), and he even resorts to nicking change from a sleeping bum’s tip cup. That is, before a disapproving passerby catches him in the act. It’s a wonderfully funny scene, and most of the film’s humor stems from the unlucky Niko getting beat up by the universe.

Schilling is super-cool in his black leather jacket and button-down shirt. His a performance predicated on disconnection with the world, and yet he’s completely likable and relatable. There’s never any oomph given to the lines he delivers, because that’s what the role dictates. And yet, we listen closely to every word because we know he’s on a journey. He’s a nobody on his way to becoming somebody, and we want so badly for that somebody to break through his carefree veneer. His slow transformation from drifter into searcher is gripping.

The black-and-white aesthetic was a wise choice by Gerster, reflecting Niko’s state of mind while painting a beautifully dark, shadowy portrait of Berlin. There’s something about the combination of B&W images and piano music that fits so perfectly. Maybe it’s their shared percussive nature, or their ability to highlight the skeletal beauty of the art they bring to life. Or maybe it’s the color of the ivory keys that come to mind. Whatever it is, the sweet combination makes A Coffee in Berlin a pleasure to drink in, sip by luscious sip.

The film’s structure is simple but enjoyable, with Niko running into someone, having a weird conversation with them, then leaving equally befuddled and contemplative. From a creepy upstairs neighbor who offers Niko his wife’s meatballs to a girl named Julika who’s crush on and grudge against Niko have endured since they were kids, every encounter is interesting and well-written. There are some moments of tragedy and drama peppered throughout, but they’re half as affective as the moments of awkward hilarity. (The most poignant encounter is a short, simple one in which Niko tries out an elderly woman’s electric recliner.)

Least successful of all scenes is the film’s finale, sadly, which leaves a sour taste. Niko is joined at the bar by an old man who shares a sorry tale from his childhood about broken glass and bicycles. It’s all very reminiscent of one of Tom Waits’ earlier bar ballads, with the old man drunkenly stumbling through his story. The scene ultimately feels regrettably manipulative not in tune with the rest of the picture, which never begs for your attention. It’s like a street performer desperately shoving his tip jar in your face after a great performance: We would have offered up our money anyway, but now you’ve killed the mood. Still, A Coffee in Berlin is a largely enjoyable, understated picture that will tickle those with a taste for DIY indies and the French New Wave.

A Coffee in Berlin trailer

As a four-hour German epic depicting the lives of five friends before, during and after the Second World War, Generation War must be appreciated as an ambitious enterprise. Compared by critics to Band of Brothers, the film covers a tremendous amount of ground, discussing both military and civilian life during the war from German perspective.

Each of the five friends has a distinct background and personality, with each following a different life track (granting the viewer a broad spectrum of German life during the war: there is the sensitive artist turned unwilling (but ultimately battle-hardened) soldier; the ideologically-driven army nurse whose time in the field ultimately transforms her perspective on Nazism; the aspiring starlet who mingles with German officers in an attempt to jumpstart her career; the Berlin-born Jew trying to flee the country; and finally, the golden-boy Nazi officer who is becoming increasingly disillusioned with the war. Each character offers us a different perspective, and as we watch their journeys variously intersect, part, and rejoin, we begin to gain a multisided and complex vision of war-time Germany.

The film’s wartime action is well executed, it deals with the various horrors of war, and really goes into the psychological changes that each of it’s five main character’s undergoes through the course of the movie. Generation War is notable for it’s rendering of the German perspective, as so often in American cinema we simply demonize the whole of Germany during this period.

Yet there was something profoundly Disney-fied about the whole experience– despite the film’s potential to get into the details of how something like the Third Reich was possible, ultimately it shies away from such touchy questions. Modern American society has an endless fascination with Nazis. In our cultural canon they have come to symbolize everything evil and wrong in the world, up there with Osama Bin Laden and Attila. We want to know why something like Hitler and the Holocaust happened–how was it possible that a whole country went along with something so profoundly offensive to our understanding of modernity and civilization?

The characters we follow throughout the film, however, never answer these questions, nor do they really seem to be a product of the times. Except for one woman’s naive obsession with the Party (for which she is punished with rape and ultimately repents), none of them ever embrace the values of Fascism and anti-Semitism present at the time. They are correct and proper in their views, with no overt bigotry or negative characteristics that would hinder our love of them. There is no perspective on why Nazi values were important on a national or cultural level, let alone what our protagonists thought about those values. It’s as if the Third Reich was a fantastical background set for the very contemporary, progressive, clear-thinking individuals that make up the cast. The war is treated like some great fantasy– something that our sensible main characters are way to savvy to ever think of really believing in. Yet this leaves the big question unanswered: how did it happen?

The film exhibits an apologetic, ahistorical blindness to the headspace of the time that braver films and novels (The Tin Drum comes to mind) at least address. It’s as if nobody bought into all that Hitler nonsense, and that it was a few bad apples that caused such a silly mess. In this sense Generation War was extremely disappointing; it passed up on the opportunity to address significant moral questions in favor of much simpler answers, as so many other films concerning the Second World War have done. In length and breadth Generation War may be considered a modern German epic—yet it remains disappointingly shallow in terms of depth.