Tränen aus Stein

I was not at all familiar with Leifs before watching this movie. Knowing it was based on his life I expected it to be a fairly typical biopic, following him from his childhood, through his difficult life, ending up with him as an old man. While it does adhere to many traits common in biopics, I enjoyed that it only focused on one part of his life, instead trying to make that slice represent him as a person. From the character you see, you can guess how he ended up in the situation he was in, and though you only see him living in the difficult time of the second world war, you get a picture of what kind of person he was - both his good sides and his bad.

The most impressive part of the movie was how much they achieved with what I assume was a quite limited budget. Despite having most scenes being set in cities like Reykjavik and Berlin, there are hardly any shots of the cities themselves. Instead of letting this be an open wound, they opted for a more creative approach, using the darkness of night time and interesting cinematography to hide the fact. While not always successful, it makes the movie much more interesting.

My biggest gripe with the movie might be due to the print of it I saw - but the image quality seemed to be quite bad, and with a yellow tint that I hope was not intentional.