Child actress, now eleven years old, Helena Zengel, has made the natural progression to sensation look like a breeze. Within seconds of watching her play nine year old Benni in the extraordinary System Crasher, Zengel has bedazzled you with her acting prowess and already entered your bloodstream.
The restless, rowdy kid, with her luminous blond strands and cryptically pink hoodie, is an intriguingly beguiling case. Benni (she hates her full name, Bernadatte) jumps from one rocky stepping stone to the next, with not much seemingly phasing or embarrassing her. Although the lightning fast transition to going ballistic is never out of sight.
Director, Nora Fingscheidt, organically lets her documentary film-making experience sprinkle across proceedings – in a positive light. But this fiction feature has a raft-load of kinetic energy surging through it, as it depicts this problem-kind in all her rage, confusion and serenity. Fingscheidt handles the sensitive subject matter with exactly the right balance of empathy and psychology.
Cinematographer, Yunus Roy Imer, does cunning, pulsating things with his camera. And John Gürtler composes a riveting music score that rattles the senses as though drip-fed directly from a turbulent child’s nervous system. Both Imer and Gürtler are running in the same shoes as his director’s leaping vision and the lead actress’ frenetic performance. And as a film, this never allows style to interfere with the structure or substance of such a painful tale.
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System crasher is the term given to a troubled / troublesome child, that the state do not know what the fuck to do with. And the cursing is supplementary to the desperate severity of little Benni’s plight. A danger to herself and others, finding a stable home for this kid is a near-impossible task. Her impulses often hurl her into hot water, and a strong reluctance for any kind of child care facility to take her under their wings.
One minute running rampantly through a field, or dancing ridiculously to music in the car, the next Benni is banging her head against the car window at the horrific prospect of returning to school. Nobody can touch her face because of serious childhood trauma. She wets the bed occasionally. And in one early scene, shoplifts a handbag, not before pushing a toddler on her ass.
The absent mother (Lisa Hagmeister) is there for the arduous hospital tests on Benni, and the odd cuddles, but lacks the fortitude to find the strength as a mother to take responsibility for her daughter. And although unlikable traits in a character whose natural role is to nurture and protect, Benni is a handful more than enough for us to somewhat appreciate the mother’s fragile restrain.
Benni’s siblings are apparently growing more and more like her in some of the wrong areas. And in many respects, like questioning why her little brother and sister can live at home but not her, Benni is partially unaware of her own predicament. And perhaps more importantly, why her place in the world is so repelently up in the air.
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It is loyal support worker, Frau Bafané (Gabriela Maria Schmeide), who seems to have the driving focus to do what is right for Benni. A woman so harmonious on the outside, her private moments of resentment and despair are telling.
Not until much later, when the downs completely swamp the ups, does she cave in for many of her peers to see. It is Benni she crumples for, and it is Benni who comforts her. There’s an endearing side to Benni, her thanking the stranger who drives her to her mother’s place is touchingly genuine.
It is the school escort, Micha (Albrecht Schucht), who provides the film’s great hope. Micha suggests three weeks away in the woods – that he has provided a kind of escapist sanctuary for teenagers prior in his work. In this, another of the film’s enormous strengths is that this getaway / vacation / boot camp brings light and joy to Benni at times. Though the suggestion a grown man can take a nine year old into the woods raises an eyebrow.
But Benni is not transformed into a model citizen, and certainly not ready to tackle society in a jovial manner. Nor is Micha the hero here, the savior. Sure, he brings out the the best (as we know it) in Benni for a while, but even someone as determined and strong-willed as he has his limits. And his fatigue and intent to throw in the towel soon surface.
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A scene of smashing up wood hints on the cliche of bond-building and tension release, but System Crasher is not here for sentiment and glory. But rather shadowing the attempts to find the good in our children, no matter the strife and strain they are enveloped in. Sure, breakthroughs poke their heads around the door a few times, but all too often they come crashing through the floor, and feels like Benni and those that would provide for her have to return to square one.
When Micha throws a cloth at Benni to wake her up – meant playfully – he has momentarily forgotten that contact with her face sends her into a insurmountable frenzy. It takes might, but he does mange to calm her. Its one of the movie’s authentically tender, candid moments. In Micha, Benni inevitably sees a father figure. Even observing his own methods of self-control – as he clasps his hands together in one scene so not to lose his temper.
Benni’s behavior might repel those around her, mainly carers, but the girl yearns for company, for someone close, for people not to leave her. The catalyst of paradoxical emotions range from her genuine wonder at the baby inside Micha’s wife’s belly – the lively wonder of a child – to holding a knife to her own throat, before being dragged away kicking and screaming. She even bites down furiously on her own thumb at the direct impact of more bad news.
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Often taken to the specialist clinic, where she is sedated, as medical and care staff continue to scratch their heads. And this is a frustrating, tiring watch at times, as our own emotions and sensibilities become embroiled in this child’s life. And as film-watching goes, that is, for me, not a flaw.
We might want to shake the living daylights out of Benni, and in a flash just want to cradle her up in our arms and protect her. This, and many other layered factors, are what makes System Crasher so affecting and powerful as a piece of cinema. As a piece of reality. The repetitiveness of these frustrating social events owe to Benni’s own nature.
The appreciation of which might take its toll between the struggle and the spirit of the child. I takes strength to see both. And it is in that child’s cloudy, but bruised, outlook that present Benni as an integral flaw in the child welfare services. In Germany or otherwise.
The film depicts such quandaries with raw honesty, as young Helena Zengel devours the screen. Her Benni blends the almighty beauty of innocent children with the furiosity of troubled souls whose path in life is twisted at every footstep. Zengel is astonishing throughout, as System Crasher both curdles your frustrations and soars like a bird desperate to be free, right until that final beat. And long, long after.
System Crasher is available to stream on Curzon Home Cinema from Friday 27th March.
