"The Edukators (Die Fetten Jahre sind vorbei)" should be adopted as the movie of the "Summer of Live8," with almost as good a soundtrack. <br /><br />It is a wonderful illustration of how all politics is personal -- as one character quotes, "every heart is a revolutionary cell" and compares the hormonal rush from political action to love.<br /><br />Helped enormously by an appealing cast who perfectly capture the ebullience, exuberance and idealism of twentysomethings, director/co-writer Hans Weingartner brings to life an intelligent film about politics that is also very funny and wonderfully romantic. Just when any character starts slipping into rhetoric in their thoughtful, pointed debates, their conversations suddenly turn on double meanings for their personal lives. Dialectics quickly turns to longing gazes as these are sweet revolutionaries who are irrepressibly human. <br /><br />As probably middle-class products of democracy who want to influence voters for change, they are much more Yippies than terrorists. They are more about what used to be called consciousness-raising, hence the original German title, as they warn rich capitalists "Your Days Of Plenty Are Numbered" and sign themselves "Erziehungsberechtigter," a mouthful which I understand translates more as "guardians" than the nevertheless evocative English title.<br /><br />The first half of the film has a breathless New Wave feel, and I'm sure it's not a coincidence that one character is named "Jule" as the "Jules et Jim" triangle is a driving plot point. There's an amusing pattern of repeated visuals that change meanings as we see who is now next to whom, who is asleep and who is awake. <br /><br />Her boyfriend "Peter" is just the kind of seductive guy, played by a leonine Stipe Erceg, who brings her a present of a sexy camisole and thinks she just needs bright colors in her frustrating life. So how can she help but be surprised that his Angry Young Man best friend and "weird" roommate "Jan" can really talk to her.<br /><br />Music is used marvelously throughout the film (even though covers of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" -no, it's not Jeff Buckley's version, it's Lucky Jim- have been way overused in films lately, the words actually are meaningful in a climactic scene here). Non-German speakers are otherwise at a real disadvantage both for having to tear your eyes away from the charismatic actors and because few of the lyrics are translated in the subtitles, though I presume one is translated because the nostalgic lyrics for a pastoral past gain ironic resonance when the threesome ends up in a soothing sylvan Tyrollean landscape. But we can pick up that the guys play loud, aggressive music in very expressive mano a mano camaraderie throughout and the chick plays a romantic-sounding singer, Jeff Cole. So we can also be surprised when "Jan" admits to having gone to the same concert she did.<br /><br />While Daniel Brühl was charming in "Goodbye, Lenin" and sweet in "Ladies in Lavender," as "Jan" he's a heartbreaking movie star. The camera simply falls in love with him, too, in frequent close-ups, and wet opportunities to take his shirt off, as he puts poignancy into every look, even a furtive, frustrated glance in a rear-view mirror.<br /><br />Just when a baby boomer is feeling nostalgic watching these kids, the film makes the connection with the '60's explicit as it very amusingly crosses "The Big Chill" with "Ruthless People." There are at least two lines from these comparisons that are very laugh out loud funny, while making points about the 1968 of protests, sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Somehow I had previously missed the generation gap truism: "If you're not liberal when you're under 30, you have no heart. If you're liberal after 30, you have no brain." <br /><br />The conclusion goes in very surprising twists on bourgeois ethics that leave some questions about who chose to do what to whom when and who is now "a good liar." So it is frustrating to learn on the IMDb message boards that the director went back and added a clarifying scene that is only being shown in Germany. I can only hope international audiences will at least get to see it on the DVD. <br /><br />It is refreshing to see a German political film where the context is Europe within capitalist globalism, though there are a couple of frissons of recall to the unavoidable past, as when the rich capitalist they debate comes very close to saying he's just following orders in how he's just followed the system. The subtitles translated one of his points as perilously sounding like "Work will make you free" but I don't know if he actually said "Arbeit macht frei" in the German. I presume the number of English words that have casually become part of their lexicon is also symbolic of globalization. <br /><br />How wonderful that a new generation of activists, at least through this film, has a sense of humor. This film restores one's faith that youth is not in fact wasted on the young.