Overrated

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

1. It's been said here that the gay content of the story has been removed. Well, the novel was released in 1905. We can nowadays interpret elements of the story in a gay context, but back then these notions did not exist. If Schlöndorff hints at homosexuality as an element of perversion, that is in fact faithful to the novel, which takes a strictly observatory, non-participating stance.2. 'Törless' is often interpreted as an indicator of upcoming intolerance and Nazidom. Again, the novel was released at a much too early time to allow for such an interpretation; the novel's author Robert Musil certainly envisioned the inevitable fall of an empire stuck to tradition and incapable of accommodating personal liberties. Schlöndorff pushes some of the juvenile delinquents into similarities with the Nazis - albeit being carefully ambiguous about it -, but it would be wrong to consider this interpretation as a part of the original narrative.3. 'Törless' is a highly psychological tale and film - again, Schlöndorff proves faithful to the novel in this respect. But this comes with the weakness of constructing characters around a certain social concept. It would be misleading to consider Törless and his rebellious friends as typical representatives of their era, or real figures upon which the author based his characters. As may be more obvious in Musil's masterpiece, 'The Man without Qualities', his characters are crafted to evoke rather a situation than a person; that makes his books almost impossible to adapt correctly.Schlöndorff's film is somewhat middlebrow; it does not intend to be a substitute for reading the novel, but at the same time it carefully avoids to give the impression that it is anything but a rendition of it. That's not quite true; the interpretation is in the framing, the omissions of the subtext, and that the ideas upon watching the film differ considerably from those you get when you read the novel. One may call it therefore a failure - but an interesting failure to watch.

Basini, a pathetic, slow witted and rather homely weakling, is targeted as a thief and is subjected to a series of humiliating, degrading experiments in the attic of a military academy. Basini willingly enslaves himself to his classmate Reiting, brilliantly portrayed as a popular bully "with gusto" (as one reviewer noted)by Fred Dietz, and seems to relish the abuse he has to endure.Basini is objectified- his debasement is seen from the point of view of Torless, who is fascinated by Basini's willingness to take whatever punishment is meted out, and his two chums - Reiting and the brainy sadist Beineberg. Eventually the sadists,who are running out of novel ways to torment their victim, decide to turn Basini over to the entire school, where he is strung up by the heels in the gym and subjected to an enthusiastic battering by his gleeful classmates. Basini is expelled as a moral degenerate, the "sensitive" Torless voluntarily leaves the academy. and the two arch-torturers stay on to graduate - no doubt with high honors. Musil's 1901 novel is more sexually explicit. In the novel Basini is stripped naked and battered by his classmates in preparation for a whipping. Basini turns himself in to avoid being flogged to death. In the novel Basini is described as pretty and sexually alluring. Seidowsky, the actor who portrays the victim in this movie, is pudgy and dull-eyed. His tormentors are handsome - almost charming at times, and that is likely closer to reality than we'd care to imagine. A modern remake could explore the homo-erotic sadism more explicitly than Schloendorf dared in the 1960s.

The idea of writing a story about a boarding school where bullies humiliate and torture weaker classmates is interesting and well worth making into a film, so I was interested in seeing this German film. However, the main character, Törless, was so confusing and inconsistent that it really damaged the overall impact. During much of the film, this lad seemed to be almost sleepwalking through the film. Many times, he just stared or watched but said or did almost nothing. Then, other times, he unexpectedly participated in some of the humiliation of his classmate. And, at another time, he was totally disconnected and observed the beatings and humiliations like a cold and clinical character reminiscent of a character from a Camus novel. Then, towards the end he announced that the torment was wrong and he tried to get the young man who was being physically, emotionally and sexually abused to come forward. As a result of this exceptionally poorly written character, so much of the impact of the film is missing. This is definitely a case of "what might have been". Oh, and speaking of 'sexually abused', this whole VERY IMPORTANT part of the story is poorly handled--being vaguely alluded to and then minimized. I would think a person being raped and sodomized might be a bit deal, but in this film it didn't seem that way at all.

Set in an indefinite time and place (likely the pre-WWI Germany/Austria), at a boarding school for adolescent boys, one student is caught stealing, and subsequently blackmailed and sadistically terrorized. One of his tormentors (the title character) passively observes much of the brutality against the victim, but eventually is overcome with emotions about his part in the evils inflicted on a fellow-student. An eventual investigation into the incidents by the school board leads the authority figures to believe that this "Young Toeless" is emotionally high strung and unfit to continue his studies at the school. Thinly veiled commentaries about young males in a society that expects total obedience and loyalty, while fanning flames of hate and urges to feel superior to others. Physical and emotional torture of a peer is shown as intoxicating and thrilling. The title character escapes this "world" by exclaiming that he now understands all about this "mystery", thus needs no longer to be involved. Once all was found out, the "meeting" among the class, where everyone "got their story straight" reminds of the post WWII investigations (culminating in the Nuremberg Trials), when one citizen would vouch for the other and vice versa, insisting all were innocent or "following orders". An emotional maturity is required for viewing this film. I would not recommend it for an audience under the age of 16. Otherwise this is a thought-provoking drama with many discussion points.